Download or read book Too Much Information written by Cass R. Sunstein and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling co-author of Nudge explores how more information can make us happy or miserable—and why we sometimes avoid it but sometimes seek it out. How much information is too much? Do we need to know how many calories are in the giant vat of popcorn that we bought on our way into the movie theater? Do we want to know if we are genetically predisposed to a certain disease? Can we do anything useful with next week's weather forecast for Paris if we are not in Paris? In Too Much Information, Cass Sunstein examines the effects of information on our lives. Policymakers emphasize “the right to know,” but Sunstein takes a different perspective, arguing that the focus should be on human well-being and what information contributes to it. Government should require companies, employers, hospitals, and others to disclose information not because of a general “right to know” but when the information in question would significantly improve people's lives. Of course, says Sunstein, we are better off with stop signs, warnings on prescription drugs, and reminders about payment due dates. But sometimes less is more. What we need is more clarity about what information is actually doing or achieving.
Download or read book Knowledge Power and Ignorance written by Bidhan Kanti Das and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is knowledge, and ignorance? How is it decided? Do power and power relations influence this process? Does the spread of knowledge lead to more ignorance? Is ignorance socially produced? Is knowledge always socially contextualized? This book deals with these important questions on the interplay of knowledge, ignorance and power located in varied contexts in India. As systematic knowledge grows, so does the possibility of ignorance. Ignorance is a state which people attribute to others and is loaded with moral judgment. Thus, being underdeveloped often ‘implies a kind of stupidity or failure’. This volume seeks to be premised in a framework where ignorance is understood as being a socially produced and maintained phenomenon, where the ways of knowing and not knowing are interdependent. It is a novel attempt for an academic re-orientation of the Knowledge–Ignorance paradigm through a process of re-interpretation of the bounded purview attached with the existing epistemological understandings. It focuses on concrete case studies, often with an ethnographic stint. The volume critically looks at various aspects: Epistemological Issues; Understanding Community Perspectives and the State; Natural Resources, Power and Ignorance; Media and Production of Non-Knowledge; and other emerging areas. Each essay bears a striking similarity – that of understanding the complex processes and dynamics of the production of ignorance in a field of commonly held beliefs of 'knowledge' - be it scientific, societal, religious, magical or political - through the overarching realm of power. This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to a cross-section of academics and students of sociology, social anthropology, political science, human geography, history, public policy and development studies.
Download or read book The Unknowers written by Linsey McGoey and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deliberate ignorance has been known as the ‘Ostrich Instruction’ in law courts since the 1860s. It illustrates a recurring pattern in history in which figureheads for major companies, political leaders and industry bigwigs plead ignorance to avoid culpability. So why do so many figures at the top still get away with it when disasters on their watch damage so many people’s lives? Does the idea that knowledge is power still apply in today’s post-truth world? A bold, wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between ignorance and power in the modern age, from debates over colonial power and economic rent-seeking in the 18th and 19th centuries to the legal defences of today, The Unknowers shows that strategic ignorance has not only long been an inherent part of modern power and big business, but also that true power lies in the ability to convince others of where the boundary between ignorance and knowledge lies.
Download or read book The Madness of Knowledge written by Steven Connor and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2021-07-21 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor’s The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge—the lusts, fantasies, dreams, and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud’s epistemophilia (or love of knowledge), and the curiously insistent links between madness, magical thinking, and the desire for knowledge. Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and “general knowledge,” charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library. In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life.
Download or read book The Dark Side of Knowledge written by Cornel Zwierlein and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-06-10 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can one study the absence of knowledge, the voids, the conscious and unconscious unknowns through history? Investigations into late medieval and early modern practices of measuring, of risk calculation, of ignorance within financial administrations, of conceiving the docta ignorantia as well as the silence of the illiterate are combined with contributions regarding knowledge gaps within identification procedures and political decision-making, with the emergence of consciously delimited blanks on geographical maps, with ignorance as a factor embedded in iconographic programs, in translation processes and the semantic potentials of reading. Based on thorough archival analysis, these selected contributions from conferences at Harvard and Paris are tightly framed by new theoretical elaborations that have implications beyond these cases and epochal focus. Contributors: Giovanni Ceccarelli, Taylor Cowdery, Lucile Haguet, John T. Hamilton, Lucian Hölscher, Moritz Isenmann, Adam J. Kosto, Marie-Laure Legay, Andrew McKenzie-McHarg, Fabrice Micallef, William T. O ́Reilly, Eleonora Rohland, Mathias Schmoeckel, Daniel L. Smail, Govind P. Sreenivasan, and Cornel Zwierlein.
Download or read book The Power of Ignorance written by Chris Gibbs and published by Brindle and Glass. This book was released on 2006 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join certified Ig-master Vaguen on the road to bliss. You might think that ignorance comes naturally, but on the contrary, the world conspires to cram our heads full of useless and dangerous know-ledge every day. Fall off this know-ledge into the safe and comforting world of oblivio(n/ousness) by discovering The Power of Ignorance. In his seminars, Vaguen has helped successful people, wealthy people, good-looking people, and people just like you to attain the heights/depths of ignorance. For the first time, his secrets are revealed between the covers of a book. Purchase this reasonably-priced volume and join the ranks of those who understand that a lack of understanding is unimportant. Based on original material and characters by Jeff Sumerel and Sam Reynolds.
Download or read book Ignorance Power and Harm written by Alana Barton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the concept of 'agnosis' and its significance for criminology through a series of case studies, contributing to the expansion of the criminological imagination. Agnotology – the study of the cultural production of ignorance, has primarily been proposed as an analytical tool in the fields of science and medicine. However, this book argues that it has significant resonance for criminology and the social sciences given that ignorance is a crucial means through which public acceptance of serious and sometimes mass harms is achieved. The editors argue that this phenomenon requires a systematic inquiry into ignorance as an area of criminological study in its own right. Through case studies on topics such as migrant detention, historical institutionalised child abuse, imprisonment, environmental harm and financial collapse, this book examines the construction of ignorance, and the power dynamics that facilitate and shape that construction in a range of different contexts. Furthermore, this book addresses the relationship between ignorance and the achievement of ‘manufactured consent’ to political and cultural hegemony, acquiescence in its harmful consequences and the deflection of responsibility for them.
Download or read book The Way of Ignorance written by Wendell Berry and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The continuing war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the political sniping engendered by the Supreme Court nominations, Terry Schiavo - contemporary American society is characterized by divisive anger, profound loss, and danger. Wendell Berry, one of the country's foremost cultural critics, addresses the menace, responding with hope and intelligence in a series of essays that tackle the major questions of the day. Whose freedom are we considering when we speak of the ''free market'' or ''free enterprise?'' What is really involved in our National Security? What is the price of ownership without affection? Berry answers in prose that shuns abstraction for clarity, coherence, and passion, giving us essays that may be the finest of his long career.
Download or read book Practising Spiritual Intelligence written by Awdhesh Singh and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiritual Intelligence refers to the intuitive knowledge of the self, others, situations and techniques to achieve the desired objectives. Hence it can be called the soul of all intelligences. Spiritual Intelligence enhances our power to inspire others by transforming their souls in such a way that their desires and aspirations are aligned in a single direction. Soul is beyond all reason and intellect. It is, in fact, the source of mind and intellect. One who knows his soul knows the universe, since soul is nothing but the microcosm of the universe. This book explains this body-soul continuum and suggests practical steps to evolve through the body-senses-mind-intellect to reach our soul. Welcome to this new path of spiritual evolution.
Download or read book Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-09-23 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the future when "firemen" burn books forbidden by the totalitarian "brave new world" regime.
Download or read book Regimes of Ignorance written by Roy Dilley and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Non-knowledge should not be simply regarded as the opposite of knowledge, but as complementary to it: each derives its character and meaning from the other and from their interaction. Knowledge does not colonize the space of ignorance in the progressive march of science; rather, knowledge and ignorance are mutually shaped in social and political domains of partial, shifting, and temporal relationships. This volume’s ethnographic analyses provide a theoretical frame through which to consider the production and reproduction of ignorance, non-knowledge, and secrecy, as well as the wider implications these ideas have for anthropology and related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.
Download or read book The Knowledge Illusion written by Steven Sloman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.
Download or read book Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance written by Shannon Sullivan and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a wide variety of philosophical approaches to the neglected philosophical problem of ignorance, this groundbreaking collection builds on Charles Mills's claim that racism involves an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance. Contributors explore how different forms of ignorance linked to race are produced and sustained and what role they play in promoting racism and white privilege. They argue that the ignorance that underpins racism is not a simple gap in knowledge, the accidental result of an epistemological oversight. In the case of racial oppression, ignorance often is actively produced for purposes of domination and exploitation. But as these essays demonstrate, ignorance is not simply a tool of oppression wielded by the powerful. It can also be a strategy for survival, an important tool for people of color to wield against white privilege and white supremacy. The book concludes that understanding ignorance and the politics of such ignorance should be a key element of epistemological and social/political analyses, for it has the potential to reveal the role of power in the construction of what is known and provide a lens for the political values at work in knowledge practices.
Download or read book A Passion for Ignorance written by Renata Salecl and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-29 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original and provocative exploration of our capacity to ignore what is inconvenient or traumatic Ignorance, whether passive or active, conscious or unconscious, has always been a part of the human condition, Renata Salecl argues. What has changed in our post-truth, postindustrial world is that we often feel overwhelmed by the constant flood of information and misinformation. It sometimes seems impossible to differentiate between truth and falsehood and, as a result, there has been a backlash against the idea of expertise, and a rise in the number of people actively choosing not to know. The dangers of this are obvious, but Salecl challenges our assumptions, arguing that there may also be a positive side to ignorance, and that by addressing the role of ignorance in society, we may also be able to reclaim the role of knowledge. Drawing on philosophy, social and psychoanalytic theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Salecl explores how the passion for ignorance plays out in many different aspects of life today, from love, illness, trauma, and the fear of failure to genetics, forensic science, big data, and the incel movement—and she concludes that ignorance is a complex phenomenon that can, on occasion, benefit individuals and society as a whole. The result is a fascinating investigation of how the knowledge economy became an ignorance economy, what it means for us, and what it tells us about the world today.
Download or read book Ignorance written by Stuart Firestein and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-04-23 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to the popular view of science as a mountainous accumulation of facts and data, Stuart Firestein takes the novel perspective that ignorance is the main product and driving force of science, and that this is the best way to understand the process of scientific discovery.
Download or read book Knowledge and Power written by George Gilder and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ronald Reagan’s most-quoted living author—George Gilder—is back with an all-new paradigm-shifting theory of capitalism that will upturn conventional wisdom, just when our economy desperately needs a new direction. America’s struggling economy needs a better philosophy than the college student's lament: "I can't be out of money, I still have checks in my checkbook!" We’ve tried a government spending spree, and we’ve learned it doesn’t work. Now is the time to rededicate our country to the pursuit of free market capitalism, before we’re buried under a mound of debt and unfunded entitlements. But how do we navigate between government spending that's too big to sustain and financial institutions that are "too big to fail?" In Knowledge and Power, George Gilder proposes a bold new theory on how capitalism produces wealth and how our economy can regain its vitality and its growth. Gilder breaks away from the supply-side model of economics to present a new economic paradigm: the epic conflict between the knowledge of entrepreneurs on one side, and the blunt power of government on the other. The knowledge of entrepreneurs, and their freedom to share and use that knowledge, are the sparks that light up the economy and set its gears in motion. The power of government to regulate, stifle, manipulate, subsidize or suppress knowledge and ideas is the inertia that slows those gears down, or keeps them from turning at all. One of the twentieth century’s defining economic minds has returned with a new philosophy to carry us into the twenty-first. Knowledge and Power is a must-read for fiscal conservatives, business owners, CEOs, investors, and anyone interested in propelling America’s economy to future success.
Download or read book Power Without Knowledge written by Jeffrey Friedman and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do leading social-scientific experts, or technocrats, know what they are doing? In Power without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman maintains that they do not. Friedman shows that people are too heterogeneous to act as predictably as technocracy requires of them. Technocratic reason, then, entails a drastically oversimplified understanding of human decision making in modern society.
