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The Half-life of Facts
- Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
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Publisher's summary
New insights from the science of science....
Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that Pluto was a planet. For decades, we were convinced that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing. But it turns out there’s an order to the state of knowledge, an explanation for how we know what we know.
Samuel Arbesman is an expert in the field of scientometrics - literally the science of science. Knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives. Doctors with a rough idea of when their knowledge is likely to expire can be better equipped to keep up with the latest research. Companies and governments that understand how long new discoveries take to develop can improve decisions about allocating resources. And by tracing how and when language changes, each of us can better bridge generational gaps in slang and dialect. Just as we know that a chunk of uranium can break down in a measurable amount of time - a radioactive half-life - so too any given field’s change in knowledge can be measured concretely.
We can know when facts in aggregate are obsolete, the rate at which new facts are created, and even how facts spread.
Arbesman takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries. He shows that much of what we know consists of “mesofacts” - facts that change at a middle timescale, often over a single human lifetime. Throughout, he offers intriguing examples about the face of knowledge: what English majors can learn from a statistical analysis of The Canterbury Tales, why it’s so hard to measure a mountain, and why so many parents still tell kids to eat their spinach because it’s rich in iron. The Half-life of Facts is a riveting journey into the counterintuitive fabric of knowledge. It can help us find new ways to measure the world while accepting the limits of how much we can know with certainty.
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- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than that - mathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true.
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Origins of Mathematics
- By Rick B on 07-08-21
By: Mario Livio
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Creation
- How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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What is life? Humans have been asking this question for thousands of years. But as technology has advanced and our understanding of biology has deepened, the answer has evolved. For decades, scientists have been exploring the limits of nature by modifying and manipulating DNA, cells, and whole organisms to create new ones that could never have previously existed on their own.
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The Goldilocks book on what is life
- By Gary on 07-11-13
By: Adam Rutherford
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13 Things That Don't Make Sense
- The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time
- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Science's best-kept secret is that there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. If history is any precedent, we should look to today's inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet 13 modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrow's breakthroughs.
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10 interesting chapters-read epiloge first
- By Stephen on 06-10-09
By: Michael Brooks
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Deep Truth
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- By: Gregg Braden
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- Unabridged
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A new world is emerging before our eyes, while the unsustainable world of the past struggles to continue. Both worlds reflect the beliefs of our past. Both exist - but only for now. Which world do you choose? Best-selling author and visionary scientist Gregg Braden suggests that the hottest issues that divide us as families, nations, and civilizations-seemingly separate concerns such as war, terror, abortion, suicide, genocide, the death penalty, poverty, economic collapse, and nuclear war - are actually related.
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Good Information
- By David on 08-13-12
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The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved
- How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry
- By: Mario Livio
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For thousands of years mathematicians solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations, until they encountered the quintic equation, which resisted solution for three centuries. Working independently, two prodigies ultimately proved that the quintic cannot be solved by a simple formula. The first popular account of the mathematics of symmetry and order, The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved is told not through abstract formulas but in a beautifully written and dramatic account of the lives and work of some of the greatest and most intriguing mathematicians in history.
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Historical Perspective Appreciated
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The Story of Western Science
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Far too often, public discussion of science is carried out by journalists, voters, and politicians who have received their science secondhand. The Story of Western Science shows us the joy and importance of reading groundbreaking science writing for ourselves and guides us back to the masterpieces that have changed the way we think about our world, our cosmos, and ourselves.
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Good text, tedious book structure
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By: Susan Wise Bauer
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The Theory That Would Not Die
- How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
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Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok. Sharon Bertsch McGrayne here explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it.
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Who is the intended audience?
- By Billy on 07-21-14
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When Einstein Walked with Gödel
- Excursions to the Edge of Thought
- By: Jim Holt
- Narrated by: David Stifel
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Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot.
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A good overview of scientific theory
- By MJ Walters on 09-11-18
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Significant Figures
- The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians
- By: Ian Stewart
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
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In Significant Figures, acclaimed mathematician Ian Stewart introduces the visionaries of mathematics throughout history. Delving into the lives of twenty-five great mathematicians, Stewart examines the roles they played in creating, inventing, and discovering the mathematics we use today. Through these short biographies, we get acquainted with the history of mathematics.
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Beware
- By Anton Kurtz on 12-08-18
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Why Information Grows
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- By: César Hidalgo
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What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.
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Great book!
- By bpjammin on 01-07-17
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The Great Mental Models
- General Thinking Concepts
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The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand. This volume details nine of the most versatile all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, your productivity, and how clearly you see the world.
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A dissapointing debut
- By Peter on 04-14-19
By: Shane Parrish
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What listeners say about The Half-life of Facts
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- M. R. Harrah
- 11-18-12
Misleading title
Is there anything you would change about this book?
I would have liked it to include more incidents and information about how things we take to be facts cease being so. The book was far more about the accretion of new facts and how we can predict that than it was about the retirement of old facts that are no longer considered true. Of the discussion that there was about facts going away, it was more about facts that were not actually proven to be errors...they tended to just become obsolete and irrelevant but still basically true.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Nashville spokes
- 03-05-13
Ground breaking knowledge
If you could sum up The Half-life of Facts in three words, what would they be?
The acquired perspective gained by understanding the fluid change of knowledge, that is the idea that facts have a life, is intimidating at first. By understanding how information changes the knowledge of facts, we can overcome our feelings of inadequacy when we do not think we know enough about a situation.
Knowledge changes and more importantly, not everyone is comfortable with that constantly changing landscape. This means that the marketplace is constantly changing because we can never have all the answers.
How liberating to know that decisions are made on known facts which are assumed to be true temporally!
I admired the painstakingly presented examples and the perspective of science, medicine and business.
I recommend this book highly.
What did you like best about this story?
The connection of the author to his father the scientist is powerfull.
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- Gary
- 02-14-13
Our understanding changes with our set of facts
Easy to follow book on the changing nature of facts and how they help make our current foundation for science. He illustrates his points by many great vignettes such as why even today spinach is falsely believed to contain a lot of iron. That story alone makes the book worth a listen.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Andy
- 12-23-12
it was true, once
Fascinating story of how what is true today will likely not be true tomorrow. Filled with real life examples of how this has been the case in the past and how it can even be predicted in the future.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Davin V. Jones
- 12-03-12
Author misrepresents what an actual 'fact' is.
What did you like best about The Half-life of Facts? What did you like least?
The overall story was ok and some really interesting insights were made. However, the author frequently conflates facts with our understanding of facts. He doesn't distinguish between temporal facts (like the current tallest building) with absolute facts (atomic properties). Also, his claim that facts change is flat out wrong. Facts don't change - that is what makes them 'facts'. Our understanding of what the facts are about something may alter or change as we learn more about things, but the facts are always the same. Even the temporal ones are constant, only requiring an extra dimension to quantify it.
One example of the misused logic the author uses is the magnetic properties of iron. He states that the magnetic properties changed over time as we became more capable of purifying the iron to measure it magnetic properties. This is wrong. The magnetic properties of iron never changed one bit. Our ability to measure the properties changed. The fact remained constant, our understanding of the fact improved.
While it seems that the author may actually understand these nuances, as some of the points he makes are very good and require this basic understanding; that he does not articulate this key difference can leave other readers with the wrong impression of what a fact is. This is what causes confusion when the general public argues against scientific knowledge (e.g. climate change or evolution) trying to claim that science is always wrong and our facts keep changing. By not distinguishing the difference, the author is reinforcing this perception.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Karen
- 03-05-13
Think!!!
That is the takeaway message from this book. What we think we know might be more opinion than fact. Try to think critically about EVERYTHING. Facts change. Keep up. Open your mind.
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- idin
- 08-15-16
The voice changes are annoying
Sean Pratt's performance and voice are great but there are many abrupt changes in narration as if new material has been injected and has been edited very poorly.
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- V. F. Golubic
- 09-29-16
The Changing World of Facts & Analytics
Great book. Highly recommended. Thoroughly enjoyed reading the various examples presented by the Author on how facts change through history.
Nothing is constant and what we consider true today will be supplanted tomorrow. I also enjoyed the journey through data analytics and how new discoveries can be found in data sets in ways not anticipated.
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- kelly
- 06-01-22
Ok
I just listened to a 10 year old book about how facts are constantly changing
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- Benjamin Pelletier
- 10-29-22
Not quite what I'd hoped
I heard about this book from Annie Duke's excellent "Thinking in Bets" and hoped it would be something along the lines of the practical philosophy of knowledge (what is the meaning of "knowing things" when the "facts" we know actually have half-lives and will often decay). Instead, the book felt heavily focused on facts about numeric data related to technology and measurements, and those are the kinds of facts I'm least interested in. I'd expect the facts "My wallet is in the bedroom" and "when hydrogen and oxygen are heated enough, they combine to form water" to be very different kinds of facts. The first one is an utter banality -- that it becomes "false" at some point is trivial and uninteresting since I expect my wallet to move around from time to time. It would probably be interesting if "My wallet was in the bedroom at 12:35 on October 29, 2022" were false since that would indicate a belief that was false even at the time it happened, but I felt like the book mostly cared about looking at the rate of decay of the clearly-temporal kind of fact, and that kind of fact decay isn't particularly interesting to me. The number of transistors we are currently capable of putting on microchips (Moore's Law) feels more like a "wallet" fact than an "invariant truth" fact, and the book focuses heavily on Moore's Law and similar trends.
I feel like the other kind of fact is a distinct category because I don't expect it to change. When it does change, it forces me to reexamine my beliefs in a way that the fact about my wallet's current location changing doesn't. There are a few interesting discussions along these lines in the book -- especially the magnetic permeability of iron. But, it doesn't seem like this is recognized as a different category, nor does the surprising idea that this is *not* a separate category seem to be discussed.
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