23
Book Reviews
The Knowledge Illusion:
Why We Never Think
Alone
By Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach
Riverhead Books, 2017. ISBN-10: 039918435X ISBN-13: 978-
0399184352 (hardcover). $17.98 (Amazon.com $11.74, paperback
$12.99, Kindle). 304 pages.
Reviewed by Doug Duncan
At first glance, one might not think of The Knowledge Illusion: Why
We Never Think Alone, by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach,
as a book about cults, but reading it caused me to reexamine
some of what I thought it means to be in a cult. In particular,
I have spent a lot of time studying critical thinking in general
and groupthink specifically since exiting my cult. I thought if I
could understand the pathology of groupthink, I would better
be able to understand what happened to me and how it all
fell apart. However, after reading The Knowledge Illusion, I now
see that groupthink is really the norm for humans. All of us are
participating in groupthink. Perhaps the point is not so much
about whether groupthink is a pathology as it is about examining
whether you are thinking as part of a pathological group.
The authors begin in the introduction by looking at how thinking
as a group can go terribly wrong. Of course, human history
is replete with examples of this, from wars to space-shuttle
explosions but the authors chose to examine the test explosion
of a nuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on March
1, 1954. In spite of the fact that the people involved in planning
this test were, presumably, among the smartest people around
(they were, after all, nuclear scientists), the explosion that day
was three times as large as what the planners anticipated, with
catastrophic consequences for the crew of a nearby Japanese
fishing vessel who endured being rained on with radioactive
debris for several hours—in spite of the fact that they were at a
distance from the test that the U.S. Navy declared was safe. The
authors ask, “How is it possible that people can simultaneously
bowl us over with their ingenuity and disappoint us with their
ignorance? How have we mastered so much, despite how limited
our understanding often is?” (p. 3).
To answer these questions, the authors begin by drawing on the
latest understanding in psychology and neuroscience to look at
what we know, why we think, and how we think—in fact, those
are the titles of the first three chapters. Taking the first question,
it turns out that each of us individually knows much less than we
think we do.
The authors take some time to illustrate how shallow our
understanding is of many things that surround us, even though
we think we understand these things. For example, how many
of us truly understand how a flush toilet really works? Certainly,
some of us do, but not everybody. What about how a ballpoint
pen actually works? We all think we understand these things,
but what we really understand is how to use them, not why
they work. Fortunately, that is not necessary for most of us to
know, because the people who specialize in those branches of
knowledge are able to produce these goods while they depend
on the rest of us to specialize in and produce other things.
Indeed, the system works pretty well most of the time but very
few of us have anything other than a shallow understanding of
things in which we do not specialize.
Why should this be the case? Why do we not understand
everything around us? Because, argue the authors, thinking is
not about understanding, it is about action:
Thinking evolved as an extension of the ability to act
effectively it evolved to make us better at doing what
is necessary to achieve our goals. Thought allows us to
select from a set of possible actions by predicting the
effects of each action and by imagining how the world
would be if we had taken different actions in the past.
(pp. 10–11)
In an evolutionary context, this all makes sense. Beings who
are adapted to take the best course of action are the ones who
are most likely to survive. The authors point out that “Storing
details is often unnecessary to act effectively a broad picture is
generally all we need” (p. 48). In other words, we do not need to
understand (in terms of our modern lives) how to manufacture a
toilet, only how to use one. As long as we can do that, we can use
our precious brain power for other priorities.
So what do we use our brain for? In the chapter entitled “How
We Think,” Sloman and Fernbach describe what we do as “causal
reasoning.” We are constantly figuring out what will happen if we
take some action or another. “What we do is excel at reasoning
about how the world works” (p. 53). Unfortunately, we are still
quite limited in how deeply we understand why things work
as they do, but we are skilled at predicting outcomes in spite
of our lack of what the authors term “explanatory depth.” How
are we able to do this? The authors go into a lot of explanation
about how our thinking extends outward into our bodies, our
technology, and even our communities. They go back through
some of the contrast between intuitive and deliberative thinking
that has been explored in great depth by Daniel Kahneman in
Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Most of the time, the type of thinking we do works pretty
well for us. We are able to interact with people, take care of
our homes, and do our jobs. We learn from the stories told by
our communities about how we should behave and what the
consequences would be if we choose to behave badly. However,
The authors ask, “How is it
possible that people can
simultaneously bowl us over
with their ingenuity and
disappoint us with
their ignorance?
VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 3 |2018
Book Reviews
The Knowledge Illusion:
Why We Never Think
Alone
By Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach
Riverhead Books, 2017. ISBN-10: 039918435X ISBN-13: 978-
0399184352 (hardcover). $17.98 (Amazon.com $11.74, paperback
$12.99, Kindle). 304 pages.
Reviewed by Doug Duncan
At first glance, one might not think of The Knowledge Illusion: Why
We Never Think Alone, by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach,
as a book about cults, but reading it caused me to reexamine
some of what I thought it means to be in a cult. In particular,
I have spent a lot of time studying critical thinking in general
and groupthink specifically since exiting my cult. I thought if I
could understand the pathology of groupthink, I would better
be able to understand what happened to me and how it all
fell apart. However, after reading The Knowledge Illusion, I now
see that groupthink is really the norm for humans. All of us are
participating in groupthink. Perhaps the point is not so much
about whether groupthink is a pathology as it is about examining
whether you are thinking as part of a pathological group.
The authors begin in the introduction by looking at how thinking
as a group can go terribly wrong. Of course, human history
is replete with examples of this, from wars to space-shuttle
explosions but the authors chose to examine the test explosion
of a nuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on March
1, 1954. In spite of the fact that the people involved in planning
this test were, presumably, among the smartest people around
(they were, after all, nuclear scientists), the explosion that day
was three times as large as what the planners anticipated, with
catastrophic consequences for the crew of a nearby Japanese
fishing vessel who endured being rained on with radioactive
debris for several hours—in spite of the fact that they were at a
distance from the test that the U.S. Navy declared was safe. The
authors ask, “How is it possible that people can simultaneously
bowl us over with their ingenuity and disappoint us with their
ignorance? How have we mastered so much, despite how limited
our understanding often is?” (p. 3).
To answer these questions, the authors begin by drawing on the
latest understanding in psychology and neuroscience to look at
what we know, why we think, and how we think—in fact, those
are the titles of the first three chapters. Taking the first question,
it turns out that each of us individually knows much less than we
think we do.
The authors take some time to illustrate how shallow our
understanding is of many things that surround us, even though
we think we understand these things. For example, how many
of us truly understand how a flush toilet really works? Certainly,
some of us do, but not everybody. What about how a ballpoint
pen actually works? We all think we understand these things,
but what we really understand is how to use them, not why
they work. Fortunately, that is not necessary for most of us to
know, because the people who specialize in those branches of
knowledge are able to produce these goods while they depend
on the rest of us to specialize in and produce other things.
Indeed, the system works pretty well most of the time but very
few of us have anything other than a shallow understanding of
things in which we do not specialize.
Why should this be the case? Why do we not understand
everything around us? Because, argue the authors, thinking is
not about understanding, it is about action:
Thinking evolved as an extension of the ability to act
effectively it evolved to make us better at doing what
is necessary to achieve our goals. Thought allows us to
select from a set of possible actions by predicting the
effects of each action and by imagining how the world
would be if we had taken different actions in the past.
(pp. 10–11)
In an evolutionary context, this all makes sense. Beings who
are adapted to take the best course of action are the ones who
are most likely to survive. The authors point out that “Storing
details is often unnecessary to act effectively a broad picture is
generally all we need” (p. 48). In other words, we do not need to
understand (in terms of our modern lives) how to manufacture a
toilet, only how to use one. As long as we can do that, we can use
our precious brain power for other priorities.
So what do we use our brain for? In the chapter entitled “How
We Think,” Sloman and Fernbach describe what we do as “causal
reasoning.” We are constantly figuring out what will happen if we
take some action or another. “What we do is excel at reasoning
about how the world works” (p. 53). Unfortunately, we are still
quite limited in how deeply we understand why things work
as they do, but we are skilled at predicting outcomes in spite
of our lack of what the authors term “explanatory depth.” How
are we able to do this? The authors go into a lot of explanation
about how our thinking extends outward into our bodies, our
technology, and even our communities. They go back through
some of the contrast between intuitive and deliberative thinking
that has been explored in great depth by Daniel Kahneman in
Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Most of the time, the type of thinking we do works pretty
well for us. We are able to interact with people, take care of
our homes, and do our jobs. We learn from the stories told by
our communities about how we should behave and what the
consequences would be if we choose to behave badly. However,
The authors ask, “How is it
possible that people can
simultaneously bowl us over
with their ingenuity and
disappoint us with
their ignorance?
VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 3 |2018
