I consider this a 'must read' for anyone wanting to understand the polarization of today's society inflamed by social media. My reason for reading this is to gain insight for work strategies since the modern approach is to deny what those truly trained in an area have to say. What I learned is that none of us know as much as we think we do (the knowledge illusion). That's not necessarily a bad thing except when we don't realize it. The other thing is (and really this is true--look at your own interactions) people really don't want to be inundated with facts. The challenge is making information that is complex understandable in very basic bits. Obviously there are no easy answers but understanding the problem and being offered some approaches is very helpful. Also this book addresses recognizing the knowledge we rely on which is outside of own heads--this is the why we never think alone part. These are important topics. The authors have done a great job organizing and presenting the material.

A bit dry, and I wish they made the distinction that knowledge > science, instead of science = knowledge, but I really enjoyed the points they made and found it informative. I could get even more out of it if I read it closely instead of just listening.

Funny and smart, I loved the combination of science and philosophy and cognitive psychology. It was easy to read and I found it incredibly interesting and particularly relevant to where my thoughts have been lately. I loved the little puzzles and questions and the specific examples broken down by the authors. I appreciated the layout of the chapters and how they set the reader up knowing what to expect from the next, and constantly referring to how they all fit together and why the contextual knowledge was necessary to understand the next chapter. This is definitely a book I will be sharing with others and talking about for a while. I'd love to be better at knowing what I don't know, and utilizing community of knowledge more effectively.

Such an incredible book. It explains why we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do. It’s extremely humbling and gives some great suggestions.

2.5 stars

There were some very interesting ideas that were explored in this. It gives you a greater appreciation for what you don't know. The book definitely got me to assess my own knowledge differently.

Here are some pretty cool quotes from the book that really stood out to me,

"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."

"Members of the community are critically dependent on each other. No one is an island; no one knows it all; collaborative learning is necessary for survival. This interdependence promotes an atmosphere of joint responsibility, mutual respect, and a sense of personal and group identity."

However this was a required reading for my class so that kind of took the fun out of reading it. I also felt that there were parts in this that were overly emphasized or that seemed to drag on and weren't that interesting. Which is pretty ironic considering that the book talks about how we pick and choose what we find to be useful information and tend to skim other things.

The book repeats the same argument over and over giving more case studies to make it stronger without coming to a conclusion