This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking

The book is a great collection of scientific and intelligent ideas from all over the world . The lessons weren't lengthy and quite engaging from crypto to life code behavioral psychology nearly everything is covered. If you have a curious child in you for science this would be a great read

This Will Make You Smarter is a collection of essays from leading scientists on the question of what scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit. Across ~150 essays, there are quite a few ideas that should be very familiar to practicing scientists: humans are bad at probability, science is messier than the ideal "scientific method" would have us believe, etc. Then there were quite a few essays involving ideas I have read about once or twice but from which I can still learn something new, like positive-sum games and comparative advantage. The completely new essays are, of course, the most bang for your buck. If you have a few minutes to read a few pages, check out: Subselves and the Modular Mind, Science vs Theatre, Scientists Should be Scientists, Kayfabe, Kakonomics, and Path Dependence (all the essays from this book and other years should be available at [...].If this book is an exercise in meta-cognition, here's a thought: as the 2012 collection of Edge.org question essays, this book was published before the replication crisis really unfolded, so it will be interesting to see if some of the more psychology-oriented essays still hold up after review in 2016.Lately I've found myself shifting towards shorter works to maximize my breadth of reading and avoid diminishing returns on any one piece. In this respect I recommend this essay collection, and will probably read some of Brockman's other collections (I have the 2013 collection, What Should We Be Worried About?, but haven't had enough excess optimism to stomach it yet). I'll also take this chance to recommend some other great collections of essays and blog posts at gwern.net, the DataGenetics blog, and of course, Eliezer Yudkowski's The Sequences.On balance, there are a handful of really good essays that made reading TWMYS worth it despite a lot of the content being familiar to a scientific thinker. Four stars.

This book has collection of essays/answers to questions asked by John Brockman. More than 150 concepts are explained by various persons like Richard Dawkins etc. This book is worth every penny. Read it if you want to increase your cognitive toolkit.

Fast schon zum Ritual geworden nehme ich mir jedes Jahr eines der Edge-Bücher von John Brockman vor. Die Bücher sind nicht einfach oder flach, nicht allem muss man zustimmen, aber ich kenne kaum ein Buch, das einen so unmittelbar in Kontakt bringt mit vielen der besten Wissenschaftler und Denker. Wie immer eine Bereicherung für das eigene Denken und Weltbild. In meiner Meinung sicherlich eines der tiefsten und besten Edge-Bücher überhaupt.

Yes definetly smarter in a wide range of subjects. The beauty of the book is there is something for everybody in every field of intrest .and make you think of future possibilities.