How To Improve Your Mind

James R. Flynn is Professor Emeritus at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate and its Gold Medal for Distinguished Career Research. He has been profiled in Scientific American and named "Distinguished Contributor" by the International Society for Intelligence Research. He is the author of What is Intelligence? (2007).

"Professor James Flynn sets a clever trap in his latest book, How to Improve Your Mind. Promising that all readers will "be far more able to defend their position after reading it than before", Flynn instead provides the critical tools necessary instead for reassessing the irrational beliefs each of us hold and, in so confronting, end them. For your own good, you should let yourself be trapped." Weekend Press, Christchurch

• List of Figures and Boxes ix Acknowledgments x1 Introduction: The Knowledge Trap 1Part 1 Arguing about Right and Wrong 152 Logic and Moral Debate – Attacks on Blacks 173 Getting Rid of Tautologies – No Private Clubs 244 The Naturalistic Fallacy and Its Consequences – be Judgmental 325 But that is Unnatural – Words Best Never Said 41Part 2 The Truth about People 496 Random Sample – Quality Not Size 517 Intelligence Quotient – Hanging the Intellectually Disabled 568 Intelligence Quotient – and the Black/White IQ Gap 629 Control Group – How Studying People Changes Them 6910 The Sociologist ’ s Fallacy – Ignoring the Real World 75Part 3 The Market and Its Church 8511 Creating a Market – Not a Frankenstein 8712 Market Forces – How they Take their Revenge 9613 Market Worship – No Ritual Sacrifices 10814 The Economic Collapse of 2008 11715 What is to be Done? 130Part 4 Enemies of Science 13916 Reality – What Scientists Really Say About Science 14117 History, Science, and Evolution – Only One Kind of Each 152Part 5 Nations and their Goals 16318 Understanding Nations – Understanding Anyone 16519 Four Cases – Making Sense Out of Nonsense 17320 Conclusion: Gene Debs University 183Index 189