Truth, Errors, and Lies

Truth, Errors, and Lies
Author: Grzegorz W. Kołodko
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2012-09-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231150695

Grzegorz W. Kolodko, one of the world's leading authorities on economics and development policy and a key architect of Poland's successful economic reforms, applies his far-reaching knowledge to the past and future of the world economy, introducing a framework for understanding our global situation that transcends any single discipline or paradigm. Deploying a novel mix of scientific evaluation and personal observation, Kolodko begins with a brief discussion of misinformation and its perpetuation in economics and politics. He criticizes the simplification of complex economic and social issues and investigates the link between developments in the global economy and cultural change, scientific discoveries, and political fluctuations. Underscoring the necessity of conceptual and theoretical innovation in understanding our global economic situation, Kolodko offers a provocative study of globalization and the possibility of coming out ahead in an era of worldwide interdependence. Deeply critical of neoliberalism, which sought to transfer economic control exclusively to the private sector, Kolodko explores the virtues of social-economic development and the new rules of the economic game. He concludes with a look at our near and distant future, questioning whether we have a say in its making.

Private Truths, Public Lies

Private Truths, Public Lies
Author: Timur Kuran
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 1998-06-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674248139

Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one's wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities. A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change. In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency. Private Truths, Public Lies uses its theoretical argument to illuminate an array of puzzling social phenomena. They include the unexpected fall of communism, the paucity, until recently, of open opposition to affirmative action in the United States, and the durability of the beliefs that have sustained India's caste system.

Lies We Believe About God

Lies We Believe About God
Author: Wm. Paul Young
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501101412

From the author of the bestselling novel The Shack and the New York Times bestsellers Cross Roads and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of twenty-eight assumptions about God—assumptions that just might be keeping us from experiencing His unconditional, all-encompassing love. In his wildly popular novels, Wm. Paul Young portrayed the Triune God in ways that challenged our thinking—sometimes upending long-held beliefs, but always centered in the eternal, all-encompassing nature of God’s love. Now, in Wm. Paul Young’s first nonfiction book, he invites us to revisit our assumptions about God—this time using the Bible, theological discussion, and personal anecdotes. Paul encourages us to think through beliefs we’ve presumed to be true and consider whether some might actually be false. Expounding on the compassion fans felt from the “Papa” portrayed in The Shack—now a major film starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer—Paul encourages you to think anew about important issues including sin, religion, hell, politics, identity, creation, human rights, and helping us discover God’s deep and abiding love.

The Truth Behind the Lie

The Truth Behind the Lie
Author: Sara Lövestam
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2019-08-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250300088

The Truth Behind The Lie is Sara Lövestam’s award-winning and gripping novel about blurred lines, second chances, and the lengths one will go to for the truth. When a six-year-old girl disappears and calling the police isn’t an option, her desperate mother Pernilla turns to an unlikely source for help. She finds a cryptic ad online for a private investigator: “Need help, but can’t contact the police?” That’s where Kouplan comes in. He’s an Iranian refugee living in hiding. He was forced to leave Iran after news of his and his brother's involvement with a radical newspaper hated by the regime was discovered. Kouplan’s brother disappeared, and he hasn’t seen him in four years. He makes a living as a P.I. working under the radar, waiting for the day he can legally apply for asylum. Pernilla’s daughter has vanished without a trace, and Kouplan is an expert at living and working off the grid. He’s the perfect PI to help... but something in Pernilla’s story doesn’t add up. She might need help that he can’t offer...and a little girl’s life hangs in the balance.

The Error of Truth

The Error of Truth
Author: Steven J. Osterlind
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2019-01-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 019256739X

Quantitative thinking is our inclination to view natural and everyday phenomena through a lens of measurable events, with forecasts, odds, predictions, and likelihood playing a dominant part. The Error of Truth recounts the astonishing and unexpected tale of how quantitative thinking came to be, and its rise to primacy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Additionally, it considers how seeing the world through a quantitative lens has shaped our perception of the world we live in, and explores the lives of the individuals behind its early establishment. This worldview was unlike anything humankind had before, and it came about because of a momentous human achievement: we had learned how to measure uncertainty. Probability as a science was conceptualised. As a result of probability theory, we now had correlations, reliable predictions, regressions, the bellshaped curve for studying social phenomena, and the psychometrics of educational testing. Significantly, these developments happened during a relatively short period in world history— roughly, the 130-year period from 1790 to 1920, from about the close of the Napoleonic era, through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolutions, to the end of World War I. At which time, transportation had advanced rapidly, due to the invention of the steam engine, and literacy rates had increased exponentially. This brief period in time was ready for fresh intellectual activity, and it gave a kind of impetus for the probability inventions. Quantification is now everywhere in our daily lives, such as in the ubiquitous microchip in smartphones, cars, and appliances; in the Bayesian logic of artificial intelligence, as well as applications in business, engineering, medicine, economics, and elsewhere. Probability is the foundation of quantitative thinking. The Error of Truth tells its story— when, why, and how it happened.

Finding Our Way to the Truth

Finding Our Way to the Truth
Author: Sarah Ciavarri
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 150645660X

In Finding Our Way to the Truth, Sarah Ciavarri explores lies of a particularly insidious sort--lies masquerading as truths. These lies can be so engrained in how we were raised, the culture we live in, and the type of thinking that has kept us safe that we don't notice how they inform our decisions and affect the way we lead, work, parent, and live. The lies Ciavarri examines aren't the obvious ones. They are sneaky--lies that can be benign, even helpful, such as "I should finish what I start," "People must like me," and "I'm responsible for it all." But these lies can keep us from owning our ideas and strengths, following a dream, confronting dysfunction, or enjoying deeper, more honest relationships. They can replace a sense of well-being and hope with regret and resentment. Ciavarri tells engaging personal stories to help readers recognize seven common lies that leaders often tell themselves. She then demonstrates a three-step process for unmasking each lie: pay attention, examine, and apply the learning. We do better when we stop listening to the lies. God wants better for us, and we were created for better. Finding Our Way to the Truth shows us the way.

Truth and Lies

Truth and Lies
Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1443452106

National bestseller A fresh, insightful guide to reading body language in the post-digital age Whether you’re at a job interview or a cocktail party, searching LinkedIn or swiping right on a dating site, you want (no—need) to understand what people are really thinking, regardless of what they’re saying. Understanding what others are trying to tell you with their posture, hand gestures, eye contact (or lack thereof) or incessant fiddling with their iPhone might all be even more important than what you’re projecting yourself. Do they plan on making a deal with your company? Are they lying to you? Can you trust this person with your most intimate secrets? Knowing what others are thinking can tell you when to run with an opportunity and when not to waste your time, whether at work, in a crucial negotiation or on a promising first date. Bestselling authors Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson, principals at the communications company Truthplane, illustrate the essential points of body language with examples from everyday life, leavened with humour and insights that you can use to your advantage in virtually any situation.

Post-Truth

Post-Truth
Author: Lee McIntyre
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2018-02-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262345986

How we arrived in a post-truth era, when “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence. Are we living in a post-truth world, where “alternative facts” replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence? How did we get here? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Lee McIntyre traces the development of the post-truth phenomenon from science denial through the rise of “fake news,” from our psychological blind spots to the public's retreat into “information silos.” What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes recent examples—claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the popular vote—and finds that post-truth is an assertion of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to believe something regardless of the evidence. Yet post-truth didn't begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial. Add to this the wired-in cognitive biases that make us feel that our conclusions are based on good reasoning even when they are not, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and the emergence of fake news as a political tool, and we have the ideal conditions for post-truth. McIntyre also argues provocatively that the right wing borrowed from postmodernism—specifically, the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth—in its attacks on science and facts. McIntyre argues that we can fight post-truth, and that the first step in fighting post-truth is to understand it.

Truth and Lies

Truth and Lies
Author: Caroline Mitchell
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-08
Genre: Birthparents
ISBN: 9781503903142

Meet Amy Winter: Detective Inspector, daughter of a serial killer. DI Amy Winter is hoping to follow in the footsteps of her highly respected police officer father. But when a letter arrives from the prison cell of Lillian Grimes, one half of a notorious husband-and-wife serial-killer team, it contains a revelation that will tear her life apart. Responsible for a string of heinous killings decades ago, Lillian is pure evil. A psychopathic murderer. And Amy's biological mother. Now, she is ready to reveal the location of three of her victims--but only if Amy plays along with her twisted game. While her fellow detectives frantically search for a young girl taken from her mother's doorstep, Amy must confront her own dark past. Haunted by blurred memories of a sister who sacrificed herself to save her, Amy faces a race against time to uncover the missing bodies. But what if, from behind bars, Grimes has been pulling the strings even tighter than Amy thought? And can she overcome her demons to prevent another murder?