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strickvl's review
3.0
Probably more like a 2.5 but 2 stars only seemed a bit stingy. This is another of those books that would have been far superior as a long magazine article. As it stands, the chapters are heavily bloated with a bunch of survey work that Poundstone did. The majority of the text consists of his writeups and explanations of his surveys rather than doing the hard work of thinking about the broader implications, or drawing from research on learning and education. This wasn't the worst book I've ever read, but it certainly wasn't the best either and probably isn't worth buying.
purplehuf's review
4.0
When it comes to the knowledge they always referring to the education systems around the world, hypothetically knowing that we’re so advanced to have such a great education system BUT unfortunately it’s becoming worse than ever! Human brain doesn’t need to memorize every single fact it just need to learn them skill (and give them enthusiasm) to look for knowledge; that would be so useful rather than giving them solid facts.
People started to rely on the cloud or physical memories to store their knowledge in it, they don’t have to recall it inside their brains but they just need to collect them one they are needed. Hence, human tend to be more dumb in the knowledge side in which can’t recognize historical figures and can’t estimate thing pretty good and that leads to the biggest question why they can’t use their brains as what it intend to be?
It is a perfect thing that he brought the conspiracy theories over to discuss in his book, and how that would affect people behavior towards everything in their lives. Honestly, it is a skepticism thing that can have control over humans’ knowledge and direct them to specific information that they would believe even if that was totally wrong and incorrect, no matter what percentage of accuracy and efficiency could hold they would believe it just because it is something that has been over the years repeated among people.
Everyone has that undoubtedly trust of being informed while they barely know the roof of any information they got in their minds; being misinformed sometimes does not seem to anyone like having lots and lots of dots but they are actually not connected which means that is so missed up and not in the favor of the person whom hold these ideas. The amount of knowledge that you got inside your memory won’t be useful and yet feeling arrogant about how much you got until you face a real question or going through a debate with someone and duh you are now a clown for not knowing how much you needed to look into information to be sure about them. The expansion of the internet now is on our favor but knowing how to take advantage of it that depend of you, even the internet have misleadingly articles and any piece of information that before you can insert it to your memory you need to look more about how right they are.
lieslindi's review
This book discusses confirmation bias, which is suitable because the entire book appeals to mine. Knowing stuff correlates to a better life: more happiness, better health, income over the base threshold. Knowing stuff is important because it facilitates making connections and learning new stuff: the book's example is the secretary who, knowing a bit about painting, invented Liquid Paper (because the bosses only cared that the typewriters were quieter, not that typos couldn't be erased). I think of the doctors and researchers who knew about more than their particular fields and were able to make the connections that informed HIV (in And the Band Played On) treatment.
Poundstone asserts that knowledge of sports trivia correlates with higher household income, an exception to the pattern the book asserts, "wherein general knowledge correlates strongly with income but knowledge in specific areas, such as science and spelling, do not, or do so only weakly" (202). I figured that a consequent hypothesis, "that sports is so pervasive in our culture that the (easy) questions ... amounted to ... general rather than specialized knowledge" (203), would bear out (since I knew six of the seven facts). He analyzed further, and gender and marriage didn't account for the difference in household income, so he tested for more specialized* information. The difficult quiz did not correlate to income, but it did, like many of his others, suggest that "breadth of knowledge, as opposed to depth, is the best predictor of income" (204). It also didn't correlate to greater happiness or fitness. Whew.
There's a passage in Life After Life with a character saying that someone's broad rather than specific knowledge indicates an education from novels. Approximately.
* I knew six of the seven basic facts and none of the specialized ones, such as that the player on the NBA logo is an actual person, Jerry West. I won't remember this person's name but I will remember that the logo isn't a stylized player.
Poundstone asserts that knowledge of sports trivia correlates with higher household income, an exception to the pattern the book asserts, "wherein general knowledge correlates strongly with income but knowledge in specific areas, such as science and spelling, do not, or do so only weakly" (202). I figured that a consequent hypothesis, "that sports is so pervasive in our culture that the (easy) questions ... amounted to ... general rather than specialized knowledge" (203), would bear out (since I knew six of the seven facts). He analyzed further, and gender and marriage didn't account for the difference in household income, so he tested for more specialized* information. The difficult quiz did not correlate to income, but it did, like many of his others, suggest that "breadth of knowledge, as opposed to depth, is the best predictor of income" (204). It also didn't correlate to greater happiness or fitness. Whew.
There's a passage in Life After Life with a character saying that someone's broad rather than specific knowledge indicates an education from novels. Approximately.
* I knew six of the seven basic facts and none of the specialized ones, such as that the player on the NBA logo is an actual person, Jerry West. I won't remember this person's name but I will remember that the logo isn't a stylized player.
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