Download or read book The Illusion of Certainty written by Erik Rifkin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-09-23 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an understanding and appreciation of the risk assessment process and the ability to objectively interpret health risk values. Included is an explanation of the uncertainty inherent in the assessment of risks as well as an explanation of how the communication and characterization of risks can dramatically alter the perception of those risks. Case studies illustrate the strengths and limitations of characterizing certain risks. Using the accepted risk assessment paradigm proposed by the National Research Council, these case studies illustrate which risk values have merit and why other assessments fail to meet basic criteria.
Download or read book The Illusion of Certainty written by Greg Messel and published by . This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Illusion of Certainty" follows two parallel storylines. Marc is a successful businessman who seems to have everything-a great job, a beautiful wife, a house in an upscale neighborhood of Portland, Oregon and two great kids who are preparing for college. But something is not right. Marc is unsettled by the sudden change in his wife, Aimee, who seems distant and unhappy. What is going on with her? The second storyline involves a successful young attorney Alexandra Mattson. Alex, as she is called by her friends, meets a handsome young cop, Sean, during an unexpected crisis in her neighborhood. Sean and Alex seem made for each other and begin to merge their futures in a world of uncertainty. The only certainty in life is that we will face uncertainty. Despite all of the technology and controls available in the modern world, sometimes the only comfort comes from the human touch.
Download or read book Certainty written by Paul F. Kisak and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certainty is perfect knowledge that has total security from error, or the mental state of being without doubt. Objectively defined, certainty is total continuity and validity of all foundational inquiry, to the highest degree of precision. Something is certain only if no skepticism can occur. Philosophy (at least, historical Cartesian philosophy) seeks this state. It is widely held that certainty about the real world is a failed historical enterprise (that is, beyond deductive truths, tautology, etc.). This is in large part due to the power of David Hume's problem of induction. Physicist Carlo Rovelli adds that certainty, in real life, is useless or often damaging (the idea is that "total security from error" is impossible in practice, and a complete "lack of doubt" is undesirable). This book discusses the issues that surround claims of certainty and the illusion of absolute truth and perfection.
Download or read book The End of Certainty written by Ilya Prigogine and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997-08-17 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine discusses the irreversibility of time and his findings impact on the laws of physics.
Download or read book The Certainty Illusion written by Paul Slovic and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we feel certain about our factual knowledge, all too often we are wrong. This phenomenon, labeled 'the certainty illusion', is demonstrated in four experiments in which subjects (1) answered questions about a variety of topics and (2) indicated their degree of certainty about each answer. Subjects were wrong frequently on answers judged certain to be correct. Careful tutoring of subjects in the subtleties of expressing their certainty in terms of probabilities and odds did little to reduce the illusion. Feelings of certainty were so strong that subjects were willing to bet on the correctness of their knowledge. Because of the illusion, the bets they accepted were quite disadvantageous to them. The psychological basis for unwarranted certainty is discussed in terms of the inferential processes whereby knowledge is reconstructed from fragments of perceptions and memories. (Author).
Download or read book The Illusion of Certainty written by James Titus Houk and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2017 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this examination of religion's influence on society, an anthropologist critiques fundamentalism and all mindsets based on rigid cultural certainties. The author argues that the future can only be safeguarded by a global humanistic outlook that recognizes and respects differing cultural perspectives and endorses the use of critical reason and empiricism. Houk coins the term "culturalism" to describe dogmatic viewpoints governed by culture-specific values and preconceived notions. Culturalism gives rise not only to fundamentalism in religion but also stereotypes about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Turning specifically to Christian fundamentalism, the author analyzes the many weaknesses of what he calls a faith-based epistemology, particularly as such thinking is displayed in young-earth creationism, the reliance on revelation and subjective experiences as a source of religious knowledge, and the reverence accorded the Bible despite its obvious flaws. As he points out, the problem with such cultural knowledge generally is that it is non-falsifiable and ultimately has no lasting value in contrast to the data-based and falsifiable knowledge produced by science, which continues to prove its worth as a reliable source of accurate information. Concluding that there is no future to the fundamentalist mindset in a diverse world where religion often exacerbates conflicts, he makes a strong case for reason and mutual tolerance.
Download or read book In Search of Certainty written by Mark Burgess and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quite soon, the world’s information infrastructure is going to reach a level of scale and complexity that will force scientists and engineers to approach it in an entirely new way. The familiar notions of command and control are being thwarted by realities of a faster, denser world of communication where choice, variety, and indeterminism rule. The myth of the machine that does exactly what we tell it has come to an end. What makes us think we can rely on all this technology? What keeps it together today, and how might it work tomorrow? Will we know how to build the next generation—or will we be lulled into a stupor of dependence brought about by its conveniences? In this book, Mark Burgess focuses on the impact of computers and information on our modern infrastructure by taking you from the roots of science to the principles behind system operation and design. To shape the future of technology, we need to understand how it works—or else what we don’t understand will end up shaping us. This book explores this subject in three parts: Part I, Stability: describes the fundamentals of predictability, and why we have to give up the idea of control in its classical meaning Part II, Certainty: describes the science of what we can know, when we don’t control everything, and how we make the best of life with only imperfect information Part III, Promises: explains how the concepts of stability and certainty may be combined to approach information infrastructure as a new kind of virtual material, restoring a continuity to human-computer systems so that society can rely on them.
Download or read book The Illusion of Doubt written by Genia Schönbaumsfeld and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Illusions of Certainty Thoughts about Thinking written by Bernard John Warnick and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-28 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book condemns the certainties which pervade Western societies, whether about innate rights, ethics or socially acceptable behavior, because a close examination of our powers of reasoning shows all such certainties to be illusory; and because illusions, like mirages, lead us astray. It asks what constitutes the acts of thinking and reasoning and examines the neurobiology involved, subjectivity - its origins and unavoidability - objectivity and its limited achievability - and the pervasive ambiguity of the language of ideas. It highlights flaws in the concept of truth; shows how deductive logic itself contains the seeds of failure to produce certainty, how inductive logic yields only probabilities and that neither pattern of logic is how we generally reason. The book demonstrates that undue certainty spawns evils which threaten social stability. A new list of what constitutes logical thought emerges. We consider approaches, of which logic is part, but not the entirety - common sense, pragmatism, judgment and wisdom. We ask, to whom might we listen - philosophers, the wise, or ourselves. Finally, the survival instinct is identified as the biological basis of our ideas about morality, political systems and the like. How a secular morality might be constructed and what an ideology-free society might be like, are considered.
Download or read book The Illusion of Love written by David P. Celani and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the attraction between abuser and victim which results in disorders and dangerous attractions on both sides, considering the typical personalities involved in patterns of neglect.
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 The Opposite of Certainty written by Janine Urbaniak Reid and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Brilliant, rich...breathtakingly honest and sometimes very funny.” —Anne Lamott “I loved this book.” —Glennon Doyle “Extraordinary.” —Caroline Leavitt “Observant and warm...the finest company.”—Kelly Corrigan “A beautiful sucker punch, like life.“ —Ron Fournier “Subtle, powerful, and hypnotic...” — Martin Cruz Smith What happens when we can no longer pretend that the ground underfoot is bedrock and the sky above predictable? All Janine Urbaniak Reid ever wanted was for everyone she loved to be okay so she might relax and maybe be happy. Her life strategy was simple: do everything right. This included trying to be the perfect mother to her three kids so they would never experience the kind of pain she pretended not to feel growing up. What she didn’t expect was the chaos of an out-of-control life that begins when her young son’s hand begins to shake. The Opposite of Certainty is the story of Janine’s reluctant journey beyond easy answers and platitudes. She searches for a source of strength bigger than her circumstances, only to have her circumstances become even thornier with her own crisis. Drawn deeply and against her will into herself, and into the eternal questions we all ask, she discovers hidden reserves of strength, humor, and a no-matter-what faith that looks nothing like she thought it would. Beautifully written and deeply hopeful, Janine shows us how we can come through impossible times transformed and yet more ourselves than we’ve ever allowed ourselves to be.
Download or read book Empire of Illusion written by Chris Hedges and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
Download or read book The Matter of Facts written by Gareth Leng and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-03-18 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How biases, the desire for a good narrative, reliance on citation metrics, and other problems undermine confidence in modern science. Modern science is built on experimental evidence, yet scientists are often very selective in deciding what evidence to use and tend to disagree about how to interpret it. In The Matter of Facts, Gareth and Rhodri Leng explore how scientists produce and use evidence. They do so to contextualize an array of problems confronting modern science that have raised concerns about its reliability: the widespread use of inappropriate statistical tests, a shortage of replication studies, and a bias in both publishing and citing “positive” results. Before these problems can be addressed meaningfully, the authors argue, we must understand what makes science work and what leads it astray. The myth of science is that scientists constantly challenge their own thinking. But in reality, all scientists are in the business of persuading other scientists of the importance of their own ideas, and they do so by combining reason with rhetoric. Often, they look for evidence that will support their ideas, not for evidence that might contradict them; often, they present evidence in a way that makes it appear to be supportive; and often, they ignore inconvenient evidence. In a series of essays focusing on controversies, disputes, and discoveries, the authors vividly portray science as a human activity, driven by passion as well as by reason. By analyzing the fluidity of scientific concepts and the dynamic and unpredictable development of scientific fields, the authors paint a picture of modern science and the pressures it faces.
Download or read book The Certainty Illusion written by Timothy Caulfield and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2025-01-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where there is so much conflicting information about how we are supposed to live, what can we really know? Knowing the truth, what’s real from what’s fake, should be easy. In today’s world, that’s far from the case. In The Certainty Illusion, Timothy Caulfield lifts the curtain on the forces contributing to our information chaos and unpacks why it’s so difficult—sometimes even for experts—to escape the fake. Whether it’s science, our own desire to be good and do the right thing, or the stories and opinions of others, there’s more to sussing out the truth than simply tracking down what feels like an authoritative source. These major forces—science, goodness, and opinion—Caulfield argues, drive beliefs and behaviour, but the ways that they can be corrupted, or worse, used to nefarious ends by bad actors, are endless. While it may feel, at times, as though we are circling the drain of truth, especially as new technologies make it even easier to spread dangerous fictions, Caulfield pulls us out of the vortex and keeps us afloat, helping us recognize and combat the forces that threaten to pull us under.
Download or read book The Illusion of God s Presence written by John C. Wathey and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential feature of religious experience across many cultures is the intuitive feeling of God's presence. More than any rituals or doctrines, it is this experience that anchors religious faith, yet it has been largely ignored in the scientific literature on religion.Starting with a vivid narrative account of the life-threatening hike that triggered his own mystical experience, biologist John Wathey takes the reader on a scientific journey to find the sources of religious feeling and the illusion of God's presence. His book delves into the biological origins of this compelling feeling, attributing it to innate neural circuitry that evolved to promote the mother-child bond. Dr. Wathey argues that evolution has programmed the infant brain to expect the presence of a loving being who responds to the child's needs. As the infant grows into adulthood, this innate feeling is eventually transferred to the realm of religion, where it is reactivated through the symbols, imagery, and rituals of worship. The author interprets our various conceptions of God in biological terms as illusory supernormal stimuli that fill an emotional and cognitive vacuum left over from infancy. These insights shed new light on some of the most vexing puzzles of religion, like the popular belief in a god who is judgmental and punishing, yet also unconditionally loving; the extraordinary tenacity of faith; the greater religiosity of women relative to men; religious obsessions with sex; the mysterious compulsion to pray; the seemingly irrepressible feminine attributes of God, even in traditionally patriarchal religions; and the strange allure of cults. Finally, Dr. Wathey considers the hypothesis that religion evolved to foster reproductive success, arguing that, in an age of potentially ruinous overpopulation, magical thinking has become a luxury we can no longer afford, one that distracts us from urgent threats to our planet.Deeply researched yet elegantly written in a jargon-free and accessible style, this book presents a compelling interpretation of the evolutionary origins of spirituality and religion.
Download or read book Lessons from an Optical Illusion written by Edward M. Hundert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a bold, modern recasting of the age-old nature-nurture debate, informed by revolutionary insights from brain science, artificial intelligence, psychiatry, linguistics, evolutionary biology, child development, ethics, and even cosmology.
