Ranked: Why Do People Think Differently?

This is a subjective Ranked version of Intriguing Connections: Why Do People Think Differently?


An Ethical Account

  1. A Philosophy of Evil by Lars Svendsen
  2. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  3. Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It by Max H. Bazerman, Ann E. Tenbrunsel

Different Backgrounds

  1. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
  2. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
  3. Transformative Experience by L. A. Paul
  4. Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
  5. Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger by Peter Bevelin
  6. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
  7. War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
  8. The Heroine With 1,001 Faces by Maria Tatar
  9. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
  10. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua D. Greene
  11. The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World by Charles C. Mann
  12. Inventing the Enemy by Umberto Eco
  13. The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap by Gish Jen
  14. How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan
  15. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson

Different Wants
  1. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
  2. A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell
  3. The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch
  4. The Second Stage by Betty Friedan
  5. Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall
  6. Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds by Jim Sterba
  7. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
  8. Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier
  9. The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World by Stewart Patrick
  10. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
  11. Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming by McKenzie Funk
  12. Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science by Stuart Ritchie

Divergent Thinking
  1. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant
  2. In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Jeanne Nemeth
  3. Why Societies Need Dissent by Cass R. Sunstein
  4. Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas
  5. A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine
  6. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
  7. Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
  8. From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew
  9. Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt, and Stephen J. Dubner
  10. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science by Peter Godfrey-Smith
  11. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
  12. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin

Divergent Thinking / Fiction
  1. A Voracious Grief by Lindsey Lamh
  2. Elektra by Jennifer Saint

The Influence of Culture

  1. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich
  2. Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: Tight and Loose Cultures and the Secret Signals that Direct Our Lives by Michele Gelfand
  3. The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it by Will Storr
  4. The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Verlan Lewis, Hyrum Lewis
  5. Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter
  6. Race And Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell
  7. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
  8. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
  9. The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
  10. Japanese Culture: The Religious and Philosophical Foundations by Roger J. Davies
  11. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis
  12. When Women Ruled The World by Maureen Quilligan
  13. Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict by Curtis L. Fox
  14. Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland
  15. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault
  16. Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose by John Nathan
  17. World Cultures: Analyzing Pre-Industrial Societies In Africa, Asia, Europe, And the Americas by James T. Shea

The Influence of Culture / Fiction 
  1. Berlin by Jason Lutes


Learning Different Ways to Think
  1. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  2. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
  3. How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine ... for Now by Stanislas Dehaene
  4. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker
  5. Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
  6. The Possibility Principle: How Quantum Physics Can Improve the Way You Think, Live, and Love by Mel Schwartz
  7. Buddha by Karen Armstrong
  8. The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers by Eric Weiner
  9. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
  10. Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It by Ian Leslie
  11. The Secret Formula of Strategic Thinkers: Winning Steps for Sustained Success by Cory Smith

How It Is Known That People Think Differently
  1. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock, and Dan Gardner
  2. Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
  3. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Fiction / Brains Infrastructure
  1. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley