Do You Think You're Clever?: The Oxford and Cambridge Questions

I bought this book at the large Tsim Sha Tsui bookshop in Hong Kong. It was certainly not a bit of a light reading as much as a brain feast. Thoroughly enjoyable, it kept challenging my perceptions about a variety of topics. The 17 year old me would probably fail to come up with such brilliant answers 20 years ago, but as a 38 years old child I totally loved it.

Well, if u on the subway, wanna take something to fill your time and nice or humor knowledge then this is the book, at first did not think it was all that but as i go on and on reading i realize its an amazing book, and what makes it amazing are its questions posed in there, that many times either have crossed your mind at some point in life or stun you and makes u go "hey ya that's right! what happens if i drop an ant? or if i drill earth pole to pole?" and so on... the other thing is that the way the author answers is amazing as well as he covers different aspects in different fields as in what happenes if u drill earth pole to pole and jump will u reach the other pole? so he covers what happens in the whole thing going through physics to biology to solving the question in an imaginary way and see if still works.... basically this book throws u the strange questions and makes ur mind twist and think how u go bout solving it, there is no right no wrong, coz of the question's nature, but its fun to think it out.....

This book is a collection of articles that answer to a set of philosophical, ethical and scientific questions. Much of it is well-balanced and insightful- I learned quite a bit of it. Yet I felt it could have been written more carefully in order to quite reach the level of Julian Baggini's books, or the excellent Books "of General Ignorance". Also, the pieces do not connect well. For instance, there are musings over whether consciousness is specifically human, or if it may also be extended to animals. A thorny topic, as one cannot even 'prove' that one's spouse or neighbor has consciousness- this is well explained. But then there is a piece on Descartes, with his shaky 'cogito ergo sum'. He was clearly unaware of phantom limbs- if the brain can make you believe you still have a lost arm, with an itching finger, then what else can it fake? The 'Cartesian theatre' isn't going to help us explain how the mind works- biologists work under the assumption that this is a serpent that bites its own tail. But, surprisingly, the author then confidently states that machines will never feel guilty, or feel at all. Well... we also thought that machines could not play a decent game of chess... Such confidence reminds me of people who believe fish don't suffer because they cannot scream. Then there is an initially good piece on 'back-of-the-envelope' estimates. A few good examples are given but then comes, of all formulas, the Drake equation, confidently presented as yielding the number of intelligent civilizations in the Universe. Sorry, but we don't have the slightest clue as what the probability of life emerging is, given ideal circumstances (such as our cozy Earth). This probability may be infinitesimal small, such that we are the only example in the entire Universe, for no-one has come even close to recreating life from scratch. Or it may at the other extreme, equal to 1. And the argument there is that Life arose really quickly after the young Earth cooled. All we know is that this p is non-zero, and this huge uncertainty makes that the Drake formula, while formally correct, is basically useless. At other points the science is just sloppy: "..there are some 100 billion separate cells in the human brain (..), with each of those 100 billion cells making 1,000 or more separate connections with other cells". Sorry, not true. To quote Wikipedia: "..there are about 86 billion neurons and 85 billion "nonneuronal" (glial) cells in the human male brain." The latter are for support only.

A fascinating and reassuring read that I can see myself re-reading a few times, and recommending wholeheartedly to anyone who rates themselves a clever-clogs!

Studenten, die sich an den englischen Eliteunis Oxford und Cambridge bewerben, werden bei Aufnahmenprüfungen oft mit Fragen konfrontiert, die auf den ersten Blick gar nichts mit wissenschaftlicher Qualifikation zu tun haben. "Was passiert, wenn Sie eine Ameise fallen lassen?", "In welche Periode würden sie gerne eine Zeitreise unternehmen und warum?" oder "Kann man in einem Raumschiff eine Kerze anzünden?" Ziel dieser Frage ist es herauszufinden, ob die Studienplatzbewerber in der Lage sind, auch mal um die Ecke zu denken und Lösungsansätze zu entwickeln, die über das reine Fachwissen hinausgehen. Die Frage ist also, ob sie wirklich "clever" sind oder nur belesene Fachidioten. Als Leser hat man viel Vergnügen mit diesen Fragen und den dargestellten Lösungsansätzen, die alle Wissenschaften von Jura über Geschichte bis hin zur Physik umfassen. Man erhält Einblicke in wissenschaftliche Denkweisen und Argumentationsstrukturen und lernt sicher auch eine ganze Menge Neues aus den verschiedenen Wissensgebieten. Aber Vorsicht: Das Buch ist keine allgemeinverständliche Einführung in die Wissensgebiete. Die Fragen mögen ja (auf den ersten Blick) noch recht einfach erscheinen, aber die Antworten sind teilweise schon komplex und verlangen ein bisschen Vorwissen oder zumindest die Bereitschaft zum intensiven (mehrfachen)Lesen. Man muss (vor allem im geisteswissenschaftlichen Bereich) auch nicht mit jeder Anwort konform gehen, aber eine anregende Lektüre ist es allemal. Das Buch ist als kindle-Version zu einem sehr günstigen Preis erhältlich, der allein schon die Anschffung rechtfertigt. Dazu ist es jedoch in der Digitalversion auch noch gut aufbereitet: Man kann über das Inhaltverzeichnis gezielt die Fragen anwählen, die einen gerade interessieren. Fazit: Das Buch regt einen immer wieder zum Nachdenken an und ist auf dem Kindle der ideale Begleiter, um mal in einer Pause oder auf Reisen in andere Gedankenwelten zu entfliehen. Klare Kaufempfehlung.

Really interesting and mind boggling questions examined in this book for a range of different subjects. Makes you think out of the box. Bought it to examine the science based questions but ended up reading questions on the other subjects as they were very interesting and engaging.

This is a really clever book and makes you think creatively. It took my over a year to finish it, I just used it as a toilet read ;) Still, the questions are interesting and the answers very clever. Sometimes (but not often) I came up with a better answer, but even if you don't you'll learn a lot while reading.

素直に読み易い英語でした。言葉の使い方ににやとしました。お正月に、楽しませてもらおうと思います。英国からエアーメールで届いたのはびっくりでした。ネットワークの広がりを実感しました。