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Truly Human Enhancement: A Philosophical Defense of Limits (Basic Bioethics)
by Nicholas AgarA nuanced discussion of human enhancement that argues for enhancement that does not significantly exceed what is currently possible for human beings.The transformative potential of genetic and cybernetic technologies to enhance human capabilities is most often either rejected on moral and prudential grounds or hailed as the future salvation of humanity. In this book, Nicholas Agar offers a more nuanced view, making a case for moderate human enhancement—improvements to attributes and abilities that do not significantly exceed what is currently possible for human beings. He argues against radical human enhancement, or improvements that greatly exceed current human capabilities.Agar explores notions of transformative change and motives for human enhancement; distinguishes between the instrumental and intrinsic value of enhancements; argues that too much enhancement undermines human identity; considers the possibility of cognitively enhanced scientists; and argues against radical life extension. Making the case for moderate enhancement, Agar argues that many objections to enhancement are better understood as directed at the degree of enhancement rather than enhancement itself. Moderate human enhancement meets the requirement of truly human enhancement. By radically enhancing human cognitive capabilities, by contrast, we may inadvertently create beings (“post-persons”) with moral status higher than that of persons. If we create beings more entitled to benefits and protections against harms than persons, Agar writes, this will be bad news for the unenhanced. Moderate human enhancement offers a more appealing vision of the future and of our relationship to technology.
Truly Human Enhancement
by Nicholas AgarThe transformative potential of genetic and cybernetic technologies to enhance human capabilities is most often either rejected on moral and prudential grounds or hailed as the future salvation of humanity. In this book, Nicholas Agar offers a more nuanced view, making a case for moderate human enhancement -- improvements to attributes and abilities that do not significantly exceed what is currently possible for human beings. He argues against radical human enhancement, or improvements that greatly exceeds current human capabilities. Agar explores notions of transformative change and motives for human enhancement; distinguishes between the instrumental and intrinsic value of enhancements; argues that too much enhancement undermines human identity; considers the possibility of cognitively enhanced scientists; and argues against radical life extension. Making the case for moderate enhancement, Agar argues that many objections to enhancement are better understood as directed at the degree of enhancement rather than enhancement itself. Moderate human enhancement meets the requirement of truly human enhancement. By radically enhancing human cognitive capabilities, by contrast, we may inadvertently create beings ("post-persons") with moral status higher than that of persons. If we create beings more entitled to benefits and protections against harms than persons, Agar writes, this will be bad news for the unenhanced. Moderate human enhancement offers a more appealing vision of the future and of our relationship to technology.
Truncated Predictor Based Feedback Designs for Linear Systems with Input Delay (Control Engineering)
by Yusheng Wei Zongli LinThis monograph is the first of its kind to present innovative research results on truncated predictor feedback (TPF) designs for general linear systems with input delay. Beginning with a brief review of time delay systems, the first half of the book focuses on TPF with a constant feedback parameter. Both state feedback and output feedback are considered. It is established that TPF achieves stabilization in the presence of an arbitrarily large bounded delay if the open loop system is not exponentially unstable. Examples are presented to illustrate that TPF may fail to stabilize an exponentially unstable system when the delay is sufficiently large. Bounds on the delay are then established under which stabilization can be achieved. The second half of the book explores variations of the TPF laws designed with a non-constant feedback parameter to accommodate unknown delays and improve closed-loop performance. The authors employ a step-by-step approach to presenting the ultimate result on a completely delay-independent feedback law. Truncated Predictor Based Feedback Designs for Linear Systems with Input Delay will appeal to control engineers, control theorists, and graduate students studying control systems. This volume will also be a valuable resource for engineers and applied mathematicians interested in dynamic systems with time delays.
Trust
by Toshio YamagishiThis book is written around the central message that collectivist societies produce security, but destroy trust. In collectivist societies, people are connected through networks of strong personal ties where the behavior of all agents is constantly monitored and controlled. As a result, individuals in collectivist networks are assured that others will abide by social norms, and gain a sense of security erroneously thought of as "trust." However, this book argues that this security is not truly trust, based on beliefs regarding the integrity of others, but assurance, based on the system of mutual control within the network. In collectivist societies, security is assured insofar as people stay within the network, but people do not trust in the benevolence of human nature. On the one hand, transaction costs are reduced within collectivist networks, as once accepted into a network the risk of being maltreated is minimized. However, joining the network requires individuals to pay opportunity cost, that is, they pay a cost by forgoing potentially superior opportunities outside the security of the network. In this era of globalization, people from traditionally collectivistic societies face the challenge of learning how to free themselves from the security of such collectivistic networks in order to explore the opportunities open to them elsewhere. This book presents research investigating how the minds of individuals are shaped by the conflict between maintaining security inside closed networks of strong ties, and venturing outside of the network to seek out new opportunities.
Trust, Accountability and Purpose: The Regulation of Corporate Governance (Elements in Corporate Governance)
by Justin O'BrienThe collapse of trust can be found across all of our institutions but most of all in finance. This Element seeks to answer an existential question: how to rebuild trust in distrusting times? Integrity, responsibility and accountability must be embedded into corporate mission statements, values and codes of conduct. Through organisational and regulatory design across five interlocking themes - legal, regulatory, managerial, ethical and social. What is required is substantive rather than technical compliance; warranted rather than stated commitment to high ethical standards; effective deterrence strategies; enhanced accountability; and a shared commitment to risk within negotiated, binding and enforceable parameters.
Trust and Confidence at the Interfaces of the Life Sciences and Society: Does the Public Trust Science? A Workshop Summary
by Helaine E. ResnickDoes the public trust science? Scientists? Scientific organizations? What roles do trust and the lack of trust play in public debates about how science can be used to address such societal concerns as childhood vaccination, cancer screening, and a warming planet? What could happen if social trust in science or scientists faded? These types of questions led the Roundtable on Public Interfaces of the Life Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a 2-day workshop on May 5-6, 2015 on public trust in science. This report explores empirical evidence on public opinion and attitudes toward life sciences as they relate to societal issues, whether and how contentious debate about select life science topics mediates trust, and the roles that scientists, business, media, community groups, and other stakeholders play in creating and maintaining public confidence in life sciences. Does the Public Trust Science? Trust and Confidence at the Interfaces of the Life Sciences and Society highlights research on the elements of trust and how to build, mend, or maintain trust; and examine best practices in the context of scientist engagement with lay audiences around social issues.
Trust and Credit in Organizations and Institutions: As Viewed from the Evolution of Cooperation (Theoretical Biology)
by Mayuko NakamaruThis book shows that evolutionary game theory can unravel how mutual cooperation, trust, and credit in a group emerge in organizations and institutions. Some organizations and institutions, such as insurance unions, credit unions, and banks, originated from very simple mutual-aid groups. Members in these early-stage mutual-aid groups help each other, making rules to promote cooperation, and suppressing free riders. Then, they come to “trust” not only each other but also the group they belong to, itself. The division of labor occurs when the society comes to have diversity and complexity in a larger group, and the division of labor also requires mutual cooperation and trust among different social roles. In a larger group, people cannot directly interact with each other, and the reputation of unknown people helps other decide who is a trustworthy person. However, if gossip spreads untruths about a reputation, trust and cooperation are destroyed. Therefore, how to suppress untrue gossip is also important for trust and cooperation in a larger group. If trustworthiness and credibility can be established, these groups are successfully sustainable. Some develop and evolve and then mature into larger organizations and institutions. Finally, these organizations and institutions become what they are now. Therefore, not only cooperation but also trust and credit are keys to understanding these organizations and institutions.The evolution of cooperation, a topic of research in evolutionary ecology and evolutionary game theory, can be applied to understanding how to make institutions and organizations sustainable, trustworthy, and credible. It provides us with the idea that evolutionary game theory is a good mathematical tool to analyze trust and credit. This kind of research can be applied to current hot topics such as microfinance and the sustainable use of ecosystems.
Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life
by Theodore M. PorterA foundational work on historical and social studies of quantificationWhat accounts for the prestige of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is desirable in social investigation as a result of its successes in science. Trust in Numbers questions whether such success in the study of stars, molecules, or cells should be an attractive model for research on human societies, and examines why the natural sciences are highly quantitative in the first place. Theodore Porter argues that a better understanding of the attractions of quantification in business, government, and social research brings a fresh perspective to its role in psychology, physics, and medicine. Quantitative rigor is not inherent in science but arises from political and social pressures, and objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts. In a new preface, the author sheds light on the current infatuation with quantitative methods, particularly at the intersection of science and bureaucracy.
Trust, Security and Privacy for Big Data
by Mamoun AlazabData has revolutionized the digital ecosystem. Readily available large datasets foster AI and machine learning automated solutions. The data generated from diverse and varied sources including IoT, social platforms, healthcare, system logs, bio-informatics, etc. contribute to and define the ethos of Big Data which is volume, velocity and variety. Data lakes formed by the amalgamation of data from these sources requires powerful, scalable and resilient storage and processing platforms to reveal the true value hidden inside this data mine. Data formats and its collection from various sources not only introduce unprecedented challenges to different domains including IoT, manufacturing, smart cars, power grids etc., but also highlight the security and privacy issues in this age of big data. Security and privacy in big data is facing many challenges, such as generative adversary networks, efficient encryption and decryption algorithms, encrypted information retrieval, attribute-based encryption, attacks on availability, and reliability. Providing security and privacy for big data storage, transmission, and processing have been attracting much attention in all big data related areas.The book provides timely and comprehensive information for researchers and industry partners in communications and networking domains to review the latest results in security and privacy related work of Big Data. It will serve computer science and cybersecurity communities including researchers, academicians, students, and practitioners who have interest in big data trust privacy and security aspects. It is a comprehensive work on the most recent developments in security of datasets from varied sources including IoT, cyber physical domains, big data architectures, studies for trustworthy computing, and approaches for distributed systems and big data security solutions etc.
Trust Us, We're Experts
by Sheldon Rampton John StauberFearless investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber ( Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! and Mad Cow U.S.A.) are back with a gripping expos of the public relations industry and the scientists who back their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety agendas. There are two kinds of "experts" in question--the PR spin doctors behind the scenes and the "independent" experts paraded before the public, scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated, and paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial actions. Lively writing on controversial topics such as dioxin, bovine growth hormone, and genetically modified food makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological innovations and of the "media pseudo-environment" created to obfuscate the risks. By financing and publicizing views that support the goals of corporate sponsors, PR campaigns have, over the course of the century, managed to suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silence the scientist who discovered that rats fed on genetically modified corn had significant organ abnormalities, squelch television and newspaper stories about the risks of bovine growth hormone, and place enough confusion and doubt in the public's mind about global warming to suppress any mobilization for action. Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry, from the "risk communicators" (whose job is to downplay all risks) and "outrage managers" (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss, or defeat) to those who specialize in "public policy intelligence" (spying on opponents). Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good. According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these views rather antidemocratic and intend to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz. This is one wake-up call that's hard to resist.
Trustworthy Open Self-Organising Systems
by Wolfgang Reif Gerrit Anders Hella Seebach Jan-Philipp Steghöfer Elisabeth André Jörg Hähner Christian Müller-Schloer Theo UngererThis booktreats the computational use of social concepts as the focal point for therealisation of a novel class of socio-technical systems, comprising smartgrids, public display environments, and grid computing. Thesesystems are composed of technical and human constituents that interact witheach other in an open environment. Heterogeneity, large scale, and uncertaintyin the behaviour of the constituents and the environment are the rule ratherthan the exception. Ensuringthe trustworthiness of such systems allows their technical constituents tointeract with each other in a reliable, secure, and predictable way while theirhuman users are able to understand and control them. "TrustworthyOpen Self-Organising Systems" contains a wealth of knowledge, fromtrustworthy self-organisation mechanisms, to trust models, methods to measure auser's trust in a system, a discussion of social concepts beyond trust, andinsights into the impact open self-organising systems will have on society.
Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality
by Hector MacDonaldFrom one of the world's leading experts in business storytelling, and for readers of Daniel Levitin, Nate Silver, and Charles Duhigg, Truth: A User's Guide is about the different types of competing truths we face every day in life: how to identify them, why they work, when they are used and misused, and what we can do to guard against them or--when appropriate--to make constructive use of them.We tend to see the world like Orwell's Winston Smith: "There was truth and there was untruth." Yet the world is far more complicated than that. In a time of "post-truth", when "fake news" is itself the subject of our headlines, it is not "untruths" that we need to worry about. Hector Macdonald reveals and examines one of our greatest collective blind spots: we are all routinely misled by the truth. This is because for any fact, scenario, story, and situation, there are what Hector terms "Competing Truths." Why do Competing Truths matter? They matter because we vote, shop, work, co-operate, and fight based on what we believe to be true, and what we believe depends in large part on what we read or hear from others. Many of the most sophisticated and influential forms of political, business, and media communication manipulate technically true statements to pull the wool over the public's eyes. Truth is not an absolute--it has its own spectrum. Truth: A User's Guide shows us how to cut through the nebulous issue of truth using a scaffold of timely examples. These examples range from the disingenuous use of statistics in Donald Trump's speeches to the 2013 fallacy that Western quinoa demand was disadvantaging native Andean farmers, to the structure, ethics, and success of Uber. Macdonald is as comfortable and insightful parsing the influence of Facebook as he is examining Colgate's misleading campaign as the toothpaste recommended by dentists. Truth: A User's Guide explores how we can guard against the noise of competing truths, in business, in our personal relationships, and within ourselves, but also how we can use them to our advantage. Written with authority and humour, this is an accessible and illuminating narrative that will find a wide audience among readers in search of understanding why the meaning of "truth" seems to have gone completely haywire.
Truth: A Brief History Of Total Bullsh*t
by Tom PhillipsThis is a book about TRUTH—and all the ways we try to avoid it—from the bestselling author of Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up.We live in a “post-truth” world, we’re told. But was there ever really a golden age of truth-telling? Or have people been lying, fibbing and just plain bullsh*tting since the beginning of time?Tom Phillips, editor of a leading independent fact-checking organization, deals with this question every day. In Truth, he tells the story of how we humans have spent history lying to each other—and ourselves—about everything from business to politics to plain old geography. Along the way, he chronicles the world’s oldest customer service complaint, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 and the surprisingly dishonest career of Benjamin Franklin.Sharp, witty and with a clear-eyed view of humanity’s checkered past, Truth reveals why people lie—and how we can cut through the bullsh*t.
The Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife
by Lucy CookeMary Roach meets Sam Kean and Bill Bryson in this uproarious tour of the basest instincts and biggest mysteries of the animal worldHumans have gone to the Moon and discovered the Higgs boson, but when it comes to understanding animals, we've still got a long way to go. Whether we're seeing a viral video of romping baby pandas or a picture of penguins "holding hands," it's hard for us not to project our own values--innocence, fidelity, temperance, hard work--onto animals. So you've probably never considered if moose get drunk, penguins cheat on their mates, or worker ants lay about. They do--and that's just for starters. In The Truth About Animals, Lucy Cooke takes us on a worldwide journey to meet everyone from a Colombian hippo castrator to a Chinese panda porn peddler, all to lay bare the secret--and often hilarious--habits of the animal kingdom. Charming and at times downright weird, this modern bestiary is perfect for anyone who has ever suspected that virtue might be unnatural.
The Truth About Bats (Fountas & Pinnell LLI Gold #Level O)
by Margaret AshaEeek! If s a Bat! Why are people afraid of bats? It's true that bats have a bad reputation--think witches, haunted castles, Halloween. But what people believe about bats isn't necessarily correct. Learn the truth behind the myths about bats.
The Truth About Contagion: Exploring Theories of How Disease Spreads
by Thomas S. Cowan Sally Fallon MorellFor readers of Plague of Corruption, Thomas S. Cowan, MD, and Sally Fallon Morell ask the question: are there really such things as "viruses"? Or are electro smog, toxic living conditions, and 5G actually to blame for COVID-19? The official explanation for today&’s COVID-19 pandemic is a &“dangerous, infectious virus.&” This is the rationale for isolating a large portion of the world&’s population in their homes so as to curb its spread. From face masks to social distancing, from antivirals to vaccines, these measures are predicated on the assumption that tiny viruses can cause serious illness and that such illness is transmissible person-to-person. It was Louis Pasteur who convinced a skeptical medical community that contagious germs cause disease; his &“germ theory&” now serves as the official explanation for most illness. However, in his private diaries he states unequivocally that in his entire career he was not once able to transfer disease with a pure culture of bacteria (he obviously wasn&’t able to purify viruses at that time). He admitted that the whole effort to prove contagion was a failure, leading to his famous death bed confession that &“the germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.&” While the incidence and death statistics for COVID-19 may not be reliable, there is no question that many people have taken sick with a strange new disease—with odd symptoms like gasping for air and &“fizzing&” feelings—and hundreds of thousands have died. Many suspect that the cause is not viral but a kind of pollution unique to the modern age—electromagnetic pollution. Today we are surrounded by a jangle of overlapping and jarring frequencies—from power lines to the fridge to the cell phone. It started with the telegraph and progressed to worldwide electricity, then radar, then satellites that disrupt the ionosphere, then ubiquitous Wi-Fi. The most recent addition to this disturbing racket is fifth generation wireless—5G. In The Truth About Contagion: Exploring Theories of How Disease Spreads, bestselling authors Thomas S. Cowan, MD, and Sally Fallon Morell explore the true causes of COVID-19. On September 26, 2019, 5G wireless was turned on in Wuhan, China (and officially launched November 1) with a grid of about ten thousand antennas—more antennas than exist in the whole United States, all concentrated in one city. A spike in cases occurred on February 13, the same week that Wuhan turned on its 5G network for monitoring traffic. Illness has subsequently followed 5G installation in all the major cities in America. Since the dawn of the human race, medicine men and physicians have wondered about the cause of disease, especially what we call &“contagions,&” numerous people ill with similar symptoms, all at the same time. Does humankind suffer these outbreaks at the hands of an angry god or evil spirit? A disturbance in the atmosphere, a miasma? Do we catch the illness from others or from some outside influence? As the restriction of our freedoms continues, more and more people are wondering whether this is true. Could a packet of RNA fragments, which cannot even be defined as a living organism, cause such havoc? Perhaps something else is involved—something that has upset the balance of nature and made us more susceptible to disease? Perhaps there is no &“coronavirus&” at all; perhaps, as Pasteur said, &“the germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.&”
The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing The Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal
by Doctor Joseph Mercola Ronnie CumminsMultiple New York Times best-selling author Dr. Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins, founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association, team up to expose the truth—and end the madness—about COVID-19. Since early 2020, the world has experienced a series of catastrophic events—a global pandemic caused by what appears to be an engineered coronavirus; international lockdowns and border closings causing widespread business closures, economic collapse, and massive unemployment; and an unprecedented curtailment of civil liberties and freedoms in the name of keeping people safe by locking them up in their homes. We are now living in a world that is increasingly ruled, not by our democratic systems and institutions, but by public health fiat, carried out by politicians who rule by instilling fear and panic. In The Truth About COVID-19, Dr. Mercola and Cummins reveal new and emerging evidence that: The SARS-CoV-2 virus was, indeed, lab-engineered and emerged from a negligently managed bioweapons lab in Wuhan, China The global pandemic was long anticipated by global elites who have used it to facilitate and hide the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history PCR testing, case counts, morbidity, and vaccine safety and efficacy data have been widely manipulated and misrepresented Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are known to worsen COVID-19 outcomes, but the junk food industry continues to push its agenda at the expense of public health Safe, simple, and inexpensive treatment and prevention for COVID-19 have been censored and suppressed to create a clear path for vaccine acceptance Effectiveness of the vaccines has been wildly exaggerated and major safety questions have gone unanswered The good news in all of this is that we can take control of our health and that, together, we have the power to unite and fight back for our health, democracy, and freedom. The time is now for a global awakening. As Dr. Mercola and Cummins remind us, this is the fight of our lives.
The Truth About Dogs: The Ancestry, Social Conventions, Mental Habits and Moral Fibre of Canis familiaris
by Stephen BudianskyStephen Budiansky holds that virtually everything previously written about dogs is either wrong or misguided. Instead he maintains that to understand the true nature of dogs we need to stop interpreting their behaviour in the human terms of loyalty and betrayal. The truth is far more complex and surprising.The Dog Genome Project is currently laying the groundwork for identifying the genetic basis of why our dogs behave in the way they do. Other research investigates canine intelligence, and some remarkable experiments reveal what dogs can and cannot see. Budiansky brings together the disciplines of behavioural science, genetics, neuroscience and archaeology to show us how wrong we have been about man's best friend.
The Truth About Fat: Why Obesity is Not that Simple
by Anthony WarnerMost people try out diets just to see if they work. One friend cuts out sugar, a second cuts out fat. Another mumbles something about gut microbes. Even scientists still seem to be arguing about what causes obesity, so what hope is there for the rest of us? Anthony Warner, author of The Angry Chef, has decided to get to the bottom of it once and for all. Is obesity really an epidemic? Can you be addicted to food? Can&’t you just exercise your way to freedom? And what the heck is a food desert? You want the truth? The science, without the prejudice? You can handle it.
The Truth About Grief
by Ruth Davis KonigsbergThe five stages of grief are so deeply imbedded in our culture that no American can escape them. Every time we experience loss--a personal or national one--we hear them recited: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The stages are invoked to explain everything from how we will recover from the death of a loved one to a sudden environmental catastrophe or to the trading away of a basketball star. But the stunning fact is that there is no validity to the stages that were proposed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross more than forty years ago. In The Truth About Grief, Ruth Davis Konigsberg shows how the five stages were based on no science but nonetheless became national myth. She explains that current research paints a completely different picture of how we actually grieve. It turns out people are pretty well programmed to get over loss. Grieving should not be a strictly regimented process, she argues; nor is the best remedy for pain always to examine it or express it at great length. The strength of Konigsberg's message is its liberating force: there is no manual to grieving; you can do it freestyle. In the course of clarifying our picture of grief, Konigsberg tells its history, revealing how social and cultural forces have shaped our approach to loss from the Gettysburg Address through 9/11. She examines how the American version of grief has spread to the rest of the world and contrasts it with the interpretations of other cultures--like the Chinese, who focus more on their bond with the deceased than on the emotional impact of bereavement. Konigsberg also offers a close look at Kübler-Ross herself: who she borrowed from to come up with her theory, and how she went from being a pioneering psychiatrist to a New Age healer who sought the guidance of two spirits named Salem and Pedro and declared that death did not exist. Deeply researched and provocative, The Truth About Grief draws on history, culture, and science to upend our country's most entrenched beliefs about its most common experience.
The Truth about Language: What It Is and Where It Came From
by Michael C. CorballisEvolutionary science has long viewed language as, basically, a fortunate accident—a crossing of wires that happened to be extraordinarily useful, setting humans apart from other animals and onto a trajectory that would see their brains (and the products of those brains) become increasingly complex. But as Michael C. Corballis shows in The Truth about Language, it’s time to reconsider those assumptions. Language, he argues, is not the product of some “big bang” 60,000 years ago, but rather the result of a typically slow process of evolution with roots in elements of grammatical language found much farther back in our evolutionary history. Language, Corballis explains, evolved as a way to share thoughts—and, crucially for human development, to connect our own “mental time travel,” our imagining of events and people that are not right in front of us, to that of other people. We share that ability with other animals, but it was the development of language that made it powerful: it led to our ability to imagine other perspectives, to imagine ourselves in the minds of others, a development that, by easing social interaction, proved to be an extraordinary evolutionary advantage. Even as his thesis challenges such giants as Chomsky and Stephen Jay Gould, Corballis writes accessibly and wittily, filling his account with unforgettable anecdotes and fascinating historical examples. The result is a book that’s perfect both for deep engagement and as brilliant fodder for that lightest of all forms of language, cocktail party chatter.
The Truth About Tesla: The Myth of the Lone Genius in the History of Innovation
by Christopher CooperA myth-busting biography of Nikola Tesla, the “enigmatic figure whose life and achievements appeal to historians, engineers, scientists, and many others” (Library Journal).Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest electrical inventors who ever lived, was rescued from obscurity in recent years, restored to his rightful place among historical luminaries. We’ve been told that his contributions to humanity were obscured by a number of nineteenth-century inventors and industrialists who took credit for his work or stole his patents outright. Most biographies repeat this familiar account of Tesla’s life, including his invention of alternating current, his falling out with Thomas Edison, how he lost billions in patent royalties to George Westinghouse, and his fight to prove that Guglielmo Marconi stole thirteen of his patents to “invent” radio. But what really happened?Newly uncovered information, however, proves that the popular account of Tesla’s life is itself very flawed. In The Truth About Tesla, Christopher Cooper sets out to prove that the conventional story not only oversimplifies history, it denies credit to some of the true inventors behind many of the groundbreaking technologies now attributed to Tesla, and perpetuates a misunderstanding about the process of innovation itself.Are you positive that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone? Are you sure the Wright Brothers were the first in flight? Think again! With a provocative foreword by Tesla biographer Marc J. Seifer, The Truth About Tesla is one of the first books to set the record straight, tracing the origin of some of the greatest electrical inventions to a coterie of colorful characters that conventional history has all but forgotten.Includes photographs
The Truth about Wuhan: How I Uncovered the Biggest Lie in History
by Dr. Andrew G. HuffShocking new insider information that shows what really happened in Wuhan, China, at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak and in the ensuing cover-up. The day that Dr. Andrew G. Huff left his senior scientist and vice president role at EcoHealth Alliance was one of the happiest days of his life due to the corruption he had witnessed at the organization. However, he never thought working there would be of any great consequence to the future. He was wrong. Because, as an EcoHealth Alliance insider, Dr. Huff had had a ringside seat to one of the biggest cover-ups in history. The Truth about Wuhan contains new research and a breakdown of how and why the development of COVID-19 in the United States and China was supported by the US government to collect intelligence on laboratories in China. Dr. Huff, an expert in the fields of bioterrorism and bio warfare, is a whistleblower who will show why the reasons the lab leak was covered up are incorrect. He worked on the classified research side of the program as a US government scientist. He knows the real how and why COVID-19 emerged. Besides exposing the conspiracy and cover-up, Dr. Huff also puts forth policy solutions and recommendations to prevent a lab leak virus from plaguing the world again. The Truth about Wuhan simply explains the complexity of the system that led to COVID-19&’s emergence; how the medical industrial complex grew and became entrenched in gain of function work after 9/11; why EcoHealth Alliance was the (almost) perfect intelligence collection cover; the policy actions and decision-making process as to why the United States government engaged in the COVID cover-up; how and why the United States swapped biotechnology with China and biomedical corporations; and the incentives for each of the actors or governments to engage and coordinate a global cover-up of COVID-19 origins. The Truth about Wuhan also shows how and why Dr. Anthony Fauci is intricately involved in the COVID cover-up; how scientists like EcoHealth Alliance president and CEO Dr. Peter Daszak rose to power and used their influence to corrupt science and the COVID origin investigation; and how the intelligence community likely orchestrated the cover-up with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Huff also provides personal harrowing accounts of how the US government waged a psychological operation against him to prevent him from speaking out. COVID-19 is the biggest lie, scandal, and intelligence failure in US history, and Dr. Andrew G. Huff is stepping out of the shadows to share his insider story about this failure that led to millions of deaths around the world.
Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science
by S. Chandrasekhar"What a splendid book! Reading it is a joy, and for me, at least, continuing reading it became compulsive. . . . Chandrasekhar is a distinguished astrophysicist and every one of the lectures bears the hallmark of all his work: precision, thoroughness, lucidity. "—Sir Hermann Bondi, Nature The late S. Chandrasekhar was best known for his discovery of the upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf star, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983. He was the author of many books, including The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes and, most recently, Newton's Principia for the Common Reader.
Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science
by S. ChandrasekharSeven lectures detailing the author&’s thoughts on motivations in the pursuit of science and patterns of scientific creativity.&“What a splendid book! Reading it is a joy, and for me, at least, continuing reading it became compulsive…. Chandrasekhar is a distinguished astrophysicist and every one of the lectures bears the hallmark of all his work: precision, thoroughness, lucidity.&” —Sir Hermann Bondi, Nature Does aesthetics play a role in science? Can it be that science is given impetus by a search for beauty? What relation exists between the beauty of an idea and its power to account for some aspect of the natural world? Throughout his distinguished career, S. Chandrasekhar has given time and thought to these questions and to their implications for his work and the work of others. Truth and Beauty gathers the fruits of his meditations. Heisenberg, observes Chandrasekhar, spoke eloquently of the sheer force of his aesthetic experience when he discovered the key to the quantum theory. Weyl characterized the process of working out his gauge theory as a choice of the beautiful over the true, a choice strongly supported by subsequent research. Einstein also felt the aesthetic power underlying his discoveries. While most of the seven essays in Truth and Beauty deal generally with the nature of science and the process of research, two essays explore the work of individuals. —Edward Arthur Milne and Arthur Stanley Eddington The late S. Chandrasekhar was best known for his discovery of the upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf star, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983. He was the author of many books, including The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes and, most recently, Newton's Principia for the Common Reader.