In 2013, the University of California, Berkeley, debuted a course to teach undergraduates the tricks used by scientists to make sense of the world, in the hope that these tricks would prove useful in assessing the claims and counterclaims that bombard us every day.

It was launched by three UC Berkeley professors — a physicist, a philosopher and a psychologist — in response to a world afloat in misinformation and disinformation, where politicians were making policy decisions based on ideas that, if not demonstrably wrong, were at least untested and uncertain.

The class, Sense and Sensibility and Science, was a hit and convinced the professors to write a book based on the class that provides tips not only on how to systematically wade through the noise around us to seek the truth, but also how to work with those holding different values to come to a consensus on how to act.

The book, Third Millennium Thinking: Creating sense in a world of nonsense (Little, Brown, Spark), will be published today, March 26 — just in time for the 2024 election season, which promises to be more bluff and bluster than rational argument.

The course, now co-taught with Amy Lerman, UC Berkeley professor of public policy and political science, currently enrolls 300 students for Zoom lectures and additional smaller, in-person discussion sections. Courses based on the UC Berkeley curriculum have been adopted at Harvard University and UC Irvine, and, this spring, by the University of Chicago. A high school course is currently being developed and classroom-tested as well. Berkeley News sat down with Perlmutter, Campbell and MacCoun to discuss the book and why the world needs a science-based approach to critical thinking and decision making.