Number Addicts

Numbers are one of humanity's greatest inventions, becoming an indispensable part of civilization. However, numbers can be not only useful but also dangerous and insidious. They have taken over our world, forcing us to believe in them rather than in... words, no matter how convincing. The authors of “Number Addicts,” two well-known Scandinavian specialists in human behavior, Mikael Dahlen and Helge Torbjornsen, explain how this happened and how numbers have managed to enslave us. They describe how numbers influence society, the lives of individuals, and politicians. The authors teach us to resist the dictatorship of numbers, to handle them in a way that does not impoverish our lives. Perhaps, the scientists say, in some areas it is better to do without numbers, and they recommend getting a kind of vaccine against numbers to independently decide how to manage them.