The Myth of Experience

The Myth of Experience

Author: Emre Soyer

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1541742060

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Experience is a great teacher . . . except when it isn't. In this groundbreaking guide, learn how the past can deceive and limit us -- and how healthy skepticism can build a better world. Our personal experience is key to who we are and what we do. We judge others by their experience and are judged by ours. Society venerates experience. From doctors to teachers to managers to presidents, the more experience the better. It's not surprising then, that we often fall back on experience when making decisions, an easy way to make judgements about the future, a constant teacher that provides clear lessons. Yet, this intuitive reliance on experience is misplaced. In The Myth of Experience, behavioral scientists Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth take a transformative look at experience and the many ways it deceives and misleads us. From distorting the past to limiting creativity to reducing happiness, experience can cause misperceptions and then reinforce them without our awareness. Instead, the authors argue for a nuanced approach, where a healthy skepticism toward the lessons of experience results in more reliable decisions and sustainable growth. Soyer and Hogarth illustrate the flaws of experience -- with real-life examples from bloodletting to personal computers to pandemics -- and distill cutting-edge research as a guide to decision-making, as well as provide the remedies needed to improve our judgments and choices in the workplace and beyond.


The Madness of Women

The Madness of Women

Author: Jane Professor Ussher

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-03-28

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1136656324

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Nominated for the 2012 Distinguished Publication Award of the Association for Women in Psychology! Why are women more likely to be positioned or diagnosed as mad than men? If madness is a social construction, a gendered label, as many feminist critics would argue, how can we understand and explain women's prolonged misery and distress? In turn, can we prevent or treat women’s distress, in a non-pathologising women centred way? The Madness of Women addresses these questions through a rigorous exploration of the myths and realities of women's madness. Drawing on academic and clinical experience, including case studies and in-depth interviews, as well as on the now extensive critical literature in the field of mental health, Jane Ussher presents a critical multifactorial analysis of women's madness that both addresses the notion that madness is a myth, and yet acknowledges the reality and multiple causes of women's distress. Topics include: The genealogy of women’s madness – incarceration of difficult or deviant women Regulation through treatment Deconstrucing depression, PMS and borderline personality disorder Madness as a reasonable response to objectification and sexual violence Women’s narratives of resistance This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of psychology, gender studies, sociology, women's studies, cultural studies, counselling and nursing.


The Myth of Normal

The Myth of Normal

Author: Gabor Maté, MD

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 059308389X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The instant New York Times bestseller By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health? Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, The Myth Of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.


History in Three Keys

History in Three Keys

Author: Paul A. Cohen

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9780231106504

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Part Two explores the thought, feelings, and behavior of the direct participants in the Boxer experience, individuals who, without a preconceived idea of the entire event, understood what was happening to them in a manner fundamentally different from historians.


The Myth of Artificial Intelligence

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence

Author: Erik J. Larson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0674983513

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“Artificial intelligence has always inspired outlandish visions—that AI is going to destroy us, save us, or at the very least radically transform us. Erik Larson exposes the vast gap between the actual science underlying AI and the dramatic claims being made for it. This is a timely, important, and even essential book.” —John Horgan, author of The End of Science Many futurists insist that AI will soon achieve human levels of intelligence. From there, it will quickly eclipse the most gifted human mind. The Myth of Artificial Intelligence argues that such claims are just that: myths. We are not on the path to developing truly intelligent machines. We don’t even know where that path might be. Erik Larson charts a journey through the landscape of AI, from Alan Turing’s early work to today’s dominant models of machine learning. Since the beginning, AI researchers and enthusiasts have equated the reasoning approaches of AI with those of human intelligence. But this is a profound mistake. Even cutting-edge AI looks nothing like human intelligence. Modern AI is based on inductive reasoning: computers make statistical correlations to determine which answer is likely to be right, allowing software to, say, detect a particular face in an image. But human reasoning is entirely different. Humans do not correlate data sets; we make conjectures sensitive to context—the best guess, given our observations and what we already know about the world. We haven’t a clue how to program this kind of reasoning, known as abduction. Yet it is the heart of common sense. Larson argues that all this AI hype is bad science and bad for science. A culture of invention thrives on exploring unknowns, not overselling existing methods. Inductive AI will continue to improve at narrow tasks, but if we are to make real progress, we must abandon futuristic talk and learn to better appreciate the only true intelligence we know—our own.


Living Myths

Living Myths

Author: J. F. Bierlein

Publisher: Wellspring/Ballantine

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0345422074

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Reveals how key myths of the world present timeless truths that enrich our understanding of the world and the role humans play today.


The Double Life of the Family

The Double Life of the Family

Author: Michael Bittman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1000319490

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The modern family is under strain. What we crave most from our families is intimacy, warmth and self-fulfilment but we often find this difficult to achieve. We hold onto these expectations of our families even in the face of contradictory experiences, so the family sustains a double life. The authors explore the gap between our values, expectations and yearnings, and our experiences of everyday family life. Family ritual, political rhetoric, advertising images and television family sitcoms are all windows onto what we want and expect - our myths of the family. Yet our aspirations for intimacy and self-fulfilment are frustrated by unacknowledged inequalities between men and women, and parents and children. The inequalities have their origins in the division of domestic labour and in labour markets that disregard family responsibilities. The Double Life Of The Family argues that our expectations of family life are more powerful than is usually believed and have enormous influence on both the way governments structure social policy and on the decisions made by ordinary people.


The Myth of the American Dream

The Myth of the American Dream

Author: D. L. Mayfield

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 083084824X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Affluence, autonomy, safety, and power—the central values of the American dream. But are they compatible with Jesus' command to love our neighbor as ourselves? In essays grouped around these four values, D. L. Mayfield asks us to pay attention to the ways they shape our own choices, and the ways those choices affect our neighbors.


Educating Intuition

Educating Intuition

Author: Robin M. Hogarth

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2001-06-15

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 0226348601

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Every day we make intuitive decisions—from the mundane choice of what clothes to wear to more important issues such as which new car "feels right" or which person would be "good" for a particular job. To varying degrees, logic plays a role in these decisions, but at a certain point all of us rely on intuition, our sixth sense. Is this the right way to decide? Should we trust our gut feelings? When intuition conflicts with logic, what should we do? In Educating Intuition, Robin M. Hogarth lays bare this mysterious process so fundamental to daily life by offering the first comprehensive overview of what the science of psychology can tell us about intuition—where it comes from, how it works, whether we can trust it. From this literature and his own research, Hogarth finds that intuition is a normal and important component of thought that has its roots in processes of tacit learning. Environment, attention, experience, expertise, and the success of the scientific method all form part of Hogarth's perspective on intuition, leading him to the surprising—but natural—conclusion that we can educate our sixth sense. To this end he offers concrete suggestions and exercises to help readers develop their intuitive skills and habits for learning the "right" lessons from experience. Artfully and accessibly combining cognitive science, the latest research in psychology, and Hogarth's own observations, Educating Intuition eschews the vague approach to the topic that has become commonplace and provides instead a wholly engaging and practical guide to enhancing our intuitive skills.


The Writer's Block Myth

The Writer's Block Myth

Author: Heloise Jones

Publisher:

Published: 2017-03-14

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9781946697325

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A practical and inspirational guide created for people living in the real world. Whether you're a seasoned writer or new to the page, The Writer's Block Myth holds the keys to get past stuck, complete your goals, feed your creative Soul, and help you experience lasting creative freedom.The voices and stories of other writers are woven throughout the book, plus short, easy exercises & tools to support your process. The Writer's Block Myth is a culmination of hundreds of hours of conversations and work with writers, artists, and creatives, as well as interview-conversations conducted with writers of all levels, interests, and experience.Put it on your desk, kitchen counter, or bedside table. Carry it in your bag. This is one to refer to often.