THIRD MILLENNIUM THINKING

A pertinent study about how knowing what questions to ask is the way to cut through confusion and misunderstanding.

This interesting, challenging book is based on a popular “Big Ideas” course at UC Berkeley. Perlmutter, Campbell, and MacCoun—a physicist, philosopher, and psychologist, respectively—aim to help people “learn to think about big problems and make effective decisions in this ‘too much information’ age.” Media saturation, data overload, fake news, and the proliferation of experts (and pseudo-experts) have combined to make the world seem like a labyrinthine mess. The authors argue that the methodology of science provides a way out, and it can be applied broadly as long as the process is properly understood. They lay out the questions to ask, the ways to separate facts from opinions, how to distinguish reliable information from background noise, how to think in terms of probabilities instead of absolutes, and how to incorporate personal values. As the authors demonstrate throughout, this approach involves a change of thinking. Get out of the echo chamber of the like-minded, they advise, and make contact with people who have different views. Review your opinions and policies, and admit it if you were wrong. Be aware of your own biases, especially the tendency to believe things simply because they confirm your views. Perlmutter, Campbell, and MacCoun provide case studies and thought exercises from their respective fields, but they avoid jargon wherever possible. They admit that the methodology can be difficult to use, although it gets easier with practice. This book is not an easy book to read and requires a good deal of attention, but the authors present many useful lessons for making sense of what is happening around us.

Working across disciplines, the authors offer valuable tools for understanding this complex, confusing era.