the rational optimist summary

Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down — all across the globe. Being a rational optimist, you possess the unique power to reach your goals and have the life you have always wanted. Pick up your own copy of the book or browse more book summaries. Fundamentally, other animals do not do barter. Having done this for a few dozen pages (during which he is guilty of only a few instances of exaggeration, cherry picking, or intentional omission of information; his thesis really is largely true), he realises he can never fill a book with it, so he goes off into surprisingly. Personally, I think this may be one of the most important books of the last 10 years. “Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals.”. “The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella).”, “Some are worse off than they were just a few months or years before. All you need are the facts, proven data, which will let you make proper conclusions about this or that event. I’d rather read a more balanced perspective on the subject. Rating: 6/10. Here’s the rub: this future sounds awfully like the feudal past. Culture evolution is much the same, but the unit of exchange is the idea. Unfortunately, when given out free by donor agencies, they often become fashion items instead, being sold on the black market for wedding veils or used as fishing nets. Even so, this is a frustrating book to read. presents the latest findings in a topical field and is written by a renowned expert but lacks a bit in style. The urban revolution was an extension of the division of labour. He's an advocate of free trade & minimal government oversight, themes that run throughout this book. Ridley argues that this trait, together with the specialization linked to it, is the source of modern human civilization, and that, as people increasingly specialize in their skill sets, we will have increased trade and more prosperity. ‘You people in the developed world are certainly free to debate the merits of genetically modified foods, but can we eat first?’. Those of libertarian bent often prove more generous than those of a socialist persuasion: where the socialist feels that it is government’s job to look after the poor using taxes, libertarians think it is their duty. getAbstract is a service that enables you to cover more books and key arguments from the very best non-fiction authors. The sexual and political liberation of women in the 1960s followed directly their domestic liberation from the kitchen by labour-saving electrical machinery. We don’t need to agree with the Ridley theme of optimism for the future to make this book worthwhile to read. As a broad generalisation, the more people trust each other in a society, the more prosperous that society is, and trust growth seems to precede income growth. Download "The Rational Optimist Book Summary, by Matt Ridley" as PDF. Click here to watch a video on the notes from this book. So is our future. He should have stuck to biology. It's a collection of fascinating finds from my week, usually about psychology, technology, health, philosophy, and whatever else catches my interest. The argument is not that exchange teaches people to be kind; it is that exchange teaches people to recognise their enlightened self-interest lies in seeking cooperation. I had the idea to do an app which disects books into the vital components but was dumbfounded when I thought of the process and work involved!”. Through science, economics and historical examples, the author reveals many reasons to be optimistic about the adversities we are facing today or might encounter in the future. Especially the emphasis on the evergrowing and intertwined role of exchange, specialisation and innovation is an eye-opener. Want to get the main points of The Rational Optimist in 20 minutes or less? Then, around 11,500 years ago the temperature of the Greenland ice cap shot up by ten degrees (centigrade) in half a century; throughout the world conditions became dramatically warmer, wetter and more predictable. I even like books that are libertarian. Postmillenialists need to read this kind of stuff together with their scriptural studies. The seventeenth-century discoveries of gravity and the circulation of the blood were splendid additions to the sum of human knowledge. Life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. The characteristic signature of poverty is a return to self-sufficiency. If I claimed The Rational Optimist to be the most important non-fiction book I've read in my entire life, it wouldn't be far from the truth. However, no one person could build a computer mouse from scratch. By looking into examples in each area of our existence, say, science, history or economics, you can see that the human race is moving forward, developing more innovative solutions to tackle the world’s problems. Matt Ridley is a British scientist, journalist and businessman. [1], Bill Gates praised the book for critiquing opposition to international aid, but criticised the book for under-representing global catastrophic risks. Throughout the world, birth rates are falling. Some of it is mildly interesting. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and conta. You can also buy it from my favourite bookshop Aldeburgh Bookshop Apart from the secularism and the evolutionary assumptions, Ridley does a great job of describing things in a way that counteracts the very common and insistent cultural pessimistic narrative. So the question is: how much fuel does it take to grow fuel? Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and conta. A truly inspiring book that goes against everything I've ever heard about the future of humanity. Positive thinking has proven to be a driving element of progress. With every action, with every positive thought, you make this world better. If not, why? Summary . Humans are different than other animals because they’re capable of sharing ideas, knowledge, and information. A lot of weeds absolutely love it, and it makes them grow faster. Read the world’s #1 book summary of The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley here. This is my book summary of The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. Bizarre as this may sound, in evolutionary terms it is quite normal. Clearly a lot of effort has been put into it! Vomiting data on our evolution doesn't change the fact that we live in a planet with finite resources. I even agree with the central tenet that the world is getting better, and could go with the argument that specialization and trade are at the center of progress. Rational Optimist starts with a thesis that we are way better off than we ever were. For me, Ridley is also rather convincing in his condemnation of the always returning doom thinking, especially on the climate-change issue. It's very rarely i stumble upon such a rare gem. There is no doubt that the modern society is facing a lot of dangers, starting from the climate change and finishing with overpopulation in certain regions of our planet. Through science, economics and historical examples, the author reveals many reasons to be optimistic about … As far as the planet is concerned, this is good news because city dwellers take up less space, use less energy and have less impact on natural ecosystems than country dwellers. Refresh and try again. What can I say, I'm a rational pessimist. Read a 15 min summary of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley, available in Book and Audiobook format. In 2019, I quit my day job as a data scientist because I started earning enough income through profitable websites to support my entire lifestyle. 1-Page Summary of The Rational Optimist The Rise of Collective Intelligence. The book primarily focuses on the benefits of the innate human tendency to trade goods and services. He has written six books and received the Hayek Prize in 2011 for The Rational Optimist. People that want to save time and simply get the key message from a book rather than read all the fluff. That's a bad combination, especially since the zones that food crops grow in are likely to shift and the weather in general is likely to become more chaotic. Rural self-sufficiency is a romantic mirage. The Rational Optimist Summary. But they have been saying this for two hundred years. This suggests that good old-fashioned Malthusian population limitation does not really apply to human beings, because of their habit of exchange and specialisation. Available on the web, iPad, iPhone and Android. The Rational Optimist is a 2010 popular science book by Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. am saying that barter – the simultaneous exchange of different objects – was itself a human breakthrough, perhaps even the chief thing that led to the ecological dominance and burgeoning material prosperity of the species. The Malthusian crisis comes not as a result of population growth directly, but because of decreasing specialisation. The book primarily focuses on the benefits of the innate human tendency to trade goods and services. Your submission has been received! It is an iron rule documented in virtually all foraging people that ‘men hunt, women and children gather’. Investigate. Technology now allows us to grow more food and feed more people with less land. Though some women have read this book and given it good reviews. There are some interesting stats on global prosperity, but it was kind of hard to get through at parts and felt overly optimistic in others. Sites like Innocentive andyet2.com allow companies both to post problems they cannot solve, promising rewards for their solution, and to post technologies they have invented that are looking for applications. David Papineau praised the book for refuting "doomsayers who insist that everything is going from bad to worse". I was initially a bit skeptical, thinking by the title it might be a blabla type feel good book, but i was blown away but i what I found: a very solid strong scientific book with tons of facts and reliable research. The possibility of new knowledge makes the steady state impossible. In other words, cooking encourages specialisation by sex. As we are constantly bombarded with doom prophesies the book makes a really good job and puts all of that into greater perspective. Those would say that life in the past was better/easier/more moral. If you want to be an optimist, go read more rational ones like: Abundance, or Pinker, or Sapiens, etc. Believe it or not, but you can try out and get an idea of these summary apps for free. For example, someone has to drill for oil and make plastic before a computer mouse can be made. admitted that even today scientists’ job is really to come along and explain the empirical findings of technological tinkerers after they have discovered something. 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