But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past Paperback – April 25, 2017

Chuck Klosterman's newest book "But What if We're Wrong" is awesome. Its out there but it continues a trend I find with him where reading his writing is almost like finding a better articulated and more edited version of some of my deep meandering thoughts. but maybe even more so in this book because of the topic. Guess i'm admitting i too am out there ;)The general question he asks is this: What will future generations see when they view this generation? What books will be studied from our century (as he puts it, who is going to be our century's kafka)? What about music; what will really define "rock n roll", or the even less defined genre of "Rock"? And as the title suggests: what if we're wrong about what we think is defining our generation? It seems we think history repeats itself, but then how could we ever predict how different today is compared to even 50 yrs ago?When he starts to delve into the sciences, he tackles the idea of paradigm shifts (taken from Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions) and the question of what can we expect next. This is where its almost freakish how similar this section gets with what i discuss in some of my honors classes (i.e. can we make predictions? Will we see the atom? Will we see the proton? Will we see the strings?)Highly recommending this book to all, sciencey or non sciency peeps. There are interviews with some amazing people: rockstar scientisits Neal De Grass Tyson, Brian Greene, director Robert Linklater, talking heads founder David Byrne, authors Jonathan Lethem and Junot Diaz and more. There are some classic Klosterman off the wall theories about pop culture (probably my favorite part is his coming to the conclusion that the tv show Roseanne may be what future generations will study when looking at the definitive 20th century television programming) and how the future might view it, there is some conspiracy theories, a lot of well crafted "let's pretend" scenarios, and most importantly there is a lot of epistemological questions that at the end of the day make for the difference between living without.To the negative reviewers: much of what you say is that you felt that it rambled, lost its way, provided no strong foundation for the arguments....Unfortunately, epistemology is often characterized by that.Even Klosterman discusses this in the book: as he puts it the difference between a physicist and a philosopher is the difference between what and why? (one cares about what is the cause, the other about the meaning behind it)Thank you Chuck for putting in the time with this one. Seems you spent quite sometime interviewing, researching, and you put together a great read. Maybe not the definitive book of this generation (hahaha, sorry) but still an excellent book.

Klosterman is engaging in an interesting thought exercise. He's trying to problematics certainty by making arguments about how uncertain things can be. And while he often meanders and sometimes posits questionable premises of his own to further his argument, he's ingeniously protected by the underlying assumption of his project: that what seems to be wrong might be worth looking at (this ofCourse has its own set of logical circles to run). But if you view his book more as a reflection on our collective cultural evaluation of academia, athletics , arts and everything else you get a truly interesting and entertaining ideation of how we've done things and how we might continue to do them.Klosterman has written a book that at the very least points the so called epl-jersey wearing Donnie Dario attending hipsters a direction for becoming cultural experts and at best provides some insight into how we process genius and change (rationally and not)

This short, thought-provoking book ranges widely from politics to music to physics but always returns to the main question of 'what if we are wrong'.There are countless cases in history of widely-held beliefs about culture, philosophy and even the nature of the world being overturned almost overnight. Artists unknown in their time are celebrated today as unsung geniuses while the giants of those ages are forgotten. Which raises the question, what do we think, believe or know today that will be proven false tomorrow?It's a good question and there isn't necessarily an answer in here but that's fine because it does make us think. I first learned of this book when one chapter was reprinted in a magazine. It asked the question 300 years from now, when rock and roll is as historical and irrelevant as, say, opera, who will historians hold up as the example of rock, who will be remembered?Now ask the same question about television.Or any other aspect of our lives.Are the Grammy, Emmy and Oscar winners really the most important works of art in the world today? If not, what is?Klosterman also asks the equally challenging question, what if we're right? Yes people once believed the world was flat and were proven wrong. But that sort of scientific revolution has become rarer as we've shared more information and established methods, so what if this is it? What if our understanding of the world is it, and there are no more revolutions?Again he doesn't have answers but there's a lot to chew on here.Klosterman's style is very friendly, he sprinkles in self-deprecating humor and personal anecdotes throughout which keeps this book from being too heavy. I found it a perfect read for a long plane trip.I recommend it.

Not my favorite of the Klosterman books, and I'm a huge fan. At times it feels more like a documentary in book form, with Klosterman as the narrator. Now that CK is a fairly famous writer, a la Malcolm Gladwell (one of the "interviewees" here), he has access to a wide variety of intellectuals and he uses those to build his arguments around. I liked him better when he was follow the train of thought of his own idiosyncratic imagination, rather than asking Neil DeGrasse Tyson what he thinks. It's provocative in a way that makes it fun reading, but the extensiveness, which approaches academic writing, is not Klosterman's wheelhouse, I don't think.