This will make you smarter

new scientific concepts to improve your thinking

by John Brockman

415 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 2012 by Harper Perennial.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-210939-2
OCLC Number:: 733224087

(8 reviews)

This Will Make You Smarter presents brilliant but accessible ideas to expand every mind. What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to the world's most influential thinkers. Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world.

1 edition

Eric Lawton reviewed This will make you smarter by John Brockman

Review of 'This will make you smarter' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

One of John Brockman's very inconsistent series of anthologies of commissioned articles on a topic. Some are awful, but this is excellent and if you read attentively, I'm sure it will make even you smarter. Some of the articles are, in my opinion, mistaken, but even almost all of those are at least wrong in a way that you will sharpen your thinking tools by arguing against them.
Over 100 articles on scientific thinking tools, grouped into themes, that you can apply to everyday thinking on anything to do with facts and policy.
My copy is so full of page-marker stickies I may as well just read again.

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras reviewed This will make you smarter by John Brockman

Review of 'This will make you smarter' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I guess I expected too much from this book, given its not so humble title. The selection of topics is okay. But if you've been into the science blogosphere and/or TED for a while you will probably be familiar with most of the ideas presented in the book already.

The essays are all really short, most are not longer than a typical blogpost. For many topics a bit more background to the ideas would have been a good thing. If you want a crash course in modern scientific ideas (without actually learning much besides the general existence of those ideas) the book may be nice. Otherwise you can safely skip this one.