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A review by morgan_blackledge
This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking by John Brockman
4.0
Brockman is the prince of nurd pimps. He's got all the big brained studs in his stable. He's a rock star of science lit agents (who even knew you could be that). I fuckin hate dinner parties and that kind of stuff. But I would love to attend one of Brockman's wing dings. He's bros with the smartest, most interesting people in the world.
Anyway. He's cranking out these little essay books and they're all really good. The way it works is he periodically asks all of his crew to write short (usually one or two paragraph long) pieces about different subjects. Since they're the smartest, most interesting people in the world, the results tend to be pretty smart and interesting.
This one is all about what's your favorite Shorthand Abstraction (SHA). A SHA is like a word or phrase that describes some complex phenomenon in a way that enables people to more easily think about complex, abstract issues. They're like tools for your cognitive tool kit. And as indicated by the books title, they make you smarter. Some notable SHAs are natural selection, placebo etc.
Another example is the Pareto principle, sometimes known as the "80/20 rule. Examples include a pattern whereby the top 1% of the population control 35% of the wealth or, on Twitter, the top 2% of users send 60% of the messages.
Anyway. This book is loaded with cool lesser know SHAs and interesting reframed of some old standards, all in bite sized portions. Good stuff.
Anyway. He's cranking out these little essay books and they're all really good. The way it works is he periodically asks all of his crew to write short (usually one or two paragraph long) pieces about different subjects. Since they're the smartest, most interesting people in the world, the results tend to be pretty smart and interesting.
This one is all about what's your favorite Shorthand Abstraction (SHA). A SHA is like a word or phrase that describes some complex phenomenon in a way that enables people to more easily think about complex, abstract issues. They're like tools for your cognitive tool kit. And as indicated by the books title, they make you smarter. Some notable SHAs are natural selection, placebo etc.
Another example is the Pareto principle, sometimes known as the "80/20 rule. Examples include a pattern whereby the top 1% of the population control 35% of the wealth or, on Twitter, the top 2% of users send 60% of the messages.
Anyway. This book is loaded with cool lesser know SHAs and interesting reframed of some old standards, all in bite sized portions. Good stuff.