Download or read book The Disclosure Paradox written by Paul Vecchiet and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louis Silvani, UFO lecturer and ET-obsessed blogger, struggles to convey a sense of urgency to his curious followers. After a failed presentation and a terrifying encounter, Louis meets Mary Ellen Velarde, a Jicarilla Apache woman with divine knowledge of Louis, himself. Together they embark on a fast-paced journey of discovery, full of physical and spiritual challenges and people with astonishing abilities. As Mary Ellen gradually reveals her own unique identity, a cell of abductees and veterans forms with a goal of assisting civilization towards its true destiny. Is Disclosure the one event that needs to happen in order to save humanity from itself?The Disclosure Paradox crosses over multiple genres with action, spirituality, social voice, and relatable characters who mirror the diversity in this world. Readers will ponder our existence. The book brings controversial issues to light, which will provoke serious discussion and questioning of convention. The intent is to bring together those who have set religious beliefs and those who rely exclusively on science for guidance. Most of all, after reading the book, it is hoped that people are moved to partake in a spiritual revolution.This book addresses the place where science and spirituality converge. The book will appeal to those who believe in, or question, traditional religious teachings, people with military interests or experience, people that believe in life on other planets, people who believe those in power have ulterior motives, and those who are spiritually awakened.
Download or read book Paradox written by A. J. Paquette and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans of James Dashner's Maze Runner series are sure to love this post-apocalyptic adventure about a girl who must survive an alien planet in order to save the Earth.
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 Paradox written by Margaret Cuonzo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to paradoxes showing that they are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. Thinkers have been fascinated by paradox since long before Aristotle grappled with Zeno's. In this volume in The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Margaret Cuonzo explores paradoxes and the strategies used to solve them. She finds that paradoxes are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. A paradox can be defined as a set of mutually inconsistent claims, each of which seems true. Paradoxes emerge not just in salons and ivory towers but in everyday life. (An Internet search for “paradox” brings forth a picture of an ashtray with a “no smoking” symbol inscribed on it.) Proposing solutions, Cuonzo writes, is a natural response to paradoxes. She invites us to rethink paradoxes by focusing on strategies for solving them, arguing that there is much to be learned from this, regardless of whether any of the more powerful paradoxes is even capable of solution. Cuonzo offers a catalog of paradox-solving strategies—including the Preemptive-Strike (questioning the paradox itself), the Odd-Guy-Out (calling one of the assumptions into question), and the You-Can't-Get-There-from-Here (denying the validity of the reasoning). She argues that certain types of solutions work better in some contexts than others, and that as paradoxicality increases, the success of certain strategies grows more unlikely. Cuonzo shows that the processes of paradox generation and solution proposal are interesting and important ones. Discovering a paradox leads to advances in knowledge: new science often stems from attempts to solve paradoxes, and the concepts used in the new sciences lead to new paradoxes. As Niels Bohr wrote, “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”
Download or read book Hostage of Paradox written by John Rixey More and published by Bettie Young's Books. This book was released on 2013-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few know about the clandestine war the CIA ran in Vietnam using Green Berets for secret operations throughout SE Asia, deployed quietly to prowl through agendas that for security reasons. A first-hand account by an elite operative. Stunning!
Download or read book The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management written by Jerry B. Harvey and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1988-07-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you sometimes feel that your office isn't a place of business but a madhouse in disguise? Is risk-taking so discouraged that mediocrity becomes the order of the day? If all this sounds familiar, your company may well be embarked on 'a trip to Abilene.' Now, Jerry Harvey once again rocks the business world. In this new book, he offers a series of insightful and often uproaringly funny 'meditations' on the craziness of everyday organizational life.
Download or read book The Paradox of Self consciousness written by José Luis Bermúdez and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Jos� Luis Berm�dez addesses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms of more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Berm�dez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given. Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox of self-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer.
Download or read book Surprised by Paradox written by Jen Pollock Michel and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world filled with ambiguity, we want faith to act like an orderly set of truth-claims to solve the problems that life throws at us. While there are certainties in Christian faith, at the heart of the Christian story is also paradox, and Jen Pollock Michel helps readers imagine a Christian faith open to mystery. Jesus invites us to abandon the polarities of either and or in order to embrace the difficult, wondrous dissonance of and.
Download or read book The Prosperity Paradox written by Clayton M. Christensen and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clayton M. Christensen, the author of such business classics as The Innovator’s Dilemma and the New York Times bestseller How Will You Measure Your Life, and co-authors Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon reveal why so many investments in economic development fail to generate sustainable prosperity, and offers a groundbreaking solution for true and lasting change. Global poverty is one of the world’s most vexing problems. For decades, we’ve assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Essentially, the plan is often to identify areas that need help, flood them with resources, and hope to see change over time. But hope is not an effective strategy. Clayton M. Christensen and his co-authors reveal a paradox at the heart of our approach to solving poverty. While noble, our current solutions are not producing consistent results, and in some cases, have exacerbated the problem. At least twenty countries that have received billions of dollars’ worth of aid are poorer now. Applying the rigorous and theory-driven analysis he is known for, Christensen suggests a better way. The right kind of innovation not only builds companies—but also builds countries. The Prosperity Paradox identifies the limits of common economic development models, which tend to be top-down efforts, and offers a new framework for economic growth based on entrepreneurship and market-creating innovation. Christensen, Ojomo, and Dillon use successful examples from America’s own economic development, including Ford, Eastman Kodak, and Singer Sewing Machines, and shows how similar models have worked in other regions such as Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Rwanda, India, Argentina, and Mexico. The ideas in this book will help companies desperate for real, long-term growth see actual, sustainable progress where they’ve failed before. But The Prosperity Paradox is more than a business book; it is a call to action for anyone who wants a fresh take for making the world a better and more prosperous place.
Download or read book The Efficiency Paradox written by Edward Tenner and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "skillful and lucid" (The Wall Street Journal) way of thinking about efficiency, challenging our obsession with it—and offering a new understanding of how to benefit from the powerful potential of serendipity. Algorithms, multitasking, the sharing economy, life hacks: our culture can't get enough of efficiency. One of the great promises of the Internet and big data revolutions is the idea that we can improve the processes and routines of our work and personal lives to get more done in less time than we ever have before. There is no doubt that we're performing at higher levels and moving at unprecedented speed, but what if we're headed in the wrong direction? Melding the long-term history of technology with the latest headlines and findings of computer science and social science, The Efficiency Paradox questions our ingrained assumptions about efficiency, persuasively showing how relying on the algorithms of digital platforms can in fact lead to wasted efforts, missed opportunities, and, above all, an inability to break out of established patterns. Edward Tenner reveals what we and our institutions, when equipped with an astute combination of artificial intelligence and trained intuition, can learn from the random and unexpected.
Download or read book The Innovation Paradox written by Tony Davila and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than twenty years, major innovations—the kind that transform industries and even societies—seem to have come almost exclusively from startups, despite massive efforts and millions of dollars spent by established companies. Tony Davila and Marc Epstein, authors of the bestselling Making Innovation Work, say the problem is that the very processes and structures responsible for established companies’ enduring success prevent them from developing breakthroughs. This is the innovation paradox. Most established companies succeed through incremental innovation—taking a product they’re known for and adding a feature here, cutting a cost there. Major breakthroughs are hard to achieve when everything about the way your organization is built and run is designed to reward making what already works work a little better. But incremental innovation can coexist with breakthrough thinking. Using examples from both scrappy startups and long-term innovators such as IBM, 3M, Apple, and Google, Davila and Epstein explain how corporate culture, leadership style, strategy, incentives, and management systems can be structured to encourage breakthroughs. Then they bring it all together in a new model called the Startup Corporation, which combines the philosophy of the startup with the experience, resources, and network of an established company. Breakthrough innovation no longer has to be the nearly exclusive province of the new kids on the block. With Davila and Epstein’s assistance, any company can develop paradigm-shifting products and services and maximize the ROI on its R&D.
Download or read book The Obesity Paradox written by Carl J. Lavie, MD and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us think that longevity hinges on maintaining a normal Body Mass Index. But research conducted over the last decade hit the media recently with explosive news: overweight and even moderately obese people with certain chronic diseases — from heart disease to cancer — often live longer and fare better than normal-weight individuals with the same ailments. In this groundbreaking book, Carl Lavie, MD, reveals the science behind the obesity paradox and shows us how to achieve maximum health rather than minimum weight. Lavie not only explains how extra fat provides additional fuel to help fight illness; he also argues that we’ve gotten so used to framing health issues in terms of obesity that we overlook other potential causes of disease. The Obesity Paradox will change the conversation about fat — and what it means to be healthy.
Download or read book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress written by Thomas J. Bollyky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good. Plagues and parasites have played a central role in world affairs, shaping the evolution of the modern state, the growth of cities, and the disparate fortunes of national economies. This book tells that story, but it is not about the resurgence of pestilence. It is the story of its decline. For the first time in recorded history, virus, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death or disability in any region of the world. People are living longer, and fewer mothers are giving birth to many children in the hopes that some might survive. And yet, the news is not all good. Recent reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, and governance that occurred with these changes in wealthier countries decades ago. There have also been unintended consequences. In this book, Thomas Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry. Bollyky interweaves a grand historical narrative about the rise and fall of plagues in human societies with contemporary case studies of the consequences. Bollyky visits Dhaka—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—to show how low-cost health tools helped enable the phenomenon of poor world megacities. He visits China and Kenya to illustrate how dramatic declines in plagues have affected national economies. Bollyky traces the role of infectious disease in the migrations from Ireland before the potato famine and to Europe from Africa and elsewhere today. Historic health achievements are remaking a world that is both worrisome and full of opportunities. Whether the peril or promise of that progress prevails, Bollyky explains, depends on what we do next. A Council on Foreign Relations Book
Download or read book The Passion Paradox written by Brad Stulberg and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coauthors of the bestselling Peak Performance dive into the fascinating science behind passion, showing how it can lead to a rich and meaningful life while also illuminating the ways in which it is a double-edged sword. Here’s how to cultivate a passion that will take you to great heights—while minimizing the risk of an equally great fall. Common advice is to find and follow your passion. A life of passion is a good life, or so we are told. But it's not that simple. Rarely is passion something that you just stumble upon, and the same drive that fuels breakthroughs—whether they're athletic, scientific, entrepreneurial, or artistic—can be every bit as destructive as it is productive. Yes, passion can be a wonderful gift, but only if you know how to channel it. If you're not careful, passion can become an awful curse, leading to endless seeking, suffering, and burnout. Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness once again team up, this time to demystify passion, showing readers how they can find and cultivate their passion, sustainably harness its power, and avoid its dangers. They ultimately argue that passion and balance--that other virtue touted by our culture--are incompatible, and that to find your passion, you must lose balance. And that's not always a bad thing. They show readers how to develop the right kind of passion, the kind that lets you achieve great things without ruining your life. Swift, compact, and powerful, this thought-provoking book combines captivating stories of extraordinarily passionate individuals with the latest science on the biological and psychological factors that give rise to—and every bit as important, sustain—passion.
Download or read book Privacy Online written by Sabine Trepte and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-07-21 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communications and personal information that are posted online are usually accessible to a vast number of people. Yet when personal data exist online, they may be searched, reproduced and mined by advertisers, merchants, service providers or even stalkers. Many users know what may happen to their information, while at the same time they act as though their data are private or intimate. They expect their privacy will not be infringed while they willingly share personal information with the world via social network sites, blogs, and in online communities. The chapters collected by Trepte and Reinecke address questions arising from this disparity that has often been referred to as the privacy paradox. Works by renowned researchers from various disciplines including psychology, communication, sociology, and information science, offer new theoretical models on the functioning of online intimacy and public accessibility, and propose novel ideas on the how and why of online privacy. The contributing authors offer intriguing solutions for some of the most pressing issues and problems in the field of online privacy. They investigate how users abandon privacy to enhance social capital and to generate different kinds of benefits. They argue that trust and authenticity characterize the uses of social network sites. They explore how privacy needs affect users’ virtual identities. Ethical issues of privacy online are discussed as well as its gratifications and users’ concerns. The contributors of this volume focus on the privacy needs and behaviors of a variety of different groups of social media users such as young adults, older users, and genders. They also examine privacy in the context of particular online services such as social network sites, mobile internet access, online journalism, blogs, and micro-blogs. In sum, this book offers researchers and students working on issues related to internet communication not only a thorough and up-to-date treatment of online privacy and the social web. It also presents a glimpse of the future by exploring emergent issues concerning new technological applications and by suggesting theory-based research agendas that can guide inquiry beyond the current forms of social technologies.
Download or read book The Paradox of Choice written by Barry Schwartz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.
Download or read book Information Overload Paradox written by L. V. Orman and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living in an age of information. Staggering amounts of information are collected, stored, and widely disseminated. Yet, we may be less informed and less knowledgeable than ever. The paradox of increasing information, yet decreasing knowledge and insight has many possible reasons, some of which are subtle and difficult to identify, and even more difficult to remedy. The fundamental issue is quantity crowding out quality, leading to an abundance of poor quality information which may not be a good substitute for scarce but high quality information. Information is not unique in exhibiting this paradox. There are many other goods that exhibit this unusual characteristic of more being worse than less. Those who eat the most food are rarely the healthiest people, and they may actually be severely deficient in some nutrients. Those who have the most Facebook friends are often the loneliest people. Those who are the busiest are not the most productive. Those who read books and watch television the most are sometimes the least knowledgeable. Information overload is like a raging fire. There is so much heat, yet no useful heat can be extracted from it. Or it is like a raging flood. There is so much water, yet no useful water can come out of it. All of these examples point to the pervasiveness of this paradox, but it is most insidious with information, critical in an information economy, and most difficult to overcome in a modern society dominated by communication technologies. In an information economy, we appear to be shipwrecked, surrounded by an ocean of water, yet dying of thirst! The most obvious reason for the paradox is the substitution problem where the emphasis on quantity shifts the emphasis and resources away from quality. It is costly to produce quality information, and it is difficult to do both quality and quantity. When quality does not pay in proportion to its high cost, quantity wins over. The second reason is the obsolescence problem. Information is not neutral with respect to the physical world, but it is an agent of change. Information is useful precisely because it is used to change the environment and subjugate nature and society to our purposes. But as information is used to change the environment to take advantage of new opportunities, our existing information about the environment becomes obsolete, leading to a loss of information. The net effect may be positive or negative, but increasingly negative as we show, in a fast-changing information-intensive society. The third reason is the competition problem when information is used as a competitive weapon against others, to mislead and confuse others, leading to a loss of knowledge on their part. Information is power, because it can be used to control others and exploit them, by controlling their information sources, and consequently their behavior. But replacing reliable information with distorted and misleading information leads to a net information loss on their part. More importantly, if everybody uses the same tactics, leading to an information war, everybody may end up worse off with significant loss of knowledge and insight by all.
