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SS O'Connor

Why is life like a poker game? How did a failed robbery help to explain human 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 once more uses his easy-going, conversational style to explain how the science of decision analysis developed, and why it has come to show us not only the reasoning behind how humans arrive at their choices in life, but why so much of the apparently bizarre behaviour of the natural world has the same hard logic to it.
Instead of the confusion and chaos one might expect, O'Connor lays out how the options organisms face when they interact can actually be analysed, and how we humans then refined this process through the addition of our intelligence and language skills. 
Starting with the extraordinary new ways of thinking that Adam Smith opened the world's eyes to, the book progresses to the 20th century - and shows how the mathematical reasoning behind our thought processes was revealed at a time when the very future of the world was at stake. 
From these earliest investigations, through to the fevered disagreements of later experts, this third volume of the Secrets of Life series explains how the science of game theory illuminates the reasons for our behaviour. In particular, the book provides insights into how the interests of the individual should be balanced against those of the group, and why the mechanism of trading would extend far further into our lives than we could ever have imagined. 
As the story unfolds it becomes ever clearer how cooperation has evolved to be the catalyst at every level of life. It explains how it was the force that built our world, and why it would settle so deeply in our hardwiring that it's become instinctive and innate in us. Perhaps most pleasingly, the same logic also shows that the benefits of collaboration are always bound to ratchet upwards - and how this will inevitably lead humans to ever-increasing levels of moral behaviour.

Otium Press

The Secrets of Life Series: From Big Bang to Trump

Why Do We All Behave In The Way We Do?

Why are humans neither 'good' nor 'bad'? How can so much chaos and confusion in the world actually lead to order? Why are we so often wrong when we're asked if the world's getting better? 
In this, the last book in The Secrets of Life quartet, SS O'Connor pulls together the threads of genetic and cultural evolution, and then adds to these the conclusions of evolutionary game theory. As he does this, he ends with an intertwined narrative that explains why so many of the phenomena of our existence may not be the mysteries we think they are, but could in fact have the same underlying logic to them. 
By examining the great currents at work in our collective story, the role that competition and cooperation have always played in the development of the world, and why each behavioural strategy is rational in what it's attempting to achieve, the book shows that the same cycles of collaboration and destruction have been present since time began. 
But while the success of these strategies may ebb and flow, it is their interaction that results in the balance and order we see around us. This current is also the consistent vector of our human history. 
Although we may have animal origins, and are also driven by the same need to respond to the profound Laws of Thermodynamics, we have developed our culture to the point where we can now choose to overrule so many of the instructions of our genes. 
Why do we do this? What are the problems that arise from our free will? How have we come to realise that self-interest is quite different from selfishness? Why have we become obsessed with the need for fairness and trust in our societies? 
And how have these forces resulted in us making the world a better place? Few of us believe this can be the case. But as the evidence of our progress becomes ever clearer, the series concludes by showing us why we are often wrong in our view of each other, and why we're so frequently mistaken in our pessimism about the future.

The Secrets of Life Series: From Big Bang to Trump

The Secrets of Life Series: From Big Bang to Trump

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