[PDF] The Knowledge Illusion eBook

Author : Steven Sloman
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 43,50 MB
Release : 2017-03-14
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0399184341

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“The Knowledge Illusion is filled with insights on how we should deal with our individual ignorance and collective wisdom.” —Steven Pinker We all think we know more than we actually do. Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We’re constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with which we interact—and usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it. The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail. But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. The Knowledge Illusion contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.

Author : Alexander Gillespie
Publisher : Earthscan
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 23,10 MB
Release : 2014-05-14
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1849776229

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Is 'sustainable development' a charade sold to an increasingly misled public? This book presents a wide-ranging, penetrating critique of sustainability and what it actually means. The author argues that despite the rhetoric of socially and environmentally sustainable development and the ever-increasing number of legislative environmental policies, the real issues such as consumption, population growth and equity are either sidestepped or manipulated in international policy and law. Analyzing the main areas of concern - economic growth, market structure, trade, aid, debt, security and sovereignty - he shows that the entire development structure and the underpinnings of the debate are leading down quite a different path to that intended by sustainability.

Author : Genia Schönbaumsfeld
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 40,99 MB
Release : 2016
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0198783949

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The Illusion of Doubt confronts one of the most important questions in philosophy: what can we know? The radical sceptic's answer is 'not very much' if we cannot prove that we are not subject to (permanent) deception. This book shows that the radical sceptical problem is an illusion created by a mistaken picture of our evidential situation.

Author : Harold Katcher
Publisher :
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 40,14 MB
Release : 2021-09-04
Category : Health & Fitness
ISBN : 9788554106058

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In May 2020, the publication of a scientific paper on the rejuvenation of rats shook the foundations of the community that studies the possibility of undoing aging. An average epigenetic rejuvenation of 54% of the animals was reported in the article, in addition to the reversal of dozens of biochemical markers of old rats to values typical of young rats. The main developer of the treatment that led to these results was Dr. Harold Katcher, author of The Illusion of Knowledge. The reception of the specialized scientific community to the experiment was shock, with the phrase "it's too good to be true" repeated almost instinctively. Thus, Dr. Katcher decided to write this book, explaining in detail the foundations of his theory of aging and the evolutionary and biochemical bases of the mechanisms that determine the lifespan of different species. However, in this book, Dr. Katcher has done much more than address the strictly scientific part. By also conducting an in-depth analysis of the history of scientific ideas and humanity's relationship with the idea of immortality, he shows that it is no accident that he may have made the greatest discovery in human history.

Author : N.J. Wade
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 26,60 MB
Release : 2006-03-30
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0387227237

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Our contact with the world is through perception, and therefore the study of the process is of obvious importance and signi?cance. For much of its long history, the study of perception has been con?ned to natural- tic observation. Nonetheless, the phenomena considered worthy of note have not been those that nurture our survival—the veridical features of perception—but the oddities or departures from the common and c- monplace accuracies of perception. With the move from the natural world to the laboratory the oddities of perception multiplied, and they received ever more detailed scrutiny. My general intention is to examine the interpretations of the perc- tual process and its errors throughout history. The emphasis on errors of perception might appear to be a narrow approach, but in fact it enc- passes virtually all perceptual research from the ancients until the present. The constancies of perception have been taken for granted whereas - partures from constancies (errors or illusions) have fostered fascination.

Author : Helen Turnbull
Publisher : Business Expert Press
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 29,77 MB
Release : 2016-08-18
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1631574582

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We may say we want to be inclusive, but what if we really don’t? What if our brains are hard-wired for selfishness and similarity and not for diversity and altruism? Having a diverse workforce is no guarantee that the work environment is inclusive. Companies hire for diversity and manage for similarity. We hire people for their difference and then teach them directly and indirectly what they have to do to fit in to the corporate culture. The Illusion of Inclusion exposes a myriad of diverse reasons why people are not more fully engaged and offers you the key to unlock the “Geometry of Inclusion”. This book takes the lid off Pandora’s box and explores the complexity of inclusion; where affinity bias or “mini-me” syndrome and the need to fit in are unconsciously blocking our ability to be inclusive. It offers a road map and an easy to comprehend model on how to minimize the impact of unconscious and conscious biases in order to embed an inclusive organizational culture.

Author : Michael Strevens
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 12,91 MB
Release : 2020-10-13
Category : Science
ISBN : 1631491385

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“The Knowledge Machine is the most stunningly illuminating book of the last several decades regarding the all-important scientific enterprise.” —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex A paradigm-shifting work, The Knowledge Machine revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. • Why is science so powerful? • Why did it take so long—two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics—for the human race to start using science to learn the secrets of the universe? In a groundbreaking work that blends science, philosophy, and history, leading philosopher of science Michael Strevens answers these challenging questions, showing how science came about only once thinkers stumbled upon the astonishing idea that scientific breakthroughs could be accomplished by breaking the rules of logical argument. Like such classic works as Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine grapples with the meaning and origins of science, using a plethora of vivid historical examples to demonstrate that scientists willfully ignore religion, theoretical beauty, and even philosophy to embrace a constricted code of argument whose very narrowness channels unprecedented energy into empirical observation and experimentation. Strevens calls this scientific code the iron rule of explanation, and reveals the way in which the rule, precisely because it is unreasonably close-minded, overcomes individual prejudices to lead humanity inexorably toward the secrets of nature. “With a mixture of philosophical and historical argument, and written in an engrossing style” (Alan Ryan), The Knowledge Machine provides captivating portraits of some of the greatest luminaries in science’s history, including Isaac Newton, the chief architect of modern science and its foundational theories of motion and gravitation; William Whewell, perhaps the greatest philosopher-scientist of the early nineteenth century; and Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of the quark. Today, Strevens argues, in the face of threats from a changing climate and global pandemics, the idiosyncratic but highly effective scientific knowledge machine must be protected from politicians, commercial interests, and even scientists themselves who seek to open it up, to make it less narrow and more rational—and thus to undermine its devotedly empirical search for truth. Rich with illuminating and often delightfully quirky illustrations, The Knowledge Machine, written in a winningly accessible style that belies the import of its revisionist and groundbreaking concepts, radically reframes much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world.

Author : Eugene T Richardson
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 46,97 MB
Release : 2020-12-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0262045605

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A physician-anthropologist explores how public health practices--from epidemiological modeling to outbreak containment--help perpetuate global inequities. In Epidemic Illusions, Eugene Richardson, a physician and an anthropologist, contends that public health practices--from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference--play an essential role in perpetuating a range of global inequities. Drawing on postcolonial theory, medical anthropology, and critical science studies, Richardson demonstrates the ways in which the flagship discipline of epidemiology has been shaped by the colonial, racist, and patriarchal system that had its inception in 1492. Deploying a range of rhetorical tools and drawing on his clinical work in a variety of epidemics, including Ebola in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, leishmania in the Sudan, HIV/TB in southern Africa, diphtheria in Bangladesh, and SARS-CoV-2 in the United States, Richardson concludes that the biggest epidemic we currently face is an epidemic of illusions—one that is propagated by the coloniality of knowledge production.

Author : Wendy Bellion
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 33,39 MB
Release : 2012-12-01
Category : Art
ISBN : 080783890X

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In this richly illustrated study, the first book-length exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States, Wendy Bellion investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with illusory art shaped their understanding of knowledge, representation, and subjectivity between 1790 and 1825. Focusing on the work of the well-known Peale family and their Philadelphia Museum, as well as other Philadelphians, Bellion explores the range of illusions encountered in public spaces, from trompe l'oeil paintings and drawings at art exhibitions to ephemeral displays of phantasmagoria, "Invisible Ladies," and other spectacles of deception. Bellion reconstructs the elite and vernacular sites where such art and objects appeared and argues that early national exhibitions doubled as spaces of citizen formation. Within a post-Revolutionary culture troubled by the social and political consequences of deception, keen perception signified able citizenship. Setting illusions into dialogue with Enlightenment cultures of science, print, politics, and the senses, Citizen Spectator demonstrates that pictorial and optical illusions functioned to cultivate but also to confound discernment. Bellion reveals the equivocal nature of illusion during the early republic, mapping its changing forms and functions, and uncovers surprising links between early American art, culture, and citizenship.

Author : Bruce Hood
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 12,44 MB
Release : 2012-06-15
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0199969892

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Most of us believe that we are unique and coherent individuals, but are we? The idea of a "self" has existed ever since humans began to live in groups and become sociable. Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion - it is not what it seems. Reality as we perceive it is not something that objectively exists, but something that our brains construct from moment to moment, interpreting, summarizing, and substituting information along the way. Like a science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. In The Self Illusion, Dr. Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. He explains that self is the product of our relationships and interactions with others, and it exists only in our brains. The author argues, however, that though the self is an illusion, it is one that humans cannot live without. But things are changing as our technology develops and shapes society. The social bonds and relationships that used to take time and effort to form are now undergoing a revolution as we start to put our self online. Social networking activities such as blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter threaten to change the way we behave. Social networking is fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships is outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. This book ventures into unchartered territory to explain how the idea of the self will never be the same again in the online social world.