This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking (Edge Question Series) Original Edition

by John Brockman (Author)

196 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0062109392

ISBN-10: 9780062109392

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Edge.org presents brilliant, accessible, cutting-edge ideas to improve our decision-making skills and improve our cognitive toolkits, with contributions by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Richard Dawkins, Brian Eno, Steven Pinker, and more. Featuring a foreword by New York Times columnist David Brooks and edited by John Brockman, This Will Make You Smarter presents some of the best wisdom from today’s leading thinkers—to make better thinkers out of the leaders of tomorrow.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This Will Make You Smarter gives us better tools to think about the world and is eminently practical for life day to day. The people in this book lead some of the hottest fields.” (DAVID BROOKS, from the Foreword)

“The world’s smartest website ... Edge is a salon for the world’s finest minds” (The Guardian)

“Edge.org has become an epicenter of bleeding-edge insight across science, technology and beyond, hosting conversations with some of our era’s greatest thinkers” (Atlantic Monthly)

“A winning combination of good writers, good science and serious broader concerns.” (KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review))

From the Back Cover

Featuring a foreword by David Brooks, This Will Make You Smarter presents brilliant—but accessible—ideas to expand every mind.

What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to the world’s most influential thinkers. Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world.

Daniel Kahneman on the “focusing illusion” • Jonah Lehrer on controlling attention • Richard Dawkins on experimentation • Aubrey De Grey on conquering our fear of the unknown • Martin Seligman on the ingredients of well-being • Nicholas Carr on managing “cognitive load” • Steven Pinker on win-win negotiating • Daniel C. Dennett on benefiting from cycles • Jaron Lanier on resisting delusion • Frank Wilczek on the brain’s hidden layers • Clay Shirky on the “80/20 rule” • Daniel Goleman on understanding our connection to the natural world • V. S. Ramachandran on paradigm shifts • Matt Ridley on tapping collective intelligence • John McWhorter on path dependence • Lisa Randall on effective theorizing • Brian Eno on “ecological vision” • Richard Thaler on rooting out false concepts • J. Craig Venter on the multiple possible origins of life • Helen Fisher on temperament • Sam Harris on the flow of thought • Lawrence Krauss on living with uncertainty

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Product details

Series: Edge Question Series
Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Original edition (February 14, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780062109392
ISBN-13: 978-0062109392
ASIN: 0062109391
Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 196 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #145 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- #64 in Science Essays & Commentary (Books)

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Atle Brandt

Too much and too little

October 20, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The concept and the idea behind this book (and the other similar editions) is sound and interesting. Get a large number of relevant thinkers to give a short "taste" from their field and some sort of prediction.

And as a site online where you might click on ten or so, it is wonderful. But in a book collecting all 150? No so much.

First off a lot of the post don't really talk about concepts as such - more along the "wow it would be kinda cool..." Lines of late night discussions. Of those that do, some just tease it in less than a page, whilst others seem on a mini crusade and go on into minutiae of their pet project.

So, a book bringing the 10/25/50 best or most popular or most controversial might be a lot better. Leaving the rest of the "thanks for taking the time" online. Then I'd have understood the "edited by" on the cover.

But still four stars?

Yes, because here are a lot of nuggets here, and a lot of books to look into and people to explore further. I have a. Feeling I might have crept close to the max numbers if highlights in a single kindle book. And, as a time capsule it will be fun to have a look at in 20+ years time.

6 people found this helpful

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Magalini Sabina

A Reader's Digest of Contemporary Thought

July 20, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Brockman's books extracted from Edge.org are really hubs, that through their spokes (the essays they group together under one question) consent the reader to reach out and grab, experience, explore the often difficult to follow contemporary thought in many scientific disciplines. Otherwise we could define them as toolkits from which to extract the necessary tool that helps us out to better understand our ever changing world. The 2012 "This will make you smarter" are 153 essays that answer the question "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?"
The message very concise, that can be extracted from this book, is that a big part of modern scientific though is about metacognition. About the way we think. Naturally also this may be one of the many biases, because the question that was posed was thought up by Pinker and Kahneman, who themselves are the ideologist of cognitive biases.
Personal suggestion: this book is what was once the Reader's Digest: an instrument to know things, or what was going on, without having to really dig through all the books one was supposed to have read. Very useful in our fast paced world. However, insufficient to really explore modern scientific thought. So read it, let it sparkle your curiosity, but then go out and get the texts, explore the profiles of the authors, look up the words and concepts you like most. This is the best way to get the best out of this opus magnum and probably what Brockman wants you to do.
If the interest in these topics is sincere I believe Daniel Kahnemans "Thinking fast, thinking slow" must be the first read.

4 people found this helpful

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Simone Campbell

Recommended this to all of my friends!

December 20, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I love this book. Way too much. I had to purchase it for a class, but I ended up purchasing additional books from the Edge.com’s question of the year because I thought it was a fantastic idea. There are so many interesting topics and they have definitely changed my perspective of the world for the better.

2 people found this helpful

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Phil H

Interesting but some Confusion and Contradiction.

March 27, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Some interesting and insightful information but I was surprised by some confusing data. A few examples I remember 1)Holism - the maximum possible connections between 10 people is 45. Hmm, IF this means the maximum number of ways of arranging 10 people in different order, this is 10! = 3628800. 2)Powers of 10 - the difference between an earthquake magnitude 6 and magnitude 8 (a thousand times more energy)! There is no explanation of why 100 times more amplitude translates to 1000 times more energy. The author wonders why nonscientists are flummuxed by log scales. 3)Statistically Significant Difference - simply whether a p value falls either side of a pre-determined level of significance. Why confuse this with interpretations of the result. In general, there is an apparent desire of some authors to use more science in dealing with important societal issues. Others opine that science is usually proven incorrect. I find this ironic. Maybe we should task science with reducing annual US traffic fatalities (35 000) by 25%. Same for gun associated homicides (20 000). Good luck in getting politicians or anyone else to take on such specific goals. Plenty of data here to explain why this won't happen. Nonetheless an interesting read.

2 people found this helpful

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This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking (Edge Question Series) Original Edition

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