The Half-Life of Facts summary

Over the course of human history, we’ve gone from worshipping nature to taking steps to truly understanding it. What was it that helped us get where we are today?

For one thing, although our knowledge certainly isn’t perfect, it does inch closer to the truth with every new development. For example, the once accepted notion that the world is a sphere isn’t quite true – it’s actually an ellipsoid. Still, this false belief is a far better approximation than the previously held belief that the Earth was flat.

Have you ever bought a new computer or phone only to discover that, within just a few short months, a newer, better one has come to market? The speed of technological progress is much faster nowadays than ever before. But why?

Because technological development follows the same pattern as the scientific knowledge we learned about in the previous blink: each new innovation sparks more and more breakthroughs.

How do we know that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world? The obvious answer is that we measured its height and then compared the result with those of other mountains.

Indeed, by measuring something’s properties, we are able to learn more about the world, and this measuring is a continuous process. After measuring Mount Everest a few more times, scientists even found out that its height is not static – it changes all the time due to erosion and the collision of the continental plates.

Have you ever wondered why so many universities and research laboratories are located in big cities?

Because people think that the larger the population, the more people there’ll be with specialist knowledge who can work together to develop new ideas.

If the accumulation of knowledge might have seemed like a smooth process so far, that’s only because we’ve neglected one crucial element: human beings. We humans, with all our faults, play an important role in these developments.

The Latin proverb errare humanum est, “to err is human,” shows just how long we’ve been grappling with our innate faults. In fact, history is full of accounts of basic human errors affecting our knowledge.

So far, we’ve only explored collective human knowledge. Now let’s turn our attention to the way we, as individuals, handle new information, and the problems our approaches cause.

First, individuals hardly notice changes that happen slowly over a long period of time. For example, 200 years ago there was an abundance of fish on the Newfoundland coast. Yet now, due mostly to fishing, there are hardly any left. Why on Earth was this allowed to happen?

Unfortunately, we don’t cope very well with changes in knowledge. Luckily, we can take steps to ensure that we keep up to date in this ever-changing world.

For starters, we can structure our routine so we systematically and actively continue learning throughout our lives.