Steven Sloman is a professor of cognitive, linguistic,
and psychological sciences at Brown University. He is the editor in
chief of the journal Cognition. He lives with his wife in
Providence, Rhode Island. His two children have flown the
coop.
Philip Fernbach is a cognitive scientist and professor of
marketing at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business.
He lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and two children.
“In The Knowledge Illusion, the cognitive scientists Steven Sloman
and Philip Fernbach hammer another nail into the coffin of the
rational individual... positing that not just rationality but the
very idea of individual thinking is a myth.” —The New York Times
Book Review
“Sloman and Fernbach offer clever demonstrations of how much we
take for granted, and how little we actually understand... The book
is stimulating, and any explanation of our current malaise that
attributes it to cognitive failures—rather than putting it down to
the moral wickedness of one group or another—is most welcome.
Sloman and Fernbach are working to uproot a very important
problem... [The Knowledge Illusion is] written with vigour and
humanity.” —Financial Times
“The Knowledge Illusion is at once both obvious and profound: the
limitations of the mind are no surprise, but the problem is that
people so rarely think about them... In the context of partisan
bubbles and fake news, the authors bring a necessary shot of
humility: be sceptical of your own knowledge, and the wisdom of
your crowd.” —The Economist
“A breezy guide to the mechanisms of human intelligence.”
—Psychology Today
“In an increasingly polarized culture where certainty reigns
supreme, a book advocating intellectual humility and recognition of
the limits of understanding feels both revolutionary and
necessary. The fact that it’s a fun and engaging page-turner
is a bonus benefit for the reader.” —Publishers Weekly
“An utterly fascinating and unsettling book, The Knowledge
Illusion shows us how everything we know is bound together
with knowledge of others. Sloman and Fernbach break down many of
our assumptions about science, how we think and how we know
anything at all about the world in which we live. Despite the
wide-scale deconstruction, the authors are upbeat... Anyone engaged
in the work of nurturing healthy and flourishing communities will
ultimately have to wrestle with the questions posed in this book.
Sloman and Fernbach help us to do so gracefully, acknowledging the
truth of how little we know, and finding hope in this precarious
situation.” —Relevant Magazine
“We all know less than we think we do, including how much we know
about how much we know. There’s no cure for this condition, but
there is a treatment: this fascinating book. The Knowledge Illusion
is filled with insights on how we should deal with our individual
ignorance and collective wisdom.” —Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family
Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How
the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought
“I love this book. A brilliant, eye-opening treatment of how little
each of us knows, and how much all of us know. It's magnificent,
and it's also a lot of fun. Read it!” —Cass R. Sunstein, coauthor
of Nudge and founder and director, Program on Behavioral Economics
and Public Policy, Harvard Law School
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