A Dangerous Delusion

A Dangerous Delusion
Author: Peter Oborne
Publisher: Elliott & Thompson
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Iran
ISBN: 9781908739896

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The definitive case against military action in Iran, passionately argued and meticulously researched In 2013 it is possible that Israel, backed by the United States, will launch an attack on Iran. This would be a catastrophic event, risking war, bloodshed, and global economic collapse. In this passionate but rationally argued essay, the authors attempt to avert a potential global catastrophe by showing that the grounds for war do not exist, that there are no Iranian nuclear weapons, and that Iran would happily come to a table and strike a deal. They argue that the military threats aimed by the West against Iran contravene international law, and argue that Iran is a civilized country and legitimate power across the Middle East. For years Peter Oborne and David Morrison have, in their respective fields, examined the actions of our political classes and found them wanting. Now they have joined forces to make a powerful case against military action. In the wake of the Iraq war, will the politicians listen?

Dangerous Delusion

Dangerous Delusion
Author: Anne Penne
Publisher:
Total Pages: 158
Release: 1960
Genre:
ISBN:

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Dangerous Delusion

Dangerous Delusion
Author: Anne PENN (pseud.)
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 1960
Genre:
ISBN:

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The Delusions of Crowds

The Delusions of Crowds
Author: William J. Bernstein
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 491
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0802157114

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This “disturbing yet fascinating” exploration of mass mania through the ages explains the biological and psychological roots of irrationality (Kirkus Reviews). From time immemorial, contagious narratives have spread through susceptible groups—with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay’s nineteenth-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, neurologist and author William Bernstein examines mass delusion through the lens of current scientific research in The Delusions of Crowds. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last five hundred years—from the Anabaptist Madness of the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that pervade today’s polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles. Through Bernstein’s supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their “desire to improve one’s well-being in this life or the next.” Bernstein’s chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania. He observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of this all-too-human phenomenon, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.

Deadly Delusions

Deadly Delusions
Author: Barry Mauer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2020-08-24
Genre:
ISBN:

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"Prescient." "An important piece of work." "While reading it, I was thinking this could be me writing this book, except it is much better articulated." "Diagnoses the condition and recommends decisive action." "Accessible to a mixed audience: both the general population and to an academic-based audience." "We need more bluntness like Mauer's." "The cartoon section as a stand-alone is great for students and even as a coffee table book. The graphics alone could draw one in. Someone sitting in your living room could easily pick it up and learn some extremely important basics pertaining to the right-wing media machine and ideology. It could pique their interest." "Mauer's book makes clear in its straightforward and blunt approach how urgent it is for us to address this issue. He tackles the issue from every side, from how the disinformation has trickled down and deceived his students, to how dangerous it can be to society as a whole and what we can and can't do about it." "Mauer speaks frankly and clearly about the dangerous delusions of the Right." Jen Senko, Director of The Brainwashing of My Dad Educators want their students to live healthy, ethical lives within a healthy, ethical society. But an enormous obstacle stands in the way: a right-wing cult that poses an existential threat to personal and collective well-being. This cult, tens of millions strong, blocks efforts to address all other major problems including climate change, racism, economic exploitation, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet many people fail to see the right wing for the serious threat that it is. Often, those who do take the threat seriously lack a holistic understanding of the problem and grossly underestimate the difficulty of confronting it. The rise of an anti-intellectual, science-hating, rage-driven right wing is the culmination of sustained efforts by right wing organizations coinciding with multi-systemic failures in the domains of journalism, education, and politics. The right wing is dragging the world to doom and furiously blocking all attempts by good people to stop it. We are witnessing the suicide of human civilization and the closing of all opportunities to intervene effectively. We need a wake-up call, a proper diagnosis of our condition, and decisive action.Our situation has become so extreme that the proper terms for it - the president is a psychopath; his followers are delusional fanatics locked in a genocidal cult - sound like hyperbolic and childish name calling. The very words required to diagnose our condition have been banished from mainstream public discourse by decorum, disbelief, and a misbegotten sense of fairness. While we debate whether such terminology is appropriate, right-wing pathologies have grown more malignant and engrained in our society. We are at an impasse.

Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain

Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain
Author: Shankar Vedantam
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0393652211

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A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2021 A Next Big Idea Club Best Nonfiction of 2021 From the New York Times best-selling author and host of Hidden Brain comes a thought-provoking look at the role of self-deception in human flourishing. Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being. The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter. Filled with powerful personal stories and drawing on new insights in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Useful Delusions offers a fascinating tour of what it really means to be human.

Delusions and the Madness of the Masses

Delusions and the Madness of the Masses
Author: Lawrie Reznek
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2010
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1442206055

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We all think that we can tell the difference between someone who is mad, or whom psychiatrists call psychotic, and someone who is sane. But can we really tell who is mad and who is not? Do we really know what madness is and how it should be recognized? Have psychiatrists made a sensible distinction between the patient who believes that aliens are beaming messages to him from a foreign planet, and the religious fanatic who believes God communicates to him via automatic writing? Is there a difference between the paranoid patient who believes that the FBI is after him, and the sizeable proportion of our normal population that believe that the US government orchestrated the 9-11 bombings? Here, Reznek hopes to shed light on the delusions of the masses-those delusions that are common to everyday people living so-called ordinary lives. He provides an understanding of madness and the psychological processes that drive us to adopt delusions, arguing that it is a mistake to view only schizophrenic patients as delusional, while excluding large groups of society from such an analysis. If we abandon the idea that whole communities cannot share a delusion, we can come to a better understanding about why the world is such a dangerous place.

The Delusion

The Delusion
Author: Laura Gallier
Publisher: NavPress
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1496422406

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2018 Christy Award winner! By March of Owen Edmonds’s senior year, eleven students at Masonville High School have committed suicide. Amid the media frenzy and chaos, Owen tries to remain levelheaded—until he endures his own near-death experience and wakes to a distressing new reality. The people around him suddenly appear to be shackled and enslaved. Owen frantically seeks a cure for what he thinks are crazed hallucinations, but his delusions become even more sinister. An army of hideous, towering beings, unseen by anyone but Owen, are preying on his girlfriend and classmates, provoking them to self-destruction. Owen eventually arrives at a mind-bending conclusion: he’s not imagining the evil—everyone else is blind to its reality. He must warn and rescue those he loves . . . but this proves to be no simple mission. Will he be able to convince anyone to believe him before it’s too late? Owen’s heart-pounding journey through truth and delusion will force him to reconsider everything he believes. He both longs for and fears the answers to questions that are quickly becoming too dangerous to ignore.

The AI Delusion

The AI Delusion
Author: Gary Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2018-08-23
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0192557793

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We live in an incredible period in history. The Computer Revolution may be even more life-changing than the Industrial Revolution. We can do things with computers that could never be done before, and computers can do things for us that could never be done before. But our love of computers should not cloud our thinking about their limitations. We are told that computers are smarter than humans and that data mining can identify previously unknown truths, or make discoveries that will revolutionize our lives. Our lives may well be changed, but not necessarily for the better. Computers are very good at discovering patterns, but are useless in judging whether the unearthed patterns are sensible because computers do not think the way humans think. We fear that super-intelligent machines will decide to protect themselves by enslaving or eliminating humans. But the real danger is not that computers are smarter than us, but that we think computers are smarter than us and, so, trust computers to make important decisions for us. The AI Delusion explains why we should not be intimidated into thinking that computers are infallible, that data-mining is knowledge discovery, and that black boxes should be trusted.