"Why then do most people in modern societies have such a superficial knowledge about how the world really works? **The complexities of the modern world are an obvious explanation: people are constantly interacting with black boxes, whose relatively simple outputs require little or no comprehension of what is taking place inside the box**. "This is as true of such ubiquitous devices as mobile phones and laptops (typing a simple query does the trick) as it is of mass-scale procedures such as vaccination (certainly the best planetary example of 2021, with, typically, the rolling up of a sleeve being the only comprehensible part). **But explanations of this comprehension deficit go beyond the fact that the sweep of our knowledge encourages specialization, whose obverse is an increasingly shallow understanding—even ignorance—of the basics**." ([Location 274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08SGC3TD3&location=274)) --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[specialisation]], [[epistomelogical-challenge]], [[scientific-method]], **Source** -- [[202412030828 - B - How the World Really Works]]