The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone Hardcover – March 14, 2017

During this time of great polarization across our planet, especially during COVID and the 2016 Presidential election, it confused me how people could ignore facts that didn't conform to their already held beliefs. I wanted to read a book to help me understand the way others think but in the process, it helped me learn more about myself and why I believe the things that I do. This book changed the way I work with others.... I now understand the importance of working with people who view things differently from me, and it's helped me to be more understanding and compassionate in the process.

The Knowledge Illusion provides a readable overview of how people overestimate their knowledge base and how modern access to information is exacerbating our overconfidence in believing access to community knowledge represents immediate knowledge we possess ourselves. We live in an era of complexity and the basis of our modern civilizations is dependent on increasingly complicated science and highly specialized knowledge to function. At the same time our civilization's understanding of the physical world has reached new highs, our individual grasp of our pool of knowledge is weaker than ever. The knowledge illusion discusses how the mind creates illusions to bridge many gaps in its understanding and how one's awareness of this can be improved.The authors start out by giving examples of incredibly smart people doing foolish things as well as asking the reader to go through several exercises to test their understanding of their own knowledge. They are good prompts to familiarize the reader with their own ignorance that they were perhaps ignorant of themselves. The author discusses some neuroscience and gives some arguments for the benefits of a mind able to construct a causal framework in which events can be predicted. The author then discusses how this our views of causal relationships can be very wrong and the mind's intuition which we default do doesn't serve us when solving problems with unique basis of assumptions. The author's also touch upon AI and how it has evolved in the last 70 years, where it has not developed as people thought and where it is going now. I wouldn't give that much credit to this part of the book as there is much better material out there. The author discusses how collaborative thinking can be a good mechanism for people to see how differentiated expertise can lead to improved research abilities and that often if not always great human achievements are dependent on groups rather than individuals. The authors remind us that deifying the achievements of the individual are often due to our belief that in the mind of one person there can be so much whereas we are all constrained and dependent on both collaboration as well as idea copying. The authors discuss how technology is impacting our ability to be honest about our own knowledge and how our ability to experience is changing with technology. The author also brings up our weak understanding of science and the failings of initiatives to improve scientific reasoning and how even those with good scientific knowledge actually rest their understanding on the expertise of others rather than deep intrinsic knowledge of the subject matter. The authors also discuss the political sphere and the extremely weak ability for people to work through the causal implications of what their voter preferences would imply. As a consequence politics becomes dependent on what the group neighborhood thinks rather than based off individual thoughtfulness. This the author's note is part of the reason for voter divisiveness today and in particular its not as though value systems are so far apart its rather that people talk in big principles rather than policy repercussions and so debates are heated by framing and group thinking. The author's discuss how we need to view intelligence and human capacity and that our biases are innate so policies which have some paternalism can be beneficial. The author's bring up some ideas from behavioral economics like nudging people's preferences to better outcomes for society.The knowledge illusion discusses a lot of concepts around how the mind functions, what its limitations are and how we can be blind to our ignorance. I think most thoughtful people recognize that their knowledge is limited and that the more complex the world is the more it is difficult to create a comprehensive view of causality. Nonetheless the book communicates its ideas well and gives some good examples highlighting how our own understanding of our ignorance is usually ignored, potentially to our peril. Worthwhile read, no really new ideas but good mix of psychology, technology, politics and social policy.

''Our point is not that people are ignorant. It’s that people are more ignorant than they think they are. We all suffer, to a greater or lesser extent, from an illusion of understanding, an illusion that we understand how things work when in fact our understanding is meager'' (6)''Illusion of understanding''! Who me?''The mind is not built to acquire details about every individual object or situation. We learn from experience so that we can generalize to new objects and situations. The ability to act in a new context requires understanding only the deep regularities in the way the world works, not the superficial details.'' (11)What source do we use?''Instead of appreciating complexity, people tend to affiliate with one or another social dogma. Because our knowledge is enmeshed with that of others, the community shapes our beliefs and attitudes. It is so hard to reject an opinion shared by our peers that too often we don’t even try to evaluate claims based on their merits. We let our group do our thinking for us. Appreciating the communal nature of knowledge should make us more realistic about what’s determining our beliefs and values.'' (15)Not me! I decide for myself! Really? George Bernard Shaw wrote . . .''The warrior of the twentieth century was driven as much by faith as the warrior of the fifteenth century: In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one per cent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.'' (126)Wow! You think the earth rotates and the sun is stationary? Don't you believe your eyes?Introduction: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge1 What We Know2 Why We Think3 How We Think4 Why We Think What Isn’t So5 Thinking with Our Bodies and the World6 Thinking with Other People7 Thinking with Technology8 Thinking About Science9 Thinking About Politics10 The New Definition of Smart11 Making People Smart12 Making Smarter DecisionsConclusion: Appraising Ignorance and IllusionThe allure of illusion -''We’ve seen that people are surprisingly ignorant, more ignorant than they think. We’ve also seen that the world is complex, even more complex than one might have thought. So why aren’t we overwhelmed by this complexity if we’re so ignorant? How can we get around, sound knowledgeable, and take ourselves seriously while understanding only a tiny fraction of what there is to know?''What to do?''The answer is that we do so by living a lie. We ignore complexity by overestimating how much we know about how things work, by living life in the belief that we know how things work even when we don’t. We tell ourselves that we understand what’s going on, that our opinions are justified by our knowledge, and that our actions are grounded in justified beliefs even though they are not. We tolerate complexity by failing to recognize it. That’s the illusion of understanding.'' (33)'Living a lie'! Everybody? 'Illusion of understanding'? Man, this is bad! Professors too?''When academics encounter a new idea that doesn’t conform to their preconceptions, there’s often a sequence of three reactions: first dismiss, then reject, and finally declare it obvious. The initial reaction to an idea that challenges an academic’s world view is to ignore it: Assume it’s not worthy of one’s time and consideration. If that doesn’t work, if community pressure forces the idea to be confronted, academics come up with reasons to reject it. Academics are terrific at justifying their opposition to an idea. Finally, if the idea is just too good to reject, if the idea hangs on in the community, academics find reasons to claim they knew it all along because it’s self-evident.'' (255)This conclusion is from self-same academics! 'They just reject it'! Such as . . .One glaring omission in this work is the neglect of Carl Menger, Ludwig Von Mises, Fredrick Von Hayek and their work on 'use of knowledge in society'. These are world famous scholars with profound insights into this same challenge. Not one mention, either by name or even the concept. Just ignored. Exactly the error this book is attempting to resolve!Hayek - ''Adam Ferguson expressed it, “nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action but not the result of human design”; and that the spontaneous collaboration of free men often creates things which are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend. This is the great discovery of classical political economy which has become the basis of our understanding not only of economic life but of most truly social phenomena.''And Bastiat - ''If the market is free, no one can accumulate unless he renders a service to someone else. . . . In reality, said Bastiat, capital is always put at the service of other people who do not own it, and it is always used to satisfy a desire (good or bad) that other people want satisfied. In that important sense, all capital is truly owned in common by the entire community - and the greater accumulation of capital, the more it's benefits are shared in common.''One subtle assumption in this work is expressed . . .''If we remain ignorant about the horrors that are going on next door, we won’t do what’s necessary to stop them.'' (257)This impulse to control others, to limit their free will, to treat others as lesser ones, runs through the writing. Even though the motive is positive, supervisory status for some is implied here. For example . . .''Intelligence resides in the community and not in any individual. So decision-making procedures that elicit the wisdom of the community are likely to produce better outcomes than procedures that depend on the relative ignorance of lone individuals. A strong leader is one who knows how to inspire a community and take advantage of the knowledge within it, and who can delegate responsibility to those with the most expertise.'''Intelligence resides in the community and not in any individual'! This collective vs person has been debated since at least the French Revolution. Nevertheless. . .''So we’re not championing faith in whatever a community believes or whatever a credentialed expert says. Along with faith must come a healthy dose of skepticism and a keen eye for charlatans and those who are confidently wrong. When your community gives you bad advice, it’s your responsibility not to take it. Nazi prison guards are not excused because they were just following orders, and terrorists are certainly not excused because they are members of an ideological community.''Where or when to blend in or reject?''But most of us have the freedom to choose communities that do their best to avoid false statements and lies. Society has come as far as it has because most people are cooperative most of the time. We try to surround ourselves with people who report only what they know, and tell us if they’re not sure. And we mostly succeed. We can almost always trust the people we interact with; that’s what makes community living possible.''This conclusion seems to drive much of the book.About two hundred and fifty notes. Every single one is linked to internet! Astounding!Around five hundred references listed in index. Each one linked to text. Great!(See - ''Escape from Democracy: The Role of Experts and the Public in Economic Policy'', by David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart. Similar conclusions, although focused on government. Also, ''Public Opinion'', by Walter Lippmann. Outstanding!)

O primeiro livro pesquisador que li que desassocia memória de conhecimento.O conhecimento coletivo está à disposição do conhecimento individual.

It is a wonderfull book with interesting perspective over knowledge, asking about the individual or collective focus. It is and old problem with fresh point of view.

This book provides lots to think about. What do we really "know"? What do we really "need to know"? It gives on a great deal humility and stresses how much we need to operate with cooperative group thinking.

arrivato in ottimo statolibro molto interessante anche per chi di psicologia non mastica molto

Overall I think it is a book with some interesting insights, but for some reason I couldn't get into it totally. I wasn't a huge fan of the writing, even though I got away with some interesting food for thoughts.