Third Millennium Thinking - by Saul Perlmutter & John Campbell & Robert Maccoun (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Based on a wildly popular UC Berkeley course, how to use scientists' tricks of the trade to make the best decisions and solve the hardest problems in age of uncertainty and overwhelming information.

In our deluge of information, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish the revelatory from the contradictory. How do we make health decisions in the face of conflicting medical advice? Does the research cited in that article even show what the authors claim? How can we navigate the next Thanksgiving discussion with our in-laws, who follow completely different experts on the topic of climate change?

In Third Millennium Thinking, a physicist, a psychologist, and a philosopher introduce readers to the tools and frameworks that scientists have developed to keep from fooling themselves, to understand the world, and to make decisions. We can all borrow these trust-building techniques to tackle problems both big and small.

Readers will learn:

• How to achieve a ground-level understanding of the facts of the modern world
• How to chart a course through a profusion of possibilities
• How to work together to take on the challenges we face today
• And much more

Using provocative thought exercises, jargon-free language, and vivid illustrations drawn from history, daily life, and scientists' insider stories, Third Millennium Thinking offers a novel approach for readers to make sense of the nonsense.

Review Quotes

"The strategies laid out in Third Millennium Thinking are very likely to help people navigate life decisions, and have the potential to empower better thinking about some of today's pressing challenges."--The Wall Street Journal

"A pertinent study about how knowing what questions to ask is the way to cut through confusion and misunderstanding. . . the authors offer valuable tools for understanding this complex, confusing era."--Kirkus Reviews

"Third Millennium Thinking offers a roadmap for making more effective decisions in an increasingly complex and noisy world. If you could only read one book about how to think more clearly, make it this one."--Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets

"In a world filled with uncertainty and fractured by polarization, this guide to critical thinking couldn't come at a better time. A Nobel laureate physicist, an influential philosopher, and an expert on legal psychology reveal how you can use the tools of science in everyday life to make smarter judgments and wiser decisions."--Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and Hidden Potential, and host of the podcast Re: Thinking

"This is a wonderful book for anyone interested in how best to navigate our complex world of information overload. Engagingly and informatively, it emphasizes how processes used in the practice of science can provide widely-applicable tools for approaching individual and collective decision-making. A truly valuable resource for taking on the challenges facing our species and the planet."--Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, Nobel Prize winner and coauthor of The Telomere Effect

"A physicist, a philosopher, and a psychologist walk into a book, and mix an inviting cocktail about how to think through big problems and make effective decisions in a Third Millennium age of overwhelming, complex, and contradictory information. A must read for anyone who needs to make expert judgments without being experts themselves."--David Dunning, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and discoverer of the Dunning-Kruger Effect

"If our species is to stagger through another millennium, we need to get better at thinking about how we think--and conducting high-stakes debates more intelligently. This book lays out, with superb clarity, the path forward."--Philip E. Tetlock, author of Superforecasting

"A model of clear thinking, and a terrific discussion of how to use logic and evidence to solve the hardest problems. This might just be the cure for what ails us."--Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University, and author of Decisions About Decisions

About the Author

Saul Perlmutter is a 2011 Nobel Laureate, sharing the prize in physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. He is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

John Campbell is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and served as President of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

Robert MacCoun is a social psychologist, a professor of law at Stanford University, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute. He received the 2019 James McKeen Cattell Award for lifetime achievement from the Association for Psychological Science.