Further Reading: The Case for Imperfect Knowledge

Tier 1: Verified Sources

Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge, 1963. The philosophical foundation for the argument that knowledge grows through conjecture and refutation — that the willingness to be wrong is the engine of progress. Popper's vision of an "open society" that treats its beliefs as hypotheses subject to revision is the political and philosophical basis for everything in this book.

Firestein, Stuart. Ignorance: How It Drives Science. Oxford University Press, 2012. A working scientist's argument that ignorance — the recognition of what we don't know — is more productive than knowledge in driving scientific progress. Firestein's celebration of not-knowing complements this chapter's case for imperfect knowledge.

Deutsch, David. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World. Viking, 2011. An optimistic epistemology arguing that progress is possible, sustainable, and open-ended — but only through the specific institution of criticism and error correction. Deutsch provides the philosophical framework for why "less wrong" is not just achievable but potentially infinite in its trajectory.

Tetlock, Philip E., and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. Crown, 2015. The practical demonstration that calibrated uncertainty produces measurably better outcomes than overconfident certainty. Tetlock's superforecasters embody the stance this book recommends: confident in methods, humble about conclusions, willing to update.

Tier 2: Attributed Claims

The phrase "all models are wrong, but some are useful" is attributed to the statistician George E. P. Box, from a 1976 paper and elaborated in his 1987 book Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces.

The concept of "less wrong" as a productive epistemic stance has been articulated by multiple philosophers and scientists, including Isaac Asimov (in his essay "The Relativity of Wrong," 1989) and the online rationalist community (the blog LessWrong, founded 2009).

  1. Start with Firestein (Ignorance) — for the celebration of productive not-knowing
  2. Then Popper (Conjectures and Refutations) — for the philosophical foundation
  3. Then Tetlock (Superforecasting) — for the practical demonstration
  4. Then Deutsch (The Beginning of Infinity) — for the optimistic epistemology