You Would Choose Now

Description

Welcome to the Leanpub Launch video for You Would Choose Now: Measuring America's Progress Toward Fairness and Tolerance https://leanpub.com/ywcn by Allen B. Downey! 0:48 Barack Obama's 2016 Howard University commencement address and the 'would you choose now' thought experiment 2:24 Survey data showing a trend toward greater tolerance over time across identity groups 3:10 Sexual orientation as the fastest-changing area of public attitudes in the last 30 years 4:02 Gen Z paradox: most tolerant generation yet lowest interpersonal trust and highest reported unhappiness 6:28 The availability heuristic, spam, and why modern communication technology distorts our sense of how trustworthy people are 9:44 Challenging nostalgia: why the past was not better for most people 11:20 Personal story: Allen's mother fired in 1961 for being pregnant, before the 1964 Civil Rights Act 12:59 John Rawls's Veil of Ignorance as the philosophical foundation for the book's central question 17:03 Whether America's progress toward fairness is unique or reflects universal trends in human flourishing 21:53 Publishing plan: one chapter per month, updating with General Social Survey 2026 data upon release About the Book If you could choose any moment in history to be born, and you did not know ahead of time who you would be — what nationality, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or economic class — when would you choose? Barack Obama posed this question in 2016, and it motivates this book. Allen Downey, data scientist and author of Probably Overthinking It, uses decades of data from national surveys to see whether America has become fairer and more tolerant. He puts changing attitudes alongside the historical record of civil rights and legal protections — and asks, "Would you choose now?" This is an early access edition. The introduction and first chapter are available now (about 50 pages), with additional chapters planned monthly and a complete draft expected in early 2027. Three editions are available in PDF and EPUB: * Free Sample — introduction only * Community Edition — introduction and first chapter (with email signup) * Early Access Edition — all currently available chapters, plus updates through the final edition This is a work in progress. Comments and suggestions are welcome. About the Author Allen Downey is the author of several books about programming, statistics, and data science, including Think Python, Think Stats, and Probably Overthinking It. He is Professor Emeritus at Olin College and Principal Data Scientist at PyMC Labs. His work explores how data and statistical methods can help us understand the world, with a particular emphasis on Bayesian methods, social science, and communicating quantitative ideas to a broad audience. He also writes the Probably Overthinking It blog. Follow the author here! https://x.com/allendowney Thank you for watching, please like and leave a comment, we'd love to hear from you! Please Subscribe and Follow! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/leanpub X: https://x.com/leanpub Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leanpub Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leanpub Create Your Own Leanpub Book! You can create your own book anytime here: https://leanpub.com/create/book Here's the tutorial showing how to write and publish a Leanpub book in your browser (it's free!): https://help.leanpub.com/en/articles/2932527-getting-started-writing-a-book-in-leanpub-s-web-browser-writing-mode If you're a Leanpub author and you'd like to submit your own Launch video for us to publish, or if you'd like to record a Launch video with Len, please go here: https://leanpub.com/launch. #books #leanpublishing #selfpublishing #leanpub #writing #culture #SocialJustice #DataScience #AmericanProgress #CivilRights #VeilOfIgnorance