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A review by jeremychiasson
But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman
3.0
This is the first book in a long time where I was sufficiently interested to read 80 consecutive pages without thinking about my phone!
In "But What If We're Wrong", Klosterman questions everything from rock music posterity, to the very theory of gravity (but not in a crackpot, flat earther kind of way).
Basically it's about how the things humans are historically the most wrong about in our own time, are often the things we feel most certain about. Not the things we are afraid to question, but the things we don't even have enough perspective to question. And yet we sit very smugly on top of these assumptions (facts as we call them), despite knowing every generation before us has been laughably wrong about certain things.
I wasn't crazy about the second half about scientific stuff. Maybe it's the author's lack of expertise (which he acknowledges constantly) or maybe it was my own lack of interest in science, but I was definitely more into the first half of the book, which focused more on music and literature.
Even so, this was a very stimulating read!
In "But What If We're Wrong", Klosterman questions everything from rock music posterity, to the very theory of gravity (but not in a crackpot, flat earther kind of way).
Basically it's about how the things humans are historically the most wrong about in our own time, are often the things we feel most certain about. Not the things we are afraid to question, but the things we don't even have enough perspective to question. And yet we sit very smugly on top of these assumptions (facts as we call them), despite knowing every generation before us has been laughably wrong about certain things.
I wasn't crazy about the second half about scientific stuff. Maybe it's the author's lack of expertise (which he acknowledges constantly) or maybe it was my own lack of interest in science, but I was definitely more into the first half of the book, which focused more on music and literature.
Even so, this was a very stimulating read!