We built reality: how social science infiltrated culture, politics, and power

In: Oxford scholarship online

Abstract

Popular culture is saturated with claims about a science of human life. Demographics are said to predict how we will vote; chemicals in our brains, who we'll date; game-like scenarios, how we'll spend our money; and genes, what we will think. This text explores this flood of scientism as it has spread in the last fifty years into almost all facets of daily existence. Readers will discover how popular pseudoscience has radically changed the world we live in, including spheres as different as dating, economics, politics, and artificial intelligence.