What's left is right, unless it's wrong: a skeptical review of Everything we know is wrong (Pt 3)

Looking back at my reflections so far, I have discussed skepticism as well as the interconnected ideas of liberalism, capitalism and individualism. These are certainly important, since they recur throughout the book, but they're not all the book is about. If they were, the book would be a treatise on political philosophy, and not a very good one. So I'm going to focus the rest of my review on the rest of the book, which really develops the main theme that Magnus wants to discuss: how to detect and cope with change.

Aspects on adaptation
Among the interesting aspects of change that Magnus discusses in his book is the fact that humans as a rule are unwilling to accept change. This is not strange; usually, you prefer the devil you know. But the book also brings up biological and psychological factors that inhibit our willingness to change. Certainly, some more depth could be added to these discussions. To me, it seems only natural to connect this discussion to evolutionary theory. But then again, there probably is a reason why I haven't got a book published.

Magnus also makes a real effort to give practical, hands-on advice on how to detect change. These are summarized at the end of each chapter by "the trendspotter Mission manual", a short comic with tips. This is a nice touch, and the tips seem sound overall, even though there is the occasional one which seems a bit limited in scope. When I read "Use public transport! Go to where the people are. Don't spend all your time in taxis and business-class lounges" (p. 136) I feel a bit... out of the loop, so to say. This gives the impression that the book is not intended for "the people", and that's unfortunate. I know, I know, it's a business book, intended for business people. But the entire "MyCapital" idea should lead to the conclusion that anyone can be a business person in today's world, and thus the book's ideas ought to have universal appeal. As I've stated before, I don't agree with the MyCapital idea, but I didn't write the book, so this type of categorization shouldn't exist within it.

More on the exciting idea of categorization
Speaking of categorization, there's a lot of that going on in the book. Initially, four ways of looking at the future are presented (p. 8), and in the end, there is a discussion of pessimism vs optimism. OK, so it's not that much categorization going on in the book. But I'm still going to discuss the categories presented.

The "future-view"-categories are interesting. Magnus labels them Utopians/Dystopians (i.e. everything is going great/to Hell), the Pendulum/the Spiral Staircase (everything recurs endelesly, with the Spiral staircasists adding a general trend upwards or downwards), and finally the Black Hole (we don't know). After reading this, I wondered about how these different views hold up: what are the strengths and weaknesses of each? However, there is no follow-up discussion of them. I am left pondering them in my loneliness, thinking about where I fit in. Well, let' face it, I'd be alone anyway, and as far as I know I have a little of each view within me (I know, I have no principles. At least I'm aware of it, and ashamed of my glaring deficiencies (and not just regarding principles). Still, it would be interesting to hear Magnus' ideas about these views, and whether he aligns himself with any of them (not the Black hole one, I presume). He is a futurologist, after all.

Regarding the age-old distinction of pessimism versus optimism, Magnus tries to do a Kant. For anyone not being a philosophy geek, that means "to combine two antithetic viewpoints into one, thus creating a new, synthetic viewpoint, which incorporates elements of both the original viewpoints". At least, that's how I defined it just now. Kant. Look him up. Well, he's dead so you can't (or is that Kant?), but you can read about him somewhere. Wikipedia probably has an article.

Anyway, the point of the synthesis of pessimism and optimism is that both viewpoints can be useful when thinking about the future. This is an interesting notion, which I also would like to be explained more in-depth. However, the presentation of the viewpoints in unbalanced, with Magnus clearly arguing much more substantially for optimism than pessimism. While pessimism is treated rather vaguely, Magnus presents three hard arguments for optimism. Two of them seem invalid to me, though I accept the argument for globalism as, in general, a good development (at least in the way that Magnus presents it). There are no three hard arguments for pessimism in the book, so the entire synthesis of the two viewpoints lacks balance. It's like Magnus really wants to argue for optimism, but he can't do it without first giving some room for the possibility of pessismism. At least Kant's synthesis worked. Granted, Kant synthesized notions that were blatantly obvious to all except philosophers, while Magnus tries to combine two fundamentally opposed worldviews (dare I say: like his own and mine own?).

Wrap it up! Pleeeaaase!
I believe I could continue writing about the ideas in Magnus' book for quite some time, but I really need to focus on my job. So I'm going to finish this review now. To sum it up, I do not agree with most of the underlying assumptions of the book, and thus naturally I do not come to the conclusions that Magnus reaches. Still, the book is engaging and thought-provoking, at least to me (sadly, my experience tells me that this cannot be extrapolated to cover more than a minuscule proportion of the population). The strong parts about change and the different attitudes toward it are interesting, even though I personally would like more in-depth analysis. There are some annoying errors. My sense of pointing out errors wouldn't be satisfied if I didn't point out one more: "idiot" is not Latin, it's Greek. It means "private citizen, individual", and was used as a derogatory term about people who only thought of themselves and not the common welfare of society. Well, it would sound bad to mention this in the book, since a possible evolution of the word could be "idiotism" (synonymous to "individualism"). In any case, that is a proofreading problem. Still, would be nice to be annoyed by the right things (i.e. the ideas), not by such errors.

A final quote from the book: "Like-minded people are the most dangerous people in the world" (p. 160). It follows that, in order to adhere to this particular advice of the book, I should not accept the advice of the book (since that would make my mind more like Magnus'). Perhaps then, my review proves the perfect counterpoint to Magnus' reasoning. Then again, probably not. Well, at least I did something more than say: "I liked it".

If you've endured my entire review, then you should get some kind of reward, but I don't have one to give. It follows that you shouldn't have read through it all. Too bad for you. With these words I leave you to reflect on why you didn't do something more worthwhile with your time.