The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date in 100+ Books in 2025

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Dec 03, 2012 Dolly rated it really liked it

Shelves: germany-german, education-school, science, 2013, nonfiction, england-english, library, math

This is a fascinating book that discusses the predictable and changing nature of facts and knowledge - how what we know evolves and/or is proven to be false over time.

The narrative is fairly readable, although a bit dense in parts. But I loved the examples and I learned a lot about the changing nature of 'mesofacts.'

I liked how the author shows our inherent unwillingness to change our base frame of reference, especially when facts that we know to be true are proven to be false and/or irrelevant This is a fascinating book that discusses the predictable and changing nature of facts and knowledge - how what we know evolves and/or is proven to be false over time.

The narrative is fairly readable, although a bit dense in parts. But I loved the examples and I learned a lot about the changing nature of 'mesofacts.'

I liked how the author shows our inherent unwillingness to change our base frame of reference, especially when facts that we know to be true are proven to be false and/or irrelevant. I was intrigued by his field of scientometrics — literally the science of science, and the mathematical way he predicts the obsolescence of knowledge.

interesting quotes:

"Nice people are indeed more creative, more successful, and even more likely to win Nobel Prizes." (p. 18)

"A slight change of the underlying state of affairs in our technological and medical abilities - facts about the world around us - can allow people to be essentially immortal." (p. 53)

"Essentially, he was arguing that the fact that things continue to grow exponentially, despite the constant feeling that we have reached some sort of plateau, is something startling and worth marveling at." (p. 54)

"Revealing hidden knowledge through the power of the crowd has been a great idea at almost any time in human history." (p. 102)

"Alan Kay, a pioneering computer scientist, defined technology as 'anything that was invented after you were born.' For many of us, this definition of technology captures the whiz-bang innovations of the Web browser and the iPad: anything that appeared recently and is different from what we are used to. In this way, we fail to notice all the older but equally important technologies around us, which can include everything from the pencil to window glass." (p. 173)

[Maxwell Planck] "New scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." (p. 186)

"However, Planck's Principle turns out to be wrong." (p. 187)

"Unlike those people who adhere to a prescriptive approach to linguistics, there's no real objective truth, with immutable rules that reside in some manual and that is completely independent of language speakers. A misuse of a word isn't wrong if enough people begin using it that way." (p. 189)

"We are often like objects being dragged through mud. We change, but slowly, and with the residue fo where we came from upon us." (p. 191)

"We have to begin actually educating ourselves and our children to recognize that knowledge will always be changing and showing the regularities behind how these changes can happen. More important than simply learning facts is learning how to adapt to changing facts. Until we begin to do that, we are going to continue to be caught flat-footed by new information." (p. 209)

new words: proteomics, accreting ...more

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Jun 22, 2012 Jim marked it as to-read-tier-2

Shelves: information-lists-maps

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Jun 26, 2023 Jane marked it as to-read

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100+ Books in 2025