But What If We're Wrong? Read online

  Odd Clauses, The (Wexler), 208

  Ohio, 196–97

  “On Colors” (Aristotle), 111

  On the Genealogy of Color (Adams), 148

  “100 Notable Books” (The New York Times, 2014), 25–27

  “100 Notable Books” (The New York Times, 2015), 26n

  Oswald, Lee Harvey, 17

  outdated thinking, 247

  overthinking, 39

  Page, Jimmy, 85

  Pakistan, and assassination of bin Laden, 151

  paradigm shifts in science, 114–15, 117–18, 120–21

  Particle Fever (film), 130–31

  patriotism, 219

  persecution, cultural, 187–88

  Pet Rocks, 182

  Petrusich, Amanda, 80–82

  Phantom Time Hypothesis, 134–37

  Dark Ages, 145

  evidence against, 135–36

  “major theory,” 135

  “minor theory,” 134

  New Chronology, 135

  role of historical figures, 135

  Russia, centrality of, 136

  physics, 108, 110–11, 113–14, 130–31

  Physics (Aristotle), 5

  Piper, “Rowdy” Roddy, 234

  Plato, 215, 219

  poetry, 93–94

  political polarization, 198–99

  Polybius of Megalopolis, 157n

  popular, how things become, 182

  Portland, Oregon, 259, 261

  predictions

  author’s, 1–2, 182

  making, 49

  presidencies

  color or religion as non-issue, 217–18

  judging and ranking, 203–6, 218–19

  Obama’s legacy, 217–18

  presidential election (2000), 197–98

  Presley, Elvis, 74–77

  pressure, responding to, 250n

  Pride and Prejudice (Austen), 45

  probability, 109–10

  proof, scientific, 120, 135–36

  public opinion

  on football, 184

  influenced by name recognition, 90–92

  on unfamiliar subject, 90–91

  punk music, 79–80

  quantum mechanics, 4, 105, 107, 120

  radio, and incomparability to television, 160n

  Radiohead, 66, 73

  Radiolab (radio show), 190–91

  Rage Against the Machine, 197–98

  Reagan, Ronald, 79, 203–5, 235

  Real Sports (TV show), 185

  Real World, The (TV show), 170

  reality TV, 169–70

  realization of a simulated world, 126–28

  “Really Big One, The” (Schulz), 258–59

  relevance of written work, 45–47

  Republic, The (Plato), 215

  respect for past classic works, 243–45

  Rest Is Noise, The (Ross), 73

  retrospective insight, 14–17

  reversals of scientific opinions, 3–7, 97–98

  Revolution Was Televised, The (Sepinwall), 164

  Revolver (album), 67

  Rhodes, Dusty, 234–35

  Richards, Keith, 85

  Riddle, Nelson, 78

  risks, calculating, 258–61

  Road, The (McCarthy), 47–48

  rock music, 14, 60–87, 92n, 95, 161

  “Albums of the Year” list (SPIN), 92

  authority of youth over age, 69

  Chuck Berry as the epitome of, 85–86

  limitations and demise of, 63, 68–69

  monomyth of, 74–77

  “Rock is dead” assertion, 61–64

  “Southern rock,” 85n

  style vs. substance, 75–76

  subgenres, 60–61, 66–67

  subjectivity of appreciation, 72–73

  rock music vs. rock ’n’ roll music, 60–61

  rock and roll music, 59–60, 68, 74, 82, 86. See also rock music

  rock ’n’ roll music, 59–60, 72, 78, 82, 85, 159. See also rock music

  Rolling Stone, 154n

  Rolling Stones, 70, 82–83

  Romo, Tony, 1

  Roseanne (TV show), 173–75

  Ross, Alex, 73–74

  Roth, Philip, 51, 55–56

  Rowling, J. K., 27–28

  Rubber Soul (album), 67, 75

  Sagan, Carl, 83–84

  Saturday Night Fever (album), 79–80

  Saunders, George, 22–24

  Schulz, Kathryn, 10–11, 49–50, 258

  Science Digest, 16–17

  Scientific American, 223

  scientific beliefs

  card game analogy, 112–13

  evolving, 3–7, 97–98, 225–26

  future revolutionary discoveries, 223–26

  major shifts before 1600, 99–101, 108, 117–18

  “normal science,” 115–16, 226

  society’s feelings about, 226

  verified by experiments, 100

  See also paradigm shifts in science

  scientific consensus, 112–13

  Second Amendment rights, 220

  Selvin, Ben, 77

  Sepinwall, Alan, 164

  “September Gurls” (song), 95

  Sex Pistols, 79–80

  shadow histories, 40–41

  Shakespeare, William, 32, 70, 90, 94

  Shteyngart, Gary, 47

  Silicon Valley (TV show), 170

  Silk Road, 37

  Simmons, J. K., 188–89

  Simulacra and Simulation (Baudrillard), 28

  simulation hypothesis, 28, 121–26

  artificial intelligence, 124

  bar analogy, 126–28

  “breaking the game,” 128–29

  cosmic rays as evidence of, 125n

  and God, 124–27

  morality, 126–28

  numerical constants, 124–25, 130

  realization of, 126–28

  shepherd analogy, 121

  Sinatra, Frank, 75–76

  Singularity (era), 227–29

  skepticism about widely held beliefs, 237–38

  skiffle music, 161

  sky appearing blue, explanation for, 111

  Slacker (film), 141

  sleep and dying, relationship between, 141–42

  “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (song), 70

  Snowden, Edward, 236

  Song of Ice and Fire, A (Martin), 53n

  Sopranos, The (TV show), 71

  Souls of All Living Creatures, The, 256

  Sousa, John Philip, 64–65

  Soviet Union, fall of, 204

  space

  and time, 113–14

  travel, 16–17, 83–84, 118–20

  Speedboat (Adler), 235

  SPIN, 92n

  sports

  analytics, 250–52

  children’s involvement in, 190–91

  “clutch” scenarios, 250n

  and physical risks, 183

  statistics, 249–50

  as televised-only events, 192–93

  Star Wars (film), 57n

  statistics, sports, 249–50

  Steel, Danielle, 52n

  Stevenson, Robert Louis, 143

  storytelling

  fox-vs.-hedgehog analogy, 199–201

  through monomyths, 74

  personal interpretation of events, 203

  and relationship to history, 202–3

  “utility myth,” 218–19

  Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The (Kuhn), 114–16

  subjective vs. objective, 94, 96–97, 1
48–51

  Supreme Court, 210

  symmetry, statistical, 26–27

  Syro (album), 38n

  Talking Heads, 68

  Tartt, Donna, 52

  TED talk about the multiverse, 105–6

  Teenage Fanclub, 92n

  teenage years, recognition of, 62n

  telephone usage, changes in, 15–16

  television

  first Golden Age (1940s–1960), 172

  second Golden Age (1990s–2010s), 172

  ancient Egypt analogy, 162–63

  as art form, 71, 165–66

  as entertainment only (1970s–1980s), 172–73

  filming and staging, 168

  incomparability to radio, 160n

  “misunderstanding” plot (1970s), 167

  natural dialogue, 166–67

  realism, desire for, 163–65, 167–68

  reality TV, 169–70

  realness, achieving, 171–72

  roman à clef programming, 170–71

  sports viewing, 192–93, 251–52

  viewing, changes in, 159–60

  Teller, Miles, 188–89

  Tenth of December (Saunders), 23

  Terminator (film franchise), 227

  “Testify” (music video), 197–98

  time

  effect of, 44–45, 56–57, 70, 205–6, 233–35

  and space, 113–14

  Toland, Gregg, 244

  “Tom Joad” (song), 230

  transgender issues, 29–30

  transgressive art, 79–80

  Trial, The (Kafka), 36, 38

  Truman Show, The (film), 126

  truths, accepting, 238–39

  Twitter, 86

  Tyson, Neil deGrasse, 99–103, 105, 108–12, 115–16, 125n, 224–25

  Ultimate Warrior, 234

  universe. See multiverse hypothesis

  University of Virginia rape story, 154n

  unpopular opinions, opposition to, 211–12

  UnREAL (TV show), 170

  Uranus, orbit of, 108–9

  US government

  Bill of Rights, 209–12

  Constitution, 207–12, 220–21

  feelings of doom about, 206–7

  founding of, 207

  Supreme Court, 210

  U.S. News & World Report, 206

  USA Today, 192

  “utility myth,” 218–19

  validating hypotheses, 106–7

  Van Halen, Eddie, 63–64

  Vargas-Cooper, Natasha, 243

  video games

  effect on children and sports, 191

  Grand Theft Auto, 128

  L.A. Noire, 128–29

  violence in sports, 183–85, 187

  Virga, Vint, 256

  Vollmann, William T., 51

  Vonnegut, Kurt, 43–45

  Voodoo Histories (Aaronovitch), 133–34

  voting, 216–17. See also elections, US

  Voyager (spacecraft), 83

  Wachowski, Lana (formerly Larry), 29

  Wachowski, Lilly (formerly Andy), 29

  Waking Life (film), 141–42

  Wallace, David Foster, 48

  Wall Street Journal, The, 190–91

  war, 226–27

  War Games (film), 227

  Washington, George, 218–19, 221

  Welles, Orson, 244

  Wexler, Jay D., 208–11

  What Good Are the Arts? (Carey), 70

  “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (Nagel), 254

  Whiplash (film), 188–89

  Williams, Hank, 70

  Williams, Robin, 255

  Wine, April, 60

  Winfrey, Oprah, 182

  Witten, Edward, 224–25, 236

  World War I, 9

  wrestling, pro, 234–35

  Wright, Frank Lloyd, 90–92

  Wright, Lawrence, 52

  writers

  bloggers as, 231–32

  changing tastes of readers, 93–94

  cult, 53–54

  poets, 93–94

  pyramid analogy, 51–56

  “quietly unrated,” 54–55

  ranking the best, 22–28, 30–39, 49–50, 92–94

  recognizing diverse, 25–27

  “vocally unrated,” 52–53

  writing that represents life, 43–47

  Y2K crisis, 1–2

  “Young Love” (song), 79

  “You’re doing it wrong” argument, 242, 243, 250

  Zero Dark Thirty (film), 152

  Zinn, Howard, 40

  Zlotnick, Susan, 45

  Zuckerman, Mort, 246

  1 This means that gravity might just be a manifestation of other forces—not a force itself, but the peripheral result of something else. Greene’s analogy was the idea of temperature: Our skin can sense warmth on a hot day, but “warmth” is not some independent thing that exists on its own. Warmth is just the consequence of invisible atoms moving around very fast, creating the sensation of temperature. We feel it, but it’s not really there. So if gravity were an emergent force, it would mean that gravity isn’t the central power pulling things to the Earth, but the tangential consequence of something else we can’t yet explain. We feel it, but it’s not there. It would almost make the whole idea of “gravity” a semantic construction.

  2 The qualities that spurred this rediscovery can, arguably, be quantified: The isolation and brotherhood the sailors experience mirrors the experience of fighting in a war, and the battle against a faceless evil whale could be seen as a metaphor for the battle against the faceless abstraction of evil Germany. But the fact that these details can be quantified is still not a satisfactory explanation as to why Moby-Dick became the specific novel that was selected and elevated. It’s not like Moby-Dick is the only book that could have served this role.

  3 “The days of buying records are already numbered,” Gillett begins. “The current process is inefficient, cumbersome and expensive, with musicians transferring their noises onto tape, somebody else transferring the tape to disc, and the whole complicated mess of distributing and selling records, shipping unwanted returns back to the warehouse . . .”

  4 This is the traditional bell curve. “Gaussian” refers to the mathematician who came up with it, Carl Friedrich Gauss.

  5 I once gave a speech at a Midwestern college, and I asked the person who picked me up at the airport what other authors the university had invited to speak in the past. The driver mentioned George Saunders. When I asked what he was like, the driver claimed that Saunders had pre-Googled the name of almost every person involved with his visit—including the driver himself—so that the brief conversations he would inevitably have with those around him would not be one-sided. He wanted to be able to ask them questions about their lives. Part of me finds this story implausible, but maybe that just proves I’m not very thoughtful.

  6 And, in fact, on the 2015 list, this was indeed the case—twenty-six of the books in the fiction and poetry category were by female authors and twenty-seven of the nonfiction works were by male authors (although the second category is complicated by posthumous anthology collections of male writers that were edited or compiled by women). It’s not like symmetry is the newspaper’s policy. It’s just an overwhelming trend, designed to combat an overwhelming disparity: In 2004, the first year The New York Times capped the list at one hundred books, only five women made the nonfiction list.

  7 In the actual quote, Maugham used the word “selected” instead of “selects.” I think we can all agree that this mistake invalidates Lethem’s entire career.

  8 Now, the easy counter to this suggestion is, “That’s crazy. Nobody uses the Deep Web for artis
tic purposes, and nobody ever would. That’s like saying the next great movie director might currently be involved with the production of snuff films.” But this response is already false. The British electronica artist Aphex Twin released the title and track listing for his 2014 album Syro on the hidden Deep Web service Tor. The reason this was done remains unclear—but that’s part of the value here. Clarity is not required.

  9 When casually talking to like-minded friends, people rarely say, “I saw a movie last night.” People more often say things like “I saw The Hateful Eight last night” or “I finally saw the new Tarantino last night.” We live in a proper-noun culture. Now, is it possible that this specific film will be lost to history? Is it possible that referring to Quentin Tarantino in an offhand manner will be confusing or misleading? Sure. But the two seconds it will take a future reader to figure this out from context is better than directly reminding that reader that this is a fiction that never happened at all.

  10 This is something I think actually will happen, in just the way I describe it here. Because of his suicide and specialized type of brilliance, David Foster Wallace will remain historically relevant. Infinite Jest will be perceived as his defining work, even though it will rarely be read, simply due to its size and complexity. Since that novel will be both deeply remembered and widely unread, it will become a perfect vessel for radical, obtuse interpretation (in the same way this is currently done with Moby-Dick). Two or three centuries from now, the events of September 11, 2001, will be the singular social touchstone for all creative American works that happened within the general vicinity of that date (and if you don’t believe me, try to find deep analysis of any American art from the middle nineteenth century that doesn’t glancingly reference the Civil War). This is the recipe for how a book about one subject ends up becoming the defining book about something else entirely. Someday, there will be a college literature class connected to the events of 9/11, Infinite Jest will be included on the reading list, and there will be an inordinate amount of emphasis on the passages about the militant Quebecois. And when that happens, the professor better give me credit for this prediction. Note me in the syllabus or something. I don’t care if the students don’t care. I mean, half of them will be cyborgs, anyway.

  11 In the introduction of this book, I identify Schulz as the author of Being Wrong. It’s the same person in both instances.

  12 Which, technically speaking, would be a triangle.