Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past

He usually is good for an entertaining read. This book however was very repetitive with some 50 cent words sprinkled in.. The majority of the thoughts were not his own just what others had to say on the topics.. It reminded me of clicking on a news headline on yahoo and instead of an article getting copy and pasted Twitter reactions of the event. I trudged through the book, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone

Saw author on The Daily Show and was intrigued by his thesis, that because we always modify our understanding of so many subjects as the ages pass, how the hell to we really believe that MORE changes aren't going to come up in the future? Not only is his laying out of the problem quite clear and reasonable, but at every step he is entertaining and thought provoking. Great read; recommend it to everyone/anyone.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. Granted, part of the reason is that the topic Mr. Klosterman covers in it is one that I’ve spent some time turning over in my own mind through the years. Essentially, he is elucidating the difficulty in understanding what the world is going to be like in the future and how that future world will understand us. We tend to try to base our conclusions on how we understand the world today but, as history shows, the world tends to unfold in very unpredictable ways, making our predictions pretty much useless. (Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s fun to try.)

As a scientist, I tend to cringe with the arrogant certainty some people in the field tend to defend scientific knowledge. I have long wondered how scientists (if they’re still called that) of the twenty-sixth century will view us. Will it be with the same kind of derision that many view those of today view the sixteenth century? Surely they felt as certain about their understanding of the world as we do about ours. Though I have great respect for science and how it’s helped us create our world, I also think that the worldview of the future is likely to be so different from ours that we can’t even fathom it. Mr. Klosterman meditates on these subjects with the help of Neil de Grasse Tyson and Brian Greene and their varying points of view illustrate the difficulties quite nicely.

Another interesting question for the writer is: which authors will still be read in a few hundred years? Or, which TV shows will be watched? Or, which musicians will still be listened to? Mr. Klosterman tackles all of these subjects well but I was struck by his approach to the music (since I’ve thought about this less than the literary question). I never considered it specifically but, as much as rock ‘n’ roll has seemed a universal musical language for me that must last forever, it’s just as likely to be the marching band music of the future. (For example, hip-hop is much more the default musical language for my children.) And the entirety of marching band music is captured by the name John Philip Sousa. (Or reggae—Bob Marley.)

Which name will define rock ‘n’ roll in 2416? Elvis? Bob Dylan? The Beatles? Mr. Klosterman discusses these and what each would mean for future scholars’ understanding of rock ‘n’ roll. (Note: it will be very different from our understanding.) He also makes a good case for the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, or Journey. Mr. Klosterman may be pushing the limits here with his “one name” theory. Classical music still has plenty of names associated with it, for example. Still, his point is well taken.

Overall, this book is excellent food for thought. After this book and his last, I Wear the Black Hat, I’m beginning to think that Mr. Klosterman and I think a lot alike. I don’t know what that say about me, exactly, but I do know that it means I’ve really enjoyed these books and recommend them highly.

Chuck's strongest work since Eating the Dinosaur. By looking at how the future will perceive the present, this book is setup to play to Klosterman's strengths as a writer. However what makes this new work exceptional is his collaboration with other artists and experts on the different topics and fields of research considered in Chuck's arguments. You'll get ammunition for endless bar arguments, and may even have some revelatory moments of perception on your way through this book.

Insightful and entertaining, Klosterman reminds us why his musings are worth the time. I will be looking forward to digging into another one of his books right away, as I had forgotten how much fun it is to listen to him argue with himself. ?

Chuck Klosterman's newest book "But What if We're Wrong" is awesome. Its out there but it continues a trend I find with him where reading his writing is almost like finding a better articulated and more edited version of some of my deep meandering thoughts. but maybe even more so in this book because of the topic. Guess i'm admitting i too am out there ;)

The general question he asks is this: What will future generations see when they view this generation? What books will be studied from our century (as he puts it, who is going to be our century's kafka)? What about music; what will really define "rock n roll", or the even less defined genre of "Rock"? And as the title suggests: what if we're wrong about what we think is defining our generation? It seems we think history repeats itself, but then how could we ever predict how different today is compared to even 50 yrs ago?

When he starts to delve into the sciences, he tackles the idea of paradigm shifts (taken from Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions) and the question of what can we expect next. This is where its almost freakish how similar this section gets with what i discuss in some of my honors classes (i.e. can we make predictions? Will we see the atom? Will we see the proton? Will we see the strings?)

Highly recommending this book to all, sciencey or non sciency peeps. There are interviews with some amazing people: rockstar scientisits Neal De Grass Tyson, Brian Greene, director Robert Linklater, talking heads founder David Byrne, authors Jonathan Lethem and Junot Diaz and more. There are some classic Klosterman off the wall theories about pop culture (probably my favorite part is his coming to the conclusion that the tv show Roseanne may be what future generations will study when looking at the definitive 20th century television programming) and how the future might view it, there is some conspiracy theories, a lot of well crafted "let's pretend" scenarios, and most importantly there is a lot of epistemological questions that at the end of the day make for the difference between living without.

To the negative reviewers: much of what you say is that you felt that it rambled, lost its way, provided no strong foundation for the arguments....
Unfortunately, epistemology is often characterized by that.
Even Klosterman discusses this in the book: as he puts it the difference between a physicist and a philosopher is the difference between what and why? (one cares about what is the cause, the other about the meaning behind it)

Thank you Chuck for putting in the time with this one. Seems you spent quite sometime interviewing, researching, and you put together a great read. Maybe not the definitive book of this generation (hahaha, sorry) but still an excellent book.

Reading each new Chuck Klosterman book (recently anyway) is like playing a sport you haven't played in 30 years. The idea of starting up again is exciting but you have your worries. For the first few minutes it's great, and you wonder why you ever stopped. But after an hour or so you're left feeling sore and in pain, knowing you'll only be able to plow on through an act of sheer will. Or with lots of alcohol.

I have been an avid follower of Klosterman for a long time, and his earlier books have a spark and uniqueness that was refreshing at the time. But "But What if We're Wrong" has little of anything to recommend. It reads almost like he's hoping to become great himself. And in order to do that before he can evolve into the next level he first has to jump the shark himself, driving away true fans until they realize this was all a part of his journey.

But alas greatness doesn't work that way.

First off, the book cover is upside down...we get it, you're trying to be witty.
I read this book cover to cover, and I must be honest, it's not my kind of book. The chapters seem to blend into one long complaint, that we are all wrong in certain aspects of life. And that we mustn't assume something is automatically real...like gravity.
The intro specifically goes after a guy who doesn't like Moby Dick and then criticizes his opinion. The book basically says that Moby Dick is epic regardless of what the reader thinks.
But oddly enough Klosterman takes a jab at Rage Against the Machine by saying 'he was too mature to take their music seriously'. Clearly he didn't understand what Rage Against the Machine's lyrics were about. Rage was an epic group, despite what Klosterman has to say. It's good to know the author was wrong too.

Read this late at night when insomnia blurs the edges of your linear thinking, and it will very likely approach what an acid trip might be. Assumptions, principles, known knows and known unknowns all bleed together in a stew of dogma shattering prose.
Brilliant!

Very interesting perspectives from a lot of interesting people. Funny and full of thought provoking opinions. You'll find yourself talking to others about a lot of the stuff you read in this book. Perfect for a book club.

Worthwhile read, and a I like Klosterman's style for the most part, but I think he gets caught up in his own intelligence at times. I haven't seen the word verisimilitude as many times in my entire life.

Klosterman said that the Metallica/Lou Reed collaboration, LuLu, was, “Bold, Uncompromising, and totally unlistenable.” I would say that this book is bold, uncompromising, and (mostly) unreadable. Stylistically, this is vastly different from anything Klosterman has ever written. While there is a swear and a joke here and there, the prose is mostly dry and pedantic. I kept waiting for his witty, conversational tone to appear, but it never really did. This is pretty much a philosophy book about time, epistemology, and metaphysics, which is fine, but far from what any Chuck Klosterman fan would be expecting. All of Klosterman’s nonfiction goes off into tangents, but it always comes right back to the main point. The tangents in this book often go off and never come back. He makes big ideas, small (as opposed to his other books which make small ideas, big), but there are just too many big ideas in this book and they can’t really be expounded upon in only 272 pages. Malcolm Gladwell’s influence can definitely be felt here and I think what was so disappointing was that most of this book is comprised of Chuck just presenting other people’s complicated theories in a more simplistic manner. Also, the thesis of the book is pretty self-evident: the perception of everything changes over time. Again, all of Klosterman’s other books have been great, but who knows? Maybe in a hundred years this will be considered his masterpiece. What if I’m wrong?

I've read every Chuck Klosterman book, and have always considered him one of my favorite authors. After reading his latest book, "What if We Were Wrong?", I have to ask myself the same question. I feel like this book is the equivalent of a band's final album of a contract -- is this book full of B-Sides, or worse, is this a live album?

The title of the book suggests Chuck is going to actually pose relevant questions, which the first two chapters annoying do, and I was happy to get through them as fast as I could. Not only could I care less about the subject matter, but he seems to be trying to impress someone with his new thesaurus. Luckily my Kindle has a dictionary so I could understand the random and unnecessary words being used. I felt like I was being assigned required reading for a graduate English class, not reading for entertainment.

After making it though the painful first two chapters, the book moves on to random thoughts that mostly have nothing to do with the book's original concept. He said in the past he finds writing while high helpful, and I wonder what drugs he was on for this one. Most likely something uninspiring and uncreative like Adderall. He talks in the middle of the book about "bar conversations" and I couldn't help but think how horrible it would be to have a conversation with him at a bar if this is the kind of conversations he leads.

I'd previously purchased his "Hypertheticals" card set, which is supposed to be a party type of game with "what if" scenario questions, and this book is very similar to them -- long and rambling text that lets you easily forget what you were even reading about in the first place.

I was expecting something else -- something relatable, humorous, or even something I could comprehend. I hope his next one is more like his earlier work.

I have mixed feelings about this book since I found bits of it fascinating and bits breathtakingly arrogant and narrow. Klosterman exists in the tiny bubble of New York writers who apparently never get off Manhattan Island, except maybe to go to another hipster borough on the subway. Especially in his chapter on literature, his assumption that the writers slobbered over by males in Manhattan are the best- until some day when they might still be the best but maybe not but really, how could anyone not think them the best- drove me so nuts I almost had to stop listening. The white male privilege of that chapter was suffocating and while it moderated in some other sections it is a fatal flaw in the whole book. Guess what, Chuck? Some of us think Roth is not only not the greatest 20th century writer but also mind-bogglingly insular and uninteresting. Of course, maybe that's because some of us are not obsessed in one form or another with what manhood is. I for one simply find him self- absorbed and often unreadable.
The rest of the book slisp into and out of that "I know best because I am a critic and writer in New York" thing. But every once in a while there is an idea that can catch one's attention, or an anecdote that is thought-provoking. I have liked Klosterman's writing in the past, though never thought his "Ethicist" answers were particularly ethical, again because they had a privileged world view that allowed behavior I think many would find reprehensible. But this book, although I finished it, may be my last. I think I was able to finish it because I "read" it in audio form and because of the odd choice of having a woman read the book. It did lead to some cognitive dissonance as I listened to clueless male arrogance coming out of her mouth but it also softened the impact.

By now Chuck Klosterman has left, perhaps ironically, his imprint on pop-culture with his books dissecting popular-culture. He also holds the distinction of being one of the most renowned writers in his genre of literature. In his latest effort But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As lf lt Were the Past he examines how future generations of humans may view us and the culture surrounding us. Klosterman raises questions such as "What if what we believe about everything is innacurate?" and "How will we be perceived in a hundred years? Three-hundred?".

Oftentimes, certainty appears to be a given until we are forced to reconsider what we thought were universal truths. Established truths? Certainly. Factual? Questionable. Before lsaac Newton, the world thought about gravity on certain terms —or not at all— after sir lsaac's theories, he went virtually unchallenged in his assessments for two centuries. Until Albert Einstein came along that is, and changed our understanding of gravity. The principle behind But What lf We're Wrong About Everything? is that time is the one true unit of measurement valid when it comes to determining the cultural value of discoveries, ideas and art. Just because you've been taught to believe so and so doesn't make them right. The author says certainty is all but illusion. Concepts and opinions develop and change over time, altering the fabric of society. To this point, Klosterman makes the case for Herman Melville's Moby Dick becoming a literary classic despite being shunned by critics in it's era.

Essay topics range from which books will transcend time, TV as art, the merit of established ideas and "facts". I love Klosterman whenever he talks about music and still slips some music-related themes. Here he ponders who history will depict as the ultimate rock band -Beatles or Stones?- the answer isn't as easy as you'd think. He also tackles football and the NFL and why realistically the sport might not be around in 25 years —successfully, l may add—among others. It never ceases to amaze me how Chuck Klosterman is able to make sense of just about anything using popular-culture.

It's hard to justify the amount of "what ifs" a such book encompasses, luckily the author is more than up to the challenge. Klosterman makes a lot of cohesive points backed by clever arguments. He's effectively able to hold an idea together with the added benefit of being an engaging writer. This is especially important for a book that holds no definite answers to the questions it ponders. Not every thought or sentiment expressed in But What If We're Wrong About Everything? is a gold nugget, yet some are thought-provoking enough that they warrant making the reader question what he or she knows.

But What If We're Wrong About Everything? is only slightly tainted when Klosterman announces that it might be destined to be forgotten and "hopeless". It is after all the concept of the book to question which aspects of science, popular-culture, arts etc. will hold lasting power, and which ones will ultimately be forgotten. Until the release of his next works it's hard to determine where this volume ranks on the Klosterman scale. Is it his most accomplished work? No. Did it need to be written? Probably not, but Chuck is just so darn likeable and readable. 3/5*

Always loved everything! by Chuck. I have a PhD in Marketing and my favorite course to teach is Consumer Behavior. I love the classic philosophers mixed with pop culture. Fargo Rock City is a classic as is his latest.

Peter W. Smith, PhD

Brother, I've adored all your previous works, even the fiction. Particularly the fiction. But I gotta tell you, I'm struggling with finishing this new book. The chapters discussing physics hurt my brain. I read a random paragraph aloud to my wife, and she stopped me after the second sentence. It's a noble concept, but stick with what brought you to the dance.

"But What If We're Wrong?" is an excellent concept with some critical flaws. This seems to be the case with a lot of Klosterman books. Don't get me wrong: I am a Klosterman fan, and I admire his ability to think critically about pop culture subjects. All of his writing is engaging. But this book falls short in its exposition, is often dry and plodding, and seems occasionally to miss obvious explanations for topics which he frames as undiscovered.

His early thoughts on gravity, for example, make an interesting argument for science as a form of religion. In other words, that our understanding of science in five hundred years will likely be vastly different from now, and thus the things which we reflexively accept as unquestionable truths today will likely be understood differently far into the future. We believe most of science because we are told to believe it. But his argument for this -- with gravity as the example -- is wanting. Klosterman reasons that because our understanding of science has included beliefs held longer than we have understood gravity and have now been proven false or changed, that our understanding of gravity is thus destined to change as well. But this dismisses ancillary advances in our ability to understand the value of replication in science, and it also dismisses the changing value of time in understanding the pace of cultural evolution. In other words, technological and scientific advancement occurs now over a smaller time frame than it did a thousand years ago, and will in a thousand years occur more rapidly than now. It is not an A-to-B comparison. For example, it took nearly the entire history of human knowledge to build our first understandings of computers, but less than a century to advance computer technology beyond a human's innate ability. In other instances, Klosterman makes arguments that he asks us to accept as true without providing any supporting evidence or really, even, logical arguments in support. He asks that we accept that "Moby Dick" is and will forever remain the archetype of the "Great American Novel", and that the word "books", like "records" or "albums", will always hold a place in English lexicon even if the things we call "books" actually change. And so on.

Still, the overall theme of the book -- that what we accept as fact in the present will likely, in many cases, be extinguished by revelations in the future -- is a fun mental exercise to apply to other subjects.

My other problem with the book is Klosterman's invasive self-awareness and mental wandering. In other Klosterman books, he'll drift off into a tangent about rock music that he's somehow able to seamlessly bring back into the subject of the essay. Often in, "But What If We're Wrong?", however, his tangents drift off and never return. They go nowhere and read as non-sequitur/asides that probably deserved either their own chapters or their own book. Chuck's stream-of-consciousness about the semantic difference between "Rock-n-Roll" and "Rock", for example, is both unnecessary and kind of pointless.

Finally, I can't help but shake the notion that Klosterman's self-awareness hindered this work. He is constantly reminding the reader that all of the theories in the book might be ridiculous, his viewpoints might be frivolous, and he might be writing something tedious and completely useless and/or insane. That's generally a humble and welcome admission from an author of a pop-philosophy book. It's generally nice to know that the author recognizes the limitations of his own understanding of the topics. It also reminds the reader that Chuck Klosterman is a profoundly down-to-earth guy who readers and writers alike would still very much enjoy having a conversation with. But in this book, it just happens way too much. Far too often the topic is abruptly interrupted by Klosterman's advisory that it's completely possible he's being batsh*t nuts right now. Over and over. It just reads too much like Chuck has read -- and been influenced by -- some negative reviews in between his last collection and this.

Still, I'd buy this book if-and-when the price comes down. It's a worthy read for Klosterman fans and those who enjoy popular nonfiction, which, in this reviewer's opinion, remains the strongest connection between common audiences and academic understanding, and Klosterman remains one of the genre's most adept purveyors. Klosterman's best work? Certainly not. Worth the price of entry? It depends on the price. But eventually, you'll want to have book in your collection, on your shelf, next to the others. If nothing else, it's a great jumping-off point for a line of thinking that we could all use a little bit more often in our lives: Remembering that there are things that we hold as certainly true, which most certainly are not.

This book is not ' Thinking about the present as if it were the past'
This book is 'Listen to my self absorbed rambling and over thinking myself into circles, with cliff notes'

Page 89, the beginning of chapter 'Merit'
"Right about now if i were reading this book (instead of writing it)..."
You POS, what kind of jackass puts that in a book and what kind of publisher lets that slip by.

What a waste of time.

Dear Chuck,

I know your secret. “But What if We’re Wrong” is plagiarized, taken from conversations that happen on a nightly basis on college campuses across the country. Conversations that have been taking place since time immemorial. Yes, it’s true, you stole every single idea in this book and made millions. But I know how it came to be and the following account is of its true origin, unless of course it’s not. But as you explained, it doesn’t matter whether I am right or wrong, all that matters is what story about the present is remembered by the future who will view it as the past. And as an unknown self-published author of my own memoir, who knows, maybe I will be the next “voice” of a generation as you so eloquently explain and make you famous, again. So this is the absolutely true story that I made up of how you came to write But What if We’re Wrong (until proven otherwise).

About a year ago you and your college buddies decided to have your annual reunion and chose Denver. On that Saturday you enjoyed the warm summer day at a Rockies game followed by a microbrew crawl that would eventually lead you to that long sought after Rocky Mountain High. Before any of you knew it, you found yourselves marching around the living room of your Airbnb with 4 extra-large pizza’s and extra cheesy garlic bread sticks while staring at the T.V. watching Sports Center highlights and listening to Chuck Berry and John Philip Sousa. You were all convinced that you would be able to see yourselves in the Rocky highlights because why the hell wouldn’t you be featured? And in this moment But What if We’re Wrong was born…

Your friend Tim, who everyone tolerates but nobody really knows how he became part of your crew or why he’s still around, interrupted your Sports Center marching and viewing by asking:

“Dude, what if 500 years from now there is no such thing as gravity?” (in his dude brah voice).
“No way brah, you mean like it just disappears” you whisper as you consider this to be more probable than not.
“No bro. I mean what if gravity is an illusion and just an amalgamation of forces”
“Amalaga what?” says Darren who had been catatonic since you forced him to watch an episode of Rosanne. The fact he was speaking again brought a sense of relief because none of you had seen him blink for 2 hours but you weren’t sure if was really just 2 minutes because time was, at that point, very relative.
Before Scott could answer Dave replies “wait, wait, what if in 500 years everyone has forgotten the Beatles and the greatest rock song is considered Don’t Stop Believin”
“What the F is wrong with future!?” cries Scott who is hyperventilating
“Nothing man. They just know the truth! The truth that our universe was not created by God. It’s really just a dog and part of a multiverse!” you say with utter conviction.

The rest of the night continues on with all of you posing ridiculous questions that make perfect sense at the time, and hell, they may even turn out to be true someday. But you are well aware that in the morning they will be forgotten and written off as just part of some “Blue Dream” and “Purple Haze” that were part of the Denver experience.

But here’s where it got interesting, on the plane ride back to Manhattan you start pounding what will ultimately turn into 6 cans of tomato juice. As if by magic, the tomato juice starts a chemical reaction with the leftover Purple Haze and Blue Dream in your system and you begin to have flashbacks and remember the questions from throughout the night. You write them down furiously as you pound the tomato juice at 32,000 feet. Since you’re writing the old fashioned way with a pen and paper you can’t tell if the red marks on the paper are blood due to your extra hard grip of the pen or if its drool from the juice but you keep writing anyway. Eventually you really have to pee, but realize that the tomato juice is your muse and that to go to the WC would be to literally piss away an opportunity to possibly become like Herman Melville (a writer whose greatness is untouchable to future generations but no longer actually read). So when you land you have 6 cans of tomato juice in your system and the outline. But you haven’t quite figured out how to convert a stoner conversation into a 250 page book that people will take seriously.

But as fate would have it, while you’re ridding yourself of the tomato juice at a JFK urinal the answer suddenly occurs to you … footnotes and citations of famous people. All you need to do is interview a bunch of rock stars, actual rock stars and proverbial rock stars, beginning with the man who happens to be using the urinal next to you, Neil Degrasse Tyson. As you went on to prove, stoner conversations don’t have footnotes, but an interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson at a urinal in JFK is citation worthy.

So Chuck, old friend, you did it. You were able to take that moment of zen and clarity that occurs when we’re with our friends on a Saturday night, when time slows down and the universe opens up, but which always disappears into the Sunday morning forgetfulness and “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” mantra and somehow you successfully transferred it to a serious and thought provoking 262 pages to be read and discussed by those of us who live in the real world. And I thank you for it.

Oh, and one last thing, in case anyone is reading Chuck Klosterman or this crappy review 500 years from now, he didn’t really plagiarize, he just had the guts to put ideas on paper that many of us secretly possess. The difference is that Chuck wasn’t afraid to be wrong.

5441. But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past,. by Chuck Klosterman (read 6 Feb 2017) I had never heard of this book nor of its author until I saw it at the library and decided to read it. It was published in 2016 by a guy who was born in Breckenridge, Minn. and was "raised Roman Caholic". If I did not usually finish a book I start I might well have quit reading this book, since many of the things he talks about have no interest for me, such as music and TV shows I never watch. But by about the middle of the book I was glad I had not quit reading. On page 136 he begins talking about "phantom time," a weird claim by a German named Herbert Illig that the years 614 A.D. to 911 A.D. did not exist and thus we are 297 years closer to the birth of Christ than we assume we are. This is a silly claim but Klosterman's discussion of it is insightful and of interest. There is also a thoughtful discussion of dreams which I admit led me to conclude dreams are of no significance, despite what Sigmund Freud says. So, anyway, I found the last part of the book of more interest than the first.

4.5 stars. Quirky and whimsical set of essays (at least they feel like essays) framing how we think about ideas (literature, music, historical events, science), and how those thoughts morph over time. Into this broad thought experiment, Klosterman explores some beliefs from the past that now seem ridiculous as a way to question what we believe now and how it will be viewed in the future. He admits the impossibility of coming to any firm or even likely conclusions -- for example, he notes that we cannot help but frame future discussions in the parameters of the present day, and attempts to imagine the future are almost always doomed to fail. But the near impossiblity of the task doesn't make the mental gymnastics any less interesting. After logical contortions, extensive hypotheticals, and discussions with experts in a variety of areas, you come away knowing how much you likely don't know and how tenuous our current vantage point is.

Having enjoyed his "I Wear The Black Hat" a great deal I picked this up. One must have, and maintain, an open mind to even consider many of the subjects he discusses here. I read 95% of the book, finding most of it interesting as a thought experiment and then the author said something I disagreed with so violently that I stopped reading it immediately. Granted, that may be me closing my mind and not willing to consider something I disagree with, which is essentially one of the major points of the book or, on the other hand, it may be the authors failure to convince me to keep my mind open long enough to get past it. In any event, there's nothing in this book that will keep me thinking about it for very long after I read it. A bit of shame as it is very ambitious in its attempt to get us all thinking about things differently. I think the truth is, I already try to think about things differently but I also have certain unassailable beliefs that I'm unwilling to part with as most of us do.

This book was maybe better in principle than in practice, but it still was interesting. The concept is essentially that throughout human history we have "known" something until we learned what we "knew" was wrong (think heliocentricity, for instance). So the author attempts to identify what makes something a candidate to possible be false knowledge and what future societies may think about things we currently just accept. He posits some pretty bold examples, for instance gravity not being a law but a consequence of a yet-unknown law supported by some theories (if memory serves). In the end, I remember thinking some parts of it were simply not fleshed out enough (but I suppose, how could they be) and feeling somewhat like the author didn't fully accomplish what he set out to. But it was still provocative and interesting, and I think he probably got bonus points in my mind for attempting something so challenging