Threats to Rationality and Progress: A Summary

Laws of logic and cause and effect must be respected in planning our lives.
Trust in communities of people who understand things beyond our experience.
People tend to believe stories that make their tribe look good and enemies look bad.
Rationality tends to be confined to the here and now of our lives.
Enlightenment ideals are not natural for most of our history and pre-history.
Threats to rationality and progress include authoritarian-nationalist and populist-right ideologies, anti-science beliefs, and suppression of speech and opinion.
New technologies tend to increase irrational thinking but require safeguards and norms.
Institutions such as academia, scientific societies, journalism, and government agencies are critical to realizing Enlightenment ideals.
Institutions must maintain credibility and principles to steer us toward the truth.