Third Millennium Thinking
Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Based on a wildly popular UC Berkeley course, how to use scientists’ tricks of the trade to make the best decisions and solve the hardest problems in age of uncertainty and overwhelming information.
In our deluge of information, it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish the revelatory from the contradictory. How do we make health decisions in the face of conflicting medical advice? Does the research cited in that article even show what the authors claim? How can we navigate the next Thanksgiving discussion with our in-laws, who follow completely different experts on the topic of climate change?
In Third Millennium Thinking, a physicist, a psychologist, and a philosopher introduce readers to the tools and frameworks that scientists have developed to keep from fooling themselves, to understand the world, and to make decisions. We can all borrow these trust-building techniques to tackle problems both big and small.
Readers will learn: How to achieve a ground-level understanding of the facts of the modern world How to chart a course through a profusion of possibilities How to work together to take on the challenges we face today And much more
Using provocative thought exercises, jargon-free language, and vivid illustrations drawn from history, daily life, and scientists’ insider stories, Third Millennium Thinking offers a novel approach for readers to make sense of the nonsense.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this solid if elementary primer, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Perlmutter, UC Berkeley philosopher Campbell (Reference and Consciousness), and Stanford University psychologist MacCoun (Drug War Heresies) equip lay readers with conceptual tools for assessing technical research. Covering common ways that errors creep into scientific studies, the authors note that researchers run the risk of identifying nonexistent or meaningless patterns when working with complex data. For instance, the physicists who discovered the Higgs particle took preemptive action to avoid such misreadings by assessing information from the Large Hadron Collider in two independent teams before comparing findings. To maintain a critical eye when considering complicated problems, the authors recommend adopting a "third millennium thinking" mindset that involves embracing "intellectual humility" by recognizing that "scientific evidence can provide probabilities but not absolute certainties." Discussions on the dangers of confirmation bias and drawing sweeping conclusions from isolated anecdotes are competent if familiar. More intriguing is the authors' proposal for "deliberative polling." Stemming from their concern that credulous readings of flawed data contribute to political polarization, the authors recommend that "a randomly selected ‘jury' of people drawn from the American public" solve policy issues with moderated input from experts across the political spectrum. The result is an efficient overview of methods for evaluating scientific claims.
