{"id":4534,"date":"2016-07-30T10:25:56","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T08:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astroblastro.com\/?p=4534"},"modified":"2016-07-30T10:27:03","modified_gmt":"2016-07-30T08:27:03","slug":"what-if-were-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/?p=4534","title":{"rendered":"What if We’re Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had to wait for a few weeks for the audiobook of Chuck Klosterman\u2019s new book, What If We\u2019re Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past<\/em> <\/a>to come out. I read a little preview and the title grabbed me. I knew I wanted to get into it as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

\"werewrong\"<\/p>\n

It’s not a predictive book about the future and it’s not scientific, it’s a loose exploration of the theme:\u00a0think about the present as if it were the past,<\/em> and it’s fascinating<\/p>\n

In some ways I’ve been thinking about his idea since I\u00a0was a little Kevin. There is\u00a0a kid\u2019s book<\/a>\u00a0written from the perspective of some future archeologist discovering artifacts from today. The archeologist interpreted everything wrong of course, the toilet was a religious alter I think. But that\u2019s not the point. The point is it\u2019s a fun thought experiment.<\/p>\n

Attitudes change over time, and eventually the change becomes what\u2019s normal. Once that happens it\u2019s hard to imagine how anyone could have lived any differently. Think about old folks\u2019 attitude toward race. Some happy conversation will all of the sudden turn taboo. And the young ones will blush and think, \u201chow can he say such a thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

But the thought experiment is for the young one to figure out what belief HE holds that will make HIS grandkids uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy. What do I hold true today that I will look back on knowing it\u2019s wrong? The fun part of the thought experiment is that everything that you think you\u2019ll think is wrong in the future isn\u2019t something you think is true today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had to wait for a few weeks for the audiobook of Chuck Klosterman\u2019s new book, What If We\u2019re Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past to come out. I read a little preview and the title grabbed me. I knew I wanted to get into it as soon as possible.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[450,451],"class_list":["post-4534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","tag-essays","tag-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4534"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4540,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534\/revisions\/4540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}