This Will Make You Smarter, John Brockman
This Will Make You Smarter, John Brockman
4 Rating(s)
List: $20.99 | Sale: $14.70
Club: $10.49

This Will Make You Smarter
New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking

Author: John Brockman

Narrator: Khristine Hvam, John Allen Nelson

Unabridged: 12 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/08/2013

Categories: Nonfiction, Science


Synopsis

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.

This Will Make You Smarter features Daniel Kahneman on the "focusing illusion"; Jonah Lehrer on controlling attention; Richard Dawkins on experimentation; Aubrey De Grey on conquering our fear of the unknown; Martin Seligman on the ingredients of well-being; Nicholas Carr on managing "cognitive load"; Steven Pinker on win-win negotiating; Daniel C. Dennett on benefiting from cycles; Jaron Lanier on resisting delusion; Frank Wilczek on the brain's hidden layers; Clay Shirky on the "80/20 rule"; Daniel Goleman on understanding our connection to the natural world; V. S. Ramachandran on paradigm shifts; Matt Ridley on tapping collective intelligence; John McWhorter on path dependence; Lisa Randall on effective theorizing; Brian Eno on "ecological vision"; Richard Thaler on rooting out false concepts; J. Craig Venter on the multiple possible origins of life; Helen Fisher on temperament; Sam Harris on the flow of thought; and Lawrence Krauss on living with uncertainty.

About John Brockman

The founder and publisher of the influential online science salon Edge.org, John Brockman is the editor of This Will Make You Smarter, What We Believe but Cannot Prove, What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, and other volumes. He is also the CEO of the literary agency Brockman, Inc. John lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lisa on October 28, 2012

This Will Make You Smarter is a challenging book that leaves you with a lot to think about. The essays are short — some shorter than a single page — that cover interesting scientific concepts, new and old ideas to help us think about the world. The founder and publisher of the online science salon, E......more

Goodreads review by Graham on June 16, 2013

The Edge.org question of 2011 was "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?" Many of the world's most famous thinkers responded to it, and their responses are compiled in this book in one-to-four-page essays organized thematically. It's somewhat ironic that although the bo......more

Goodreads review by Pvw on August 17, 2013

Edge is an organisation that promotes the spreading of cultural and scientific knowledge to a general public. Every year they pose a general philosophical question and publish some of the best answers by prominent intellectuals. This book contains the answers to the proposition: "Which new scientifi......more

Goodreads review by Ben on January 13, 2013

It didn't. No, in all seriousness, I think this book would have been quite good for me about five years ago - many of the cognitive tools they bring up are indeed very useful. But this book suffers from having too many authors - so for one thing there is quite a lot of redundancy, as multiple people......more

Goodreads review by Mike on July 30, 2012

Each essay is only 3-5 pages, making this a great book to pick up when you have a few minutes of free time and want a little bit of intellectual stimulation. That said, some essays were great and thought-provoking, but others were painfully dull and a chore to get through.......more