The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone

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Penguin, 2017 M03 14 - 304 páginas
“The Knowledge Illusion is filled with insights on how we should deal with our individual ignorance and collective wisdom.” —Steven Pinker

We all think we know more than we actually do.

 
Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We’re constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with which we interact—and usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
 
The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail. But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. The Knowledge Illusion contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.
 

Contenido

Ignorance and the Community
1
one What We Know
19
Two Why We Think
37
THREE How We Think
49
Four Why We Think What Isnt So
69
Five Thinking with Our Bodies and the World
85
six Thinking with Other People
107
seven Thinking with Technology
131
nine Thinking About Politics
171
Ten The New Definition of Smart
195
ELEven Making People Smart
215
Twelve Making Smarter Decisions
233
Appraising Ignorance and Illusion
255
Acknowledgments
267
Index
285
Derechos de autor

Eight Thinking About Science
153

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Acerca del autor (2017)

Steven Sloman is a professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University. He is the editor in chief of the journal Cognition. He lives with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island. His two children have flown the coop.

Philip Fernbach
 is a cognitive scientist and professor of marketing at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and two children.

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