By Chuck Klosterman
New York Times bestselling writer Chuck Klosterman asks questions which are profound of their simplicity: How convinced are we approximately our knowing of gravity? How sure are we approximately our figuring out of time? what is going to be the defining reminiscence of rock track, years from at the present time? How heavily may still we view the content material of our goals? How heavily should still we view the content material of tv? Are all activities destined for extinction? Is it attainable that the best artist of our period is presently unknown (or—weirder still—widely recognized, yet completely disrespected)? Is it attainable that we “overrate” democracy? and maybe most annoying, is it attainable that we’ve reached the top of knowledge?
Klosterman visualizes the modern international because it will seem to these who'll understand it because the far away past. Kinetically slingshotting via a wide spectrum of aim and subjective difficulties, But What If We’re Wrong? is equipped on interviews with numerous artistic thinkers—George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Díaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, between others—interwoven with the kind of high-wire humor and nontraditional research simply Klosterman might dare to aim. It’s a possible most unlikely success: a e-book in regards to the issues we can't be aware of, defined as though we did. It’s approximately how we are living now, as soon as “now” has turn into “then.”
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Extra info for But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
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And while that notion is undoubtedly false, the sensation of certitude it generates is paralyzing. ” I would go a step further than Schulz; I suspect most conventionally intelligent people are naïve realists, and I think it might be the defining intellectual quality of this era. The straightforward definition of naïve realism doesn’t seem that outlandish: It’s a theory that suggests the world is exactly as it appears. , “The sun appears to move across the sky, so the sun must be orbiting Earth”).
Taste is subjective, but some subjective opinions are casually expressed the same way we articulate principles of math or science. There isn’t an ongoing cultural debate over the merits of Moby-Dick: It’s not merely an epic novel, but a transformative literary innovation that helps define how novels are supposed to be viewed. Any discussion about the clichéd concept of “the Great American Novel” begins with this book. The work itself is not above criticism, but no individual criticism has any impact; at this point, attacking Moby-Dick only reflects the contrarianism of the critic.
The idea of a character choosing between swallowing a blue pill that allows him to remain a false placeholder and a red pill that forces him to confront who he truly is becomes a much different metaphor. Considered from this speculative vantage point, The Matrix may seem like a breakthrough of a far different kind. It would feel more reflective than entertaining, which is precisely why certain things get remembered while certain others get lost. This is how the present must be considered whenever we try to think about it as the past: It must be analyzed through the values of a future that’s unwritten.