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Atheist Nexus 2014-09-03T08:29:11Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd http://api.ning.com/files/SNy51epto7bgkjv2qt7GHJ1XE2QR8YUZPIzSiJFXISogKgvpFuMEXz1O0lbLHuX77XB4ocUycSKkBii0xeagxS40lLbtpxOB/alanturing.jpg?width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1 http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/nexusbookclub/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=10gfewkubnj8a&feed=yes&xn_auth=no "Cli-fi" tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2014-08-29:2182797:Topic:2467178 2014-08-29T23:42:58.333Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd

Are members here aware of the recent advent of "cli-fi" novels and films? In a sense, they're the flip side of fundamentalist "left behind" fiction. They anticipate the inevitable disruption that our quickly changing climate will cause--socially, economically, and politically--and they incorporate that futuristic vision into their narratives.

The difference, of course, is that the Rapture is a myth and, for the righteous, a delicious nightmare, while…

Are members here aware of the recent advent of "cli-fi" novels and films? In a sense, they're the flip side of fundamentalist "left behind" fiction. They anticipate the inevitable disruption that our quickly changing climate will cause--socially, economically, and politically--and they incorporate that futuristic vision into their narratives.

The difference, of course, is that the Rapture is a myth and, for the righteous, a delicious nightmare, while cli-fi entertainment is founded on the grim realization of dire trends that we can all see in our nurturing world today.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cli-fi-birth-of-a-genre

 POLLY AND THE ONE AND ONLY WORLD tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2014-08-20:2182797:Topic:2462293 2014-08-20T19:56:50.779Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd
For some time I was an active member here at A|N--a regular contributor to several groups--until, at a certain point (in May 2010, in fact), I decided that the time I was spending online was keeping me from the work I needed to do.

 I needed to finish drafting my sixth novel. And then work on revisions. Now, after more than five years and 30 drafts, the novel is in print (advance copies are out to all the major reviewers) and will launch officially at the Brattleboro Literary…

For some time I was an active member here at A|N--a regular contributor to several groups--until, at a certain point (in May 2010, in fact), I decided that the time I was spending online was keeping me from the work I needed to do.

 I needed to finish drafting my sixth novel. And then work on revisions. Now, after more than five years and 30 drafts, the novel is in print (advance copies are out to all the major reviewers) and will launch officially at the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont on Oct. 4. The book is already getting some attention, and it stands to viewed as controversial in some communities because the villains in the world of the novel are oppressive fundamentalists. We'll see.

Anyone here at A|N who likes fiction will enjoy this book, I think. For a peek, the curious may visit the book at Amazon (as long as you're not averse to giving Amazon the traffic) and use the "look inside" function.

 Top 5 Books on Atheism tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2013-12-15:2182797:Topic:2350371 2013-12-15T02:19:11.704Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd
Published on Sep 2, 2013

Top 5 Books on Atheism. Hemant Mehta (http://www.friendlyatheist.com)

Published on Sep 2, 2013

Top 5 Books on Atheism. Hemant Mehta (http://www.friendlyatheist.com)
 The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2013-06-12:2182797:Topic:2248554 2013-06-12T01:29:11.915Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd

This is a must-read, but I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to write a review. Instead, I'm going to post someone else's. This first review gives all the really good examples anyhow.

Here's the book on Amazon.com.

Playing the…

This is a must-read, but I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to write a review. Instead, I'm going to post someone else's. This first review gives all the really good examples anyhow.

Here's the book on Amazon.com.

Playing the Odds

State lotteries, it's sometimes said, are a tax on people who don't understand mathematics. But there is no cause for anyone to feel smug. The brain, no matter how well schooled, is just plain bad at dealing with randomness and probability. Confronted with situations that require an intuitive grasp of the odds, even the best mathematicians and scientists can find themselves floundering.

Suppose you want to calculate the likelihood of tossing two coins and coming up with one head. The great 18th-century mathematician Jean Le Rond d'Alembert thought the answer was obvious: there are three possibilities, zero, one or two heads. So the odds for any one of those happening must be one in three.

But as Leonard Mlodinow explains in "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives," there are, in fact, four possible outcomes: heads-heads, heads-tails, tails-heads and tails-tails. So there is a 25 percent chance of throwing zero or two heads and a 50 percent chance of throwing just one. In the long run, anyone offering d'Alembert's odds in a coin-flipping contest would lose his shirt.

The key to puzzles like this, Mlodinow writes, is Cardano's method, named for Gerolamo Cardano, author of the 16th-century "Book on Games of Chance." To lay the odds for even the simplest-seeming event, one constructs a table, or "sample space," of all the ways Fortuna's dice might fall. Trust your instincts instead and you're bound to go wrong.

If a woman has two children and one is a girl, the chance that the other child is also female has to be 50-50, right? But it's not. Cardano again: The possibilities are girl-girl, girl-boy and boy-girl. So the chance that both children are girls is 33 percent. Once we are told that one child is female, this extra information constrains the odds. (Even weirder, and I'm still not sure I believe this, the author demonstrates that the odds change again if we're told that one of the girls is named Florida.)

Mlodinow — the author of "Feynman's Rainbow," "Euclid's Window" and, with Stephen Hawking, "A Briefer History of Time" — writes in a breezy style, interspersing probabilistic mind-benders with portraits of theorists like Jakob Bernoulli, Blaise Pascal, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Pierre-Simon de Laplace and Thomas Bayes. The result is a readable crash course in randomness and statistics that includes the clearest explanation I've encountered of the Monty Hall problem (named for the M.C. of the old TV game show "Let's Make a Deal").

You are presented with three doors, behind one of which is a new car. You take your pick, but before your fate is revealed, the M.C. swings open one of the other doors, revealing a booby prize.

So far, so good, but now comes the big decision. Do you stay with your original choice or switch to the other unopened door? Even the great mathematician Paul Erdos was dumbfounded to realize that this is not a 50-50 proposition. If you lay out the possibilities on Cardano's grid, you will see that your odds actually improve if you change doors.

The key to this puzzle is that the door the M.C. opens is not chosen at random. (He's not going to ruin the game by prematurely revealing the car.) As in the two-daughter problem, the additional information skews the odds, and with Cardano's method you can make a rational, though counterintuitive, decision. [continue]

Here's a second review:

Win some, lose some

A chance is what you take when you cannot calculate the odds. If the odds are in your favour, then in the long run, you'll win. What are the chances that you could flip a coin 10 million times and get heads every time? Very high, according to probability theory. Go on flipping and, over a period almost indistinguishable from eternity, you'd get myriad uninterrupted stretches of heads or tails. The catch is you'd never know whether you were in a stretch of 10 million consecutive wins or losses until after the event.

That is the second lesson of this delightful book: risky ventures, long shots and random outcomes have a way of looking like good bets, but only after the event. Almost everything that happens in life is contingent upon a series of unconscious gambles: of turnings taken, of chance encounters and unconsidered choices - in short, the drunkard's walk of the title. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, it was easy enough to track back to the warning signs and condemn the high command for not having read them correctly. But this was to impose a selected pattern on what - before the bombs began to fall - would have been a bewildering array of conflicting intelligence amassed over many months from listening posts around the globe. Pearl Harbor wasn't a random event - somebody planned it - but until it had happened, such an attack could have been predicted in many places, or not at all. The dilemma for all gamblers is: just because such a thing is probable, does that mean it is going to happen this time?

The answer depends on how you calculate the odds. The odds at the start of the OJ Simpson trial certainly seemed against an acquittal, but a clever defence lawyer called Alan Dershowitz helped the jury to think constructively about probabilities. Around four million American women were beaten up by their husbands or boyfriends each year, he argued, but in 1992 only 1,432 had been murdered by their partners. So the probability that the African-American sports star turned actor had committed the fatal assault was actually one in 2,500. The jury were impressed by the calculation, but, as Mlodinow points out, it was the wrong calculation. In fact, the prosecution should have demonstrated that the same data told another story: that since Nicole Brown Simpson had already been murdered, the probabilities had to be considered differently. Of all those battered wives and girlfriends who had been murdered in the US, 90% had been murdered by their abusers. [continue]
 Robert Jordan "Wheel of Time" fans? tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2012-09-10:2182797:Topic:2049473 2012-09-10T17:11:00.518Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd
I am guilty of only getting to book 7 of the series but I plan of re-reading and then reading them all but it is a LOT of a richly written world to get through.

I am guilty of only getting to book 7 of the series but I plan of re-reading and then reading them all but it is a LOT of a richly written world to get through.
 Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2012-09-04:2182797:Topic:2044943 2012-09-04T21:08:15.107Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd
The book we've just finished reading is titled, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats by Gwynne Dyer, 2008, 2010 Oneworld Publications ISBN: 978-1-85168-814-2…

The book we've just finished reading is titled, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats by Gwynne Dyer, 2008, 2010 Oneworld Publications ISBN: 978-1-85168-814-2

This was most somber reading. The book has some future scenarios which explain how we will have gotten to some situation, and then explains the results of that. It goes from bad scenarios, to worse scenarios, to awful scenarios, to extinction-level scenarios. It writes in a future historical way, explaining how we got to some situation. This is certainly not bedtime reading – that is, unless you're a cynic like I am, and live your everyday life knowing that global destruction is a certainty. It talks of global warming. The book talks about CO2 parts per million – that we began to get concerned when it reached 350 ppm, on the way to 400 ppm, then 450, and it will probably reach 500 ppm. Global warming at 2C degrees would have an impact, but would be surmountable. Global warming at 5C degrees would be devastating. The author even goes into a scenario of 9C degree increase over time, which really would cause a global extinction – the end of life on earth as we know it.

By about 2030 – or 18 years from now – is when this problem looks to become crisis level. However, the crisis may begin in months – or even weeks – from this writing in August 2012.

This is especially troublesome because as the polar regions melt, CO2 will be released from ancient ice and sea floors which have been frozen for millennia.

Moreover, what can be done about it? It is technically feasible to reduce our use of fossil fuels drastically, and even continue to run our lights, our heaters, and our cars. There are a lot of "feel good" ways this can be done – everything from riding your bike, driving less, turning down the heater, and using alternative fuels such as ethanol. These will likely have little effect. It will take implementing some already proven technologies, including the use of algae as fuel, and generating electricity from waves as well as wind. It will take some reforestation, and a change in dietary habits – which will certainly be unpopular. As things stand, with the US having pulled out of the Kyoto treaty, emerging economies including China, India, and Brazil having been exempt from it, and global politics being what they are, it seems unlikely that emissions will be brought down in time to not cause drastic problems. These problems include the tropical regions and the lower latitudes of the temperate region to no longer be suitable for growing crops, and large migrations of refugees from the areas near the equator to the higher latitudes will likely happen – and many will find borders closed to them, leaving them to starve.

Farming methods may need to change, for instance, crops may be planted earlier than they have been historically, and but they will have a short growing season as they'll need to harvest them before it gets too hot and they die off. They'll be able to plant a second crop after the heat of summer cools down, but it will need to be harvested before freeze. Long-season crops may not be possible to grow, or only in a few regions of earth. Crop failures will become commonplace.

This will take some cooperation of all of the nations of the world – and the wealthier nations helping the poorer nations to industrialize in a way that creates less greenhouse gases. If we fail to help these poorer nations – and they will industrialize using what they have – meaning fossil fuels, the same way the industrialized nations started, they too will contribute to this problem that has come into being since the early 1800s – the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, national economics, global economics, nor international cooperation seem likely to turn this necessity into reality. The question is will this situation change so as to turn it around before it is too late? In short, the situation will almost surely become much worse before it gets better. Even if the problem is ended today, inertia will keep the heat increasing for awhile. I doubt that the problem will be addressed effectively at all until the obvious situation becomes critical – and then it is far too late.

Part of the effect of global warming is changing of the air currents, and rainfall, leading to droughts or desertification in some areas which may be farmlands now, and at the same time lead to torrential rains in other areas, as well as intensified tropical storms – leading to more torrential rain in some affected areas. Some areas, including parts of northern Canada and northern Russia, will benefit from global warming for their growing seasons – at least temporarily.

The worst is if it gets warm enough, and ocean currents stop circulating as they have been, leaving large areas of sea floors without oxygen – causing the anaerobic bacteria on sea floors to flourish, and burp out hydrogen sulfate, which is a deadly gas. This situation is called a "Canfield Ocean", and is now believed to be the cause of how previous cycles of global warming led to mass extinction events. After all, if it was just that the area a life form lived in had gotten too warm, it would seem that animals would migrate, and seeds would be blown or otherwise carried into a better environment for them. It's not a problem of the climate in a given area becoming warmer, but rather the problem of the planetary climate system going amok when temperatures get out of its narrow range. It is this situation which are believed to have caused all of the extinction level events, with the sole exception of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) event of 65 million years ago, now believed to have been caused by a meteor strike near the Yukatan which killed the dinosaurs. Will it happen again in about another 150 years or so? The Black Sea has had this phenomenon occurring for many years simply because it does not have water circulation. Dead zones in the oceans, including the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, and the Atlantic are documented by NASA. NASA's article blames fertilizer run-off for the dead zones. These are another cause of an anoxic, or non-oxygenated water near the floor of the sea. Ocean currents stopping their flow will make the problem much much bigger.

There are some mentions of some untried, unproven, or even uninvented technologies which could be used to stave this off. The question is are we going to get started immediately, or in the next few years, on some of the proven technologies? I don't believe this is the time to be placing all of our hopes on some airy-fairy, hopes of future generations' inventions. We've failed to start using the proven technologies, which we could have and needed to put into use during the 1980s, but the political and economic powers that existed then did not see a problem. A large number of people still do not see a problem. Time is rapidly running out, and we can no longer wait for new technologies to be invented or developed.

That does seem to be changing. In August, 2012, MarketWatch, from the Wall Street Journal, not a publication known for its sensationalism but respected for its financial perspectives says in their article WWIII: Great commodities war to end all wars?:

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, WWIII: The Great Commodities War to End All Wars. We've heard that before. Remember WWI, known as The War to End All Wars, 37 million casualties. WWII was bigger, 60 million. Will WWIII finally end all wars? Or end the world, civilization, planet?

And it's already started folks, ending the Great American Dream.

Fasten your seat belts, soon we'll all be shocked out of denial. Some unpredictable black swan. A global wake-up call will trigger the Pentagon's prediction in Fortune a decade ago at the launch of the Iraq War: "By 2020 … an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies is emerging … warfare defining human life."

Full article available at http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-08-07/commentary/33066875_1_wwiii-war-preparations-iraq-war

They're not the only ones.

Also in August, 2012, IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis- a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs asks, "FOOD: How bad is the crisis?" In their article they note that there are droughts in major food producing countries throughout the world, and there may be little available for export and less still for food aid to starving countries. In July, they also published an article, "FOOD: Another crisis coming?" They correctly note in that article that 2012 temperatures are the highest on record; the highest since 1895 when the US government began keeping records. They also note that temperatures in the US states of Georgia and South Carolina – corn (maize) growing areas – rose as high as 45C! That is well beyond 40C, the temperature at which all life loses its vigor, and quickly begins to die off.

The 0.6C degrees is a global average. It may be much much hotter in some local areas.

It is interesting to note that the author of the book Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats predicted a drought in the summer of 2012. That's precisely what we've seen! That seems to lend the book and its author some credibility.

I highly recommend reading this book. Get it from your local library, or buy a copy from your local book store or over the Internet. "This is the most important book you'll read this year." – quoted from Planet Green (from the book's back cover)
 Why do they all have "happy endings" tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2012-07-24:2182797:Topic:2012294 2012-07-24T12:44:29.524Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd
Through the years I have read hundreds of books, and i have noticed that I see less and less stories that end without a happy resolution. i recently went back and read 1984 and I am Legend, While these were amazing books, neither one of them would have what I would call a happy ending. I can't be the only one who liked…

Through the years I have read hundreds of books, and i have noticed that I see less and less stories that end without a happy resolution. i recently went back and read 1984 and I am Legend, While these were amazing books, neither one of them would have what I would call a happy ending. I can't be the only one who liked this style of writing, i just can't seem to find any current stories like this.

Any recommendations?
 Raven's Gate, by Anthony Horowitz tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2012-05-19:2182797:Topic:1955378 2012-05-19T01:19:16.278Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd

Raven's Gate, by Anthony Horowitz

I ran across this audio book at the library, not knowing anything about it or the author. But it was the kind of book I tend to like—supernatural horror and mystery. In many ways the book is completely unoriginal. Everything about it—from the characters to the dialogue to the plot—is a textbook…

Raven's Gate, by Anthony Horowitz

I ran across this audio book at the library, not knowing anything about it or the author. But it was the kind of book I tend to like—supernatural horror and mystery. In many ways the book is completely unoriginal. Everything about it—from the characters to the dialogue to the plot—is a textbook cliché. I'm talking secretive witch covens, sinister cats, gateways to other worlds, secret societies that preserve the legends (read, truths) of antiquity, evidence that the world of science and reason is only "part of the story," and that an older and more magical world exists along with it (only veiled by the disbelief of a society that thinks it knows all there is to know), human sacrifices, magical talismans, pophetic dreams, and children holding the key to salvation. You get the idea.

In short, it is written exactly like stories like this are supposed to be written. Yet in spite of this, I find the book to be completely enjoyable, and mostly for two reasons: it is well-written by Horowitz, and expertly narrated by the British actor Simon Preeble. In spite of the clichés, Horowitz weaves a story that seems plausible with a writing style that is clean and competent.

I'm just on my last CD, so I'm don't yet know how it ends (or do I?), but this is only book one of five, so things don't end here. I'm enjoying it and I recommend it if you like the genre.

Here's info on the plot from Wikipedia:

Raven's Gate is the first book in The Power of Five series, written by Anthony Horowitz. It is followed by Evil Star, released in 2006, Nightrise in 2007, and Necropolis in 2008, with the final book Oblivion due October 2012.

Matt Freeman is a fourteen year old boy who lives in Ipswich with his aunt, Gwenda Davis, who turns out to be an antagonist in Evil Star . He lives with her because his parents died in a car crash when he was eight years old. While living with his aunt, he breaks into a warehouse filled with electronic equipment with his friend, Kelvin Johnson. After they get caught, Matt is sent to Yorkshire on the L.E.A.F. (Liberty and Education Achieved through Fostering) Project, which involves sending troubled children into the countryside to get away from city temptations. Matt's foster parent is a woman named Jayne Deverill, who lives on a farm with a strange farmhand named Noah, who doesn't talk much.

When Matt goes down to the nearby village of Lesser Malling on an errand for Mrs. Deverill he receives a warning from a strange man. The man warns him to get away from Lesser Malling before it is too late. So Matt tries to escape, and while trying to find some money he goes into Mrs. Deverill's bedroom and finds a copy of the police report detailing his parents' deaths and his clairvoyant powers. Matt tries to escape Hive Hall by stealing the bike of Mrs. Deverill's missing husband. He tries to ride away, but finds it impossible to escape, because which ever way he goes, he always ends up back at the same intersection in the forest he started at. He hears strange whispers and sees a light in the trees.

After a while, He discovers Omega One, an abandoned nuclear power station, in the woods and meets the man from Lesser Malling again. The man introduces himself as Tom Burgess, gives Matt a charm that prevents him from going in circles like before, and tells Matt to meet him at his house. Matt visits his house the next day and finds Tom Burgess murdered, with the words "Raven's Gate" painted on the wall in red. Matt runs away as fast as possible, then finds the police and tells them what he saw. They go back to the house where a woman named Miss Creevy says that Tom Burgess has gone to tend to his sheep and visit someone far away. He shows the police officers the scene where he saw Tom Burgess's body, but finds nothing. The words painted on the wall have been painted over.

To get information about Raven's Gate, he finds a book by someone called Elizabeth Ashwood, but the chapter on Raven's Gate is ripped out. When he searches on the Internet, an instant-mail box appears, and a man called Professor Sanjay Dravid talks to him, asking Matt who he is. Matt tells him his name, then the pop-up window disappears. The librarian tells Matt to go to the Greater Malling Gazette to find articles on Raven's Gate, and there he meets Richard Cole, a young journalist working there. Matt tells his story to him, but Cole doesn't believe him. And oddly, when he leaves the Gazette he finds Mrs. Deverill waiting for him with Noah. They forcefully take Matt back to Hive Hall.

Later that night, Matt wakes up to see another light coming from Omega One, even though he found out from the gazette that it hadn't been used in 20 years. Matt knows something is going on and explores the woods. Near the power station he finds an old witchcraft ceremony going on with all the inhabitants of Lesser Malling involved. The power station lights are coming on and men are carrying materials into the building. Matt is noticed and Mrs Deverill summons some gruesome hounds from a fire to kill Matt. While Matt is being chased, he accidentally falls into a bog and begins to sink. Richard Cole arrives and rescues him, as Matt had used his power to call for help. The dogs arrive and Richard kills them by getting a can of gasoline stuffed with a handkerchief, lights it of fire, then throws it at the dogs setting them on fire. They then go back to Richard's house in York. [continue]

 Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2012-04-28:2182797:Topic:1937182 2012-04-28T01:59:15.360Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd
This has been on my list for some time, and I finally got around to listening to the audio book. Fascinating book. It is informative, funny, and well-written. The audio book was also read by a competent narrator, just don't ask me his name at the moment. If you're interested in why we behave as we do -- when shopping, eating, etc., then read this book.

I'm not going to say much about it. Instead I'm just going to include some of the…

This has been on my list for some time, and I finally got around to listening to the audio book. Fascinating book. It is informative, funny, and well-written. The audio book was also read by a competent narrator, just don't ask me his name at the moment. If you're interested in why we behave as we do -- when shopping, eating, etc., then read this book.

I'm not going to say much about it. Instead I'm just going to include some of the Wikipedia entry, which covers the book pretty thoroughly. I'm not particularly interested in economics, but I do find behavioral economics engaging. - Dallas

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely

[Dan Ariely] challenges readers' assumptions about making decisions based on rational thought. Ariely explains, "My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are--how we repeat them again and again--I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them".

The Truth about Relativity
 In chapter 1, Ariely describes the ways in which people frequently regard their environment in terms of their relation to others; it is the way that the human brain is wired. People not only compare things, but also compare things that are easily comparable.[2] For example, if given the following options for a honeymoon - Paris (with free breakfast), Rome (with free breakfast), and Rome (no breakfast included), most people would probably choose Rome with the free breakfast. The rationale is that it is easier to compare the two options for Rome than it is to compare Paris and Rome. Ariely also explains the role of the decoy effect (or asymmetric dominance effect) in the decision process. The decoy effect is the phenomenon whereby consumers will tend to have a specific change in preference between two options when also presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated. This effect is the "secret agent" in many decisions. In the example with the honeymoon options, Rome without free breakfast is the decoy. (It makes Rome with breakfast look superior to Rome without breakfast. Comparing Rome and Paris is difficult, so the easy comparison of Rome makes it more likely to choose Rome over Paris.) It makes Paris look inferior when compared to Rome with the free breakfast. Relativity helps people make decisions but it can also make them miserable. People compare their lives to those of others, leading to jealousy and envy. Ariely finishes the chapter by saying "the more we have, the more we want" [3] and his suggested cure is to break the cycle of relativity. To break the cycle, people can control what goes on around them. The focus on smaller "circles" can boost relative happiness, as can changing this focus from narrow to broad. When considering upgrading a phone, the consumer could think about what else they could buy with the money they would spend on the upgrade.

The Cost of Free
 In chapter 3, Ariely explains how humans react to the words "free" and "zero". Humans make decisions without rationalizing the outcomes of their choices. To illustrate this point, Ariely conducted multiple experiments. The outcome was consistent: when faced with multiple choices, the free option was commonly chosen. With the opportunity to receive something for free, the actual value of the product or service is no longer considered. Ariely claims, "Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside. FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is." [5]

Ariely's concept of "FREE!" applies not only to monetary and quantitative costs, but also to time. We forgo some of our time when we wait in line for free popcorn or to enter a museum on a free-entrance day. We could have been doing something else at that time. Ultimately, he demonstrates how such a simple concept can be used to drive business and social policy. For example, to reduce health cost, companies could offer free regular checks. Employees would be more willing to get them at zero cost rather than paying some amount of money. Ariely recommends the consideration of the net benefits of the choices we make regarding both preference and money. Perhaps we would get the better deal and even save money if we did not react to free the way we do.

Emotion in Decision Making
 In chapter 6, Ariely collaborated with close friend George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, to test the influence of arousal on decision making in high-emotion situations. Ariely and Loewenstein chose to test the effects of sexual arousal on decision-making in college-aged men at University of California, Berkeley. By using computers to stimulate sexual arousal, they determined that in a stimulated state, the young men were more likely to undergo an action that they would not normally consider. Using the data, Ariely argues that other high-emotion situations such as anger, frustration, and hunger have the potential to trigger similar effects on decision-making. In such situations our behavior is fully controlled by emotions. We are not the people we thought we were. No matter how much experience we have we make irrational decisions every time we are under the influence of arousal. Furthermore, he presents ideas to improve our decision-making abilities in other emotion-provoking situations such as safe sex, safe driving, and making other life decisions. For example, Ariely proposes an OnStar system that could potentially lower the number of car accidents in teenagers by performing tasks such as changing the car's temperature or dialing the teenager's mother when the car exceeds a set speed.

The Problem of Procrastination and Self-control
 In chapter 7, over the last decade Americans have shown surprisingly little self-control. Ariely blames this lack of self-control on people's two states in which they make their judgments—cool state and hot state. In our cool state we make rational long-term decisions, whereas in our hot state we give in to immediate gratification and put off our decisions made in the cool state.

Ariely describes putting off these goals for immediate gratification as procrastination.[7] With proper motivators such as deadlines and penalties, people are more willing to meet deadlines or long-term goals. The author states that based on his experience with his students, deadlines set by authority figures such as teachers and supervisors make us start working on a specific task earlier. If we set the deadlines ourselves, we might not perform well. Moreover, we will not start making any progress towards the completion of the task until the deadline approaches.

Ariely also applies his theories to other aspects in life such as health care and savings. Having to pay a deposit at the doctor's office would make people more likely not to procrastinate and show up for their appointments. He goes on to say that if more consequences were put into effect, people would be more likely to meet their goals, appointments, deadlines, etc. made in a cool state. Ariely also elaborates on his idea of self-control credit cards. When applying for such a card, users can decide how much they can spend in each category and what would happen when they exceed their limit.

The High Price of Ownership
 In chapter 8, Ariely discusses how we overvalue what we have, and why we make irrational decisions about ownership. The idea of ownership makes us perceive the value of an object to be much higher than if we do not own the object. This illustrates the phenomenon of the endowment effect -- placing a higher value on property once possession has been assigned. The author begins the chapter by using an example of how a lottery for highly sought-after Duke University basketball tickets inflates students' sense of value for the tickets. Students who actually received the tickets valued them ten times more than the students who did not receive them.

Ariely gives three reasons why we do not always think rationally when it comes to our possessions:

1.Ownership is such a big part of our society that we tend to focus on what we may lose rather than on what we may gain.

2.The connection we feel to the things we own makes it difficult for us to dispose of them.

3.We assume that people will see the transaction through our eyes.

Ariely also lists the "peculiarities" of ownership as he calls them. One of them is that the harder we work on something, the more we start feeling about them as our own. Take assembling a piece of furniture as an example. Another peculiarity is that sometimes, the sense of ownership comes before the actual ownership, e.g. online auctions. To avoid the endowment effect, Ariely suggests that we create a barrier between ourselves and the material things we are tempted by daily.

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST

Predictably Irrational on Amazon.com
 Behavioral Economics on Wikipedia
 Dan Ariely's Official Site at MIT
 Dan Ariely's Blog
 Dan Ariely's Profile & Talks on TED.com
 Dan Ariely Interviews on NPR.org

 I Don't Believe in Atheists, by Chris Hedges tag:www.atheistnexus.org,2011-12-12:2182797:Topic:1779434 2011-12-12T18:05:07.179Z La Gaya Sienza http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/robbrownsyd
I do not know a lot about Chris Hedges, but he has always struck me as a very decent man who is genuinely concerned about the welfare of his fellow man. I've read several of his articles, but none of his books. However, I just finished listening to I Don't Believe in Atheists, a critique of what he calls atheist fundamentalism.

As always, I prefer that you interpret this review as my take on (or understanding of) the book, and not as an authoritative retelling on what…

I do not know a lot about Chris Hedges, but he has always struck me as a very decent man who is genuinely concerned about the welfare of his fellow man. I've read several of his articles, but none of his books. However, I just finished listening to I Don't Believe in Atheists, a critique of what he calls atheist fundamentalism.

As always, I prefer that you interpret this review as my take on (or understanding of) the book, and not as an authoritative retelling on what the author is trying to say. I could certainly get something wrong here, so please read his book first before drawing any final conclusions.

First and foremost, this is not a book about proof for the existence of god. Nor is it a tirade against atheists for not believing in a divine entity.

Rather, I Don't Believe in Atheists is a critique of what Hedges (and others I suppose) call the New Atheists – nonbelievers that he claims are just as fundamentalist and unyielding in their beliefs as fundamentalist theists are—naming, in particular, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, E. O. Wilson, and Richard Dawkins.

In my opinion, the book is rather poorly named because it doesn't clearly convey what the book is about, and because Hedges doesn't just take on the New Atheists within its pages. He also takes on fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, and draws parallels between these two and the New Atheists. (The paperback edition was subsequently retitled When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists.)

Fundamentalist Christians believe in creationism, angels and demons, prescriptive morality, and an idyllic utopia in which all of man is converted to the one true religion, and spends the rest of their time on earth serving and worshiping god. These people, Hedges says, are delusional. They believe in irrational things and cling to views of human nature that do not correspond with the historical behavior of the human race.

But the New Atheists, those who preach the gospel of science and reason, are equally delusional, he claims, because they too believe in utopian ideals about the betterment and perfection of humanity. They claim that if we can just eliminate irrational religion in society, teach science and reason, and dispense with superstition and magical thinking, that one day we can have a peaceful world based on mutual respect, tolerance, and understanding. Then and only then will true progress be made. But human history does not support this view, either.

Knowledge and science are morally neutral. They can be used by good people towards good ends, and by bad people towards bad ends. They cannot save humanity from itself. Evil is not a problem which can be solved. Rather, it is a mystery of human nature. A mystery we will never be rid of. A curse we cannot escape.

All we can hope to do is resist it. Shame it. Suppress it. Work against it. But we will never eliminate it. And those who preach either the gospel of a dogmatic religion as salvation or of science and reason as salvation are kidding both themselves and those who believe them.

Because we have a well-documented history, and because we see culture and technology as continually moving forward and building upon the past, we mistakenly believe that we are progressing morally at the same rate – that moral virtue evolves as quickly as our scientific understanding of the world around us.

But we're not, and it doesn't. Neither the dogma of fanatical religion nor advances in science, reason, and technology have made us more humane. They have not influenced our moral instincts. We are just as capable and willing to prey upon our fellow man as we have always been (and Hedges provides many examples to prove his point). Both religion and secularism, he says, can rationalize horrendous acts of violence for a perceived benefit to human moral and social progress. If we can just eliminate the undesirables, the non-conformists, the ones who don't share our views and won't play along with our vision of the future, then, and only then, will we truly fulfill our human potential.

Hedges answer to all this is what I believe he believes to be authentic religion. To him, true religion is about community, compassion, and tolerance. It is about helping the needy and embracing the outcast. It is not about abortion rights, adultery, gay marriage, divine judgment, or an unyielding dogma.

This, we are to suppose, is the religion that Hedges practices. Well, perhaps it is. I don't know him so I can't say for sure, though I do get the impression that he is definitely the type of person who would strive for this ideal – who would make these values his own. But the flaw in this, or perhaps I should say the irony, is that he is advocating, on a basic level, what fundamentalist Christians and the New Atheists are advocating: that the world would be a much better place if the rest of us were like them. And it is hard not to wonder if he is not being a bit too idyllic, as well. I mean, how many people do you know who are like this?

I am tempted to say that he is wearing rose-colored glasses. But upon reflection, Hedges's experiences as a war correspondent, as a man who's seen the worst of human nature, does not allow one to accept that he is simply being naïve.

In many ways, I Don't Believe in Atheists is both a cynical and sobering. I can certainly see some of myself in his criticisms, and for that, I'm glad. Things that challenge us are always so much more interesting than things that flatter us.

However, I do think the book had its share of flaws. In the first part of the book, he drones on and on about the New Atheists being this and that, and this and that, and this and that, to the point of tedium. It's like, okay, I get it already! Can we move on?

I also think that he was a bit too forgiving of religiosity and I don't think he was always being fair to Hitch, Dennett, et al, but as I have not read their entire collected writings, I cannot say with certainty how accurately he portrayed their views. (Though some of the Sam Harris quotes were quite troubling.)

Additionally, words like "sacred," "transcendent," and "reverence" appeared way too often for my comfort. Generally speaking I have no use for those kinds of words, because I don't believe in any of them, and they lend themselves too readily to extremism, I think.

Well, I still have many more notes jotted down, so I could probably say a lot more about this book, but since this review is already pretty long, I'll leave it with this: While I don't agree with everything Hedges said, and while I'm not yet convinced he was always fair and objective, I would definitely recommend I Don't Believe in Atheists.

As for me, I'm still not quite prepared to issue a final judgment on the book. I cannot reconcile some of what I believe with his claims. And that's fine. It is certainly worth revisiting in the future, and I hope to do just that. And while I would not consider it a masterpiece, it is an important book that asks you to reconsider your views instead of one that just placates them.

MORE LINKS
Wikipedia page for Chris Hedges
Interview with Chris Hedges
Book link at Amazon.com
Review and comments (vey mixed) at GoodReads.com

I am also attaching the first six tracks of CD one.


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