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Leidy Klotz: Subtract (Hardcover, 2021, Flatiron Books) 4 stars

Blending behavioral science and design, Leidy Klotz's Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less offers a …

A gentle introduction to degrowth for liberals?

4 stars

Not all popular science books are created equally. The best of them are written by scientists describing the body of knowledge to which they themselves have contributed. Hawkins’s A Brief History of Time helped define the genre (though of course there were important antecedents); my favorite book from 2021, David Graeber & David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, is an example from the humanistic side of the social sciences.

Leidy Klotz’s Subtract (“the Untapped Science of Less”) begins by describing a fascinating series of psychology experiments that systematically tested a hypothesis that Klotz had articulated: people tend to solve problems by adding things (Lego bricks in the first experiment, but also other things, including ingredients in recipes and words in text) when subtracting things would work as well or better. Klotz argues that “subtraction neglect” is a form of cognitive bias that influences much of our thinking, to our detriment. …