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A review by sarah_gibson
The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone by Steven Sloman, Philip Fernbach
4.0
So, I'm taking a class that gave us a number of books to choose from to write an essay on how it connects to the subject matter we're discussing (i.e. Information Communities). I decided to go with The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone. I won't post my boring essay, but I'll just give a basic description of the book and a short rundown of my thoughts.
In the Knowledge Illusion the authors are making the point that since human brains evolved to filter out most information, much of what we think we "know" is actually external information gathered from our knowledge community (friends, family, local experts [e.g. plumbers], teachers, books, and the internet.) “We fail to draw an accurate line between what is inside and outside our heads. And we fail because there is no sharp line. So we frequently don’t know what we don’t know” (15).
They give many examples throughout and one such example was that of the zipper. Participants were asked to rate on a scale how well they understood how zippers work. Next, they were asked to explain how zippers work in as much detail as possible. Last, they were asked to once again rate how well they understood zippers. Not surprisingly, participants rated their knowledge lower the second time around. The authors refer to this throughout as an Illusion of Understanding. They explain that humans in general are guilty of this because it's simply how our brains evolved. We seamlessly pull information from our external environment (knowledge community) and blend it with our internal environment (our mind).
They go into a lot more than this and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in topics of cognitive science, psychology, and/or politics. Only downside is that I felt like the writing was clunky at times. They also become a bit repetitive and I found myself sometimes skimming different examples that were making the same points.
In the Knowledge Illusion the authors are making the point that since human brains evolved to filter out most information, much of what we think we "know" is actually external information gathered from our knowledge community (friends, family, local experts [e.g. plumbers], teachers, books, and the internet.) “We fail to draw an accurate line between what is inside and outside our heads. And we fail because there is no sharp line. So we frequently don’t know what we don’t know” (15).
They give many examples throughout and one such example was that of the zipper. Participants were asked to rate on a scale how well they understood how zippers work. Next, they were asked to explain how zippers work in as much detail as possible. Last, they were asked to once again rate how well they understood zippers. Not surprisingly, participants rated their knowledge lower the second time around. The authors refer to this throughout as an Illusion of Understanding. They explain that humans in general are guilty of this because it's simply how our brains evolved. We seamlessly pull information from our external environment (knowledge community) and blend it with our internal environment (our mind).
They go into a lot more than this and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in topics of cognitive science, psychology, and/or politics. Only downside is that I felt like the writing was clunky at times. They also become a bit repetitive and I found myself sometimes skimming different examples that were making the same points.