The Rational Optimist

By Matt Ridley

Categories: Business & Money, Engineering & Transportation

For two hundred years, pessimists have warned that things are about to get much worse. Matt Ridley argues they keep being wrong. Through exchange, specialization, and innovation, which Ridley calls cultural evolution, humans have made life steadily better: more food, higher incomes, and longer lives, with less disease, child mortality, and violence. Covering the sweep from the Stone Age to the Internet, he makes the case for optimism about where we're going.

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• Sam Harris: “They include the Red Queen, Genome, the Rational Optimist, and the Evolution of Everything.”
• Shane Parrish: “Matt Ridley is a longtime favorite. Originally a PhD zoologist, Ridley went on to write great books like The Red Queen and The Rational Optimist, and wrote for The Economist for a while. This book makes the argument for how trial-and-error style evolution occurs across a wide range of phenomena. I don’t know that I agr”