reading review - what if?

Longtime readers - or even those of just the past few months - will recall that I highlighted Munroe's How To back in June. I suppose I'm a little out of order here, as What If? was published five years before How To, though I must note that the books aren't strictly linked despite sharing an obvious spirit of scientific exploration through the lens of the extreme. The main difference is that How To had a functional edge, in that it at least looked for absurd processes for the mundane; What If? gives serious consideration to the most outlandish, improbable, or simply absurd scenarios - see my book notes here.

What If? by Randall Munroe (February 2020)

The most interesting theme in this book was how general intuition fails when considering extremes. Most of us can't visualize how materials collide at extreme speeds (Munroe makes the point that a feather moving fast enough can knock us over) and struggle with the magnitudes involved in energy questions (an unused charger, if warm to the touch, is using about a penny of electricity per day; the sun provides a million times more consistent power than lightning). This ability to comprehend scale is perhaps the most unrecognized form of intelligence. I have a friend who was never considered smart in book terms - he couldn't find 180 in the corners of a triangle - but he has an incredible grasp of scale; I consider his brain a better example of a great mathematical mind than someone who can do long division without a calculator.

I also noticed a tendency of this book to draw simple logic out of complex math or science. Munroe notes in one section that hard drives often transfer data much faster than the internet, due to a combination of storage size and connection throughput; it spoke to my related feeling that although the internet is a net timesaver, it's certainly not always the most efficient tool. I also liked the advice that the best way for people lost in the wilderness to find each other is to follow three basic rules -  leave trails, move faster when you get on someone's trail, and always remember to look for where someone was rather than where they are. Perhaps the most amusing insight was that if you believe your soulmate lived in the distant past, then it means you shouldn't rule out that soulmates can also live in the distant future - just think about it from the perspective of your soulmate.

TOA Rating: Three hypotheticals out of four.