Bøger udgivet af Otium Press

The final in the four-part series shows what the theories, research and science all add up to. It examines the evidence that illustrates how wrong most people in thinking the world is descending into darkness and chaos, and shows instead that it's actually improving at an astonishing rate.

Why is life like a poker game? How did a failed robbery help to explainhuman nature? Why are we so certain bad men will win - and yet we're so wrong?In this, the third volume of The Secrets of Life quartet, SS O'Connor oncemore uses his easy-going, conversational style to explain how the science ofdecision analysis developed, and why it has come to show us not only thereasoning behind how humans arrive at their choices in life, but why so muchof the apparently bizarre behaviour of the natural world has the same hardlogic to it. Instead of the confusion and chaos one might expect, O'Connorlays out how the options organisms face when they interact can actually beanalysed, and how we humans then refined this process through the addition ofour intelligence and language skills. Starting with the extraordinary new waysof thinking that Adam Smith opened the world's eyes to, the book progresses tothe 20th century - and shows how the mathematical reasoning behind our thoughtprocesses was revealed at a time when the very future of the world was atstake. From these earliest investigations, through to the fevereddisagreements of later experts, this third volume of the Secrets of Lifeseries explains how the science of game theory illuminates the reasons for ourbehaviour. In particular, the book provides insights into how the interests ofthe individual should be balanced against those of the group, and why themechanism of trading would extend far further into our lives than we couldever have imagined. As the story unfolds it becomes ever clearer howcooperation has evolved to be the catalyst at every level of life. It explainshow it was the force that built our world, and why it would settle so deeplyin our hardwiring that it's become instinctive and innate in us. Perhaps mostpleasingly, the same logic also shows that the benefits of collaboration arealways bound to ratchet upwards - and how this will inevitably lead humans toever-increasing levels of moral behaviour.

Why does the gene behave like a hedge fund manager? Why are mutationslike a gambling scam? Why does nothing ever become top dog in life and winforever? Humans only arrived after 99. 99% of the time there's been life onearth. So what was here before us? And how did these species, and theevolutionary process that created them, end up with the unpromising creaturesthat were our ancestors? In this, the first book of The Secrets of Lifequartet, SS O'Connor brings his outsider's, questioning eye to reveal thegreat forces that lie behind life: from the laws that arose with Big Bang,through to the 'decisions' that organisms make to determine their chances. Buthow did everything come about? And what made some life forms succeed - whileothers would join the 99. 9% of species that appeared, yet went on to becomeextinct? The story goes right back to our single-celled forebears - the onlythings that were on the planet for 80% of its existence, and then continues asit lays out the ways that successive transmissions built increasingcomplexity, and how the resulting species found their synergistic ways ofcoexisting. In an easy-going, conversational style, O'Connor explains inlay-man's language how the gene is the great conductor of life's orchestra,how it helped millions of life forms to refine themselves - yet why it alsosees failure, death and extinctions as opportunities rather than disasters. Lastly, the book tells the story of the men who unpicked the mysteries, whatthey meant by fitness and 'the fittest', but why they continued to be baffledby organisms that broke the rules by helping each other. Why would some evenchoose to be sterile when producing the next generation was the overridingcompulsion in life? And how does the answer to this question explain whyaltruism is the proof for the 'gene-based theory of evolution' - and whycooperation would become the strongest force in life?