The Mona Lisa Deception

The popularity of the Mona Lisa is an illusion. So says Nicholas Christakis in his book review of "Everything is Obvious, Once You Know the Answer" by Duncan J. Watts. “We claim to be saying that the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world [but] we are trapped inside a hall of mirrors of our own devising," Watts writes. "We think the Mona Lisa is famous because of its traits, but we think those traits are significant only because they belong to the Mona Lisa, which we know to be famous." Christakis observes that "We rely on common sense to understand the world, but in fact it is an endless source of just-so stories that can be tailored to any purpose. Common sense is a kind of bespoke make-believe, and we can no more use it to scientifically explain the workings of the social world than we can use a hammer to understand mollusks." Fascinating.