
The Half-life of Facts
Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date
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Narrado por:
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Sean Pratt
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De:
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Samuel Arbesman
Acerca de esta escucha
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.
©2012 Samuel Arbesman (P)2012 Gildan Media LLCLos oyentes también disfrutaron...
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Breakfast with Seneca
- A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living
- De: David Fideler
- Narrado por: Paul Heitsch
- Duración: 7 h y 17 m
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In Breakfast with Seneca, philosopher David Fideler mines Seneca's classic works in a series of focused chapters, clearly explaining Seneca's ideas without oversimplifying them. Best enjoyed as a daily ritual, like an energizing cup of coffee, Seneca's wisdom provides us with a steady stream of time-tested advice about the human condition - which, as it turns out, hasn't changed much over the past 2,000 years.
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A Philosophical Breakfast
- De Ronald William C. Brady Jr. en 03-16-22
De: David Fideler
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Human Errors
- A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes
- De: Nathan H. Lents
- Narrado por: L.J. Ganser
- Duración: 7 h y 54 m
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We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often - 200 times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake. As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last.
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From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes to...Aliens?
- De Katy.LED en 12-04-18
De: Nathan H. Lents
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Origin Story
- A Big History of Everything
- De: David Christian
- Narrado por: Jamie Jackson
- Duración: 12 h y 23 m
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Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
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A brilliant achievement, must read/listen
- De 11104 en 09-05-18
De: David Christian
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Trade Wars Are Class Wars
- How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace
- De: Matthew C. Klein, Michael Pettis
- Narrado por: Bob Souer
- Duración: 8 h y 32 m
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Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show in this book, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past 30 years.
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Narrator is robotic
- De dugmartssch en 05-22-20
De: Matthew C. Klein, y otros
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Surfaces and Essences
- Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
- De: Douglas Hofstadter, Emmanuel Sander
- Narrado por: Sean Pratt
- Duración: 33 h y 53 m
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Analogy is the core of all thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over 30 years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.
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An analogy to describe this 33-hour book
- De George C. en 11-08-19
De: Douglas Hofstadter, y otros
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A Decent Life
- Morality for the Rest of Us
- De: Todd May
- Narrado por: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Duración: 6 h y 16 m
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In A Decent Life, May leads listeners through the traditional philosophical bases of a number of arguments about what ethics asks of us, then he develops a more reasonable and achievable way of thinking about them, one that shows us how we can use philosophical insights to participate in the complicated world around us. He explores how we should approach the many relationships in our lives - with friends, family, animals, people in need - through the use of a more forgiving, if no less fundamentally serious, moral compass.
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Simple and Inspirational
- De Anonymous User en 07-26-20
De: Todd May
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How Propaganda Works
- De: Jason Stanley
- Narrado por: Tom Parks
- Duración: 12 h y 49 m
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In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy - particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality - and how it has damaged democracies of the past.
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Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Philosophy
- De Amazon Customer en 04-18-21
De: Jason Stanley
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The Human Condition (Second Edition)
- De: Hannah Arendt
- Narrado por: Elizabeth Wiley
- Duración: 15 h y 42 m
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A work of striking originality, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then - diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions - continue to confront us today.
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Not translating quotes, seriously?
- De Anna en 09-14-21
De: Hannah Arendt
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Napoleon's Hemorrhoids…And Other Small Events That Changed History
- De: Phil Mason
- Narrado por: LJ Ganser
- Duración: 8 h y 13 m
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Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying, historical what-ifs, Napoleon's Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs. In one of Phil Mason's many revelations, you'll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. You'll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield.
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They just throw the facts too fast
- De Concerned_llama en 12-11-20
De: Phil Mason
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Upheaval
- Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
- De: Jared Diamond
- Narrado por: Henry Strozier
- Duración: 18 h y 44 m
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In his earlier best sellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in the final audiobook in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis through selective change - a coping mechanism more commonly associated with personal trauma.
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The Urine of the Earth in a Teacup
- De Marian en 05-12-19
De: Jared Diamond
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The Master and His Emissary
- The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
- De: Iain McGilchrist
- Narrado por: Dennis Kleinman
- Duración: 27 h y 15 m
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This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain - the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the "rational" side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master.
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The Master and His Emissary
- De Michael en 11-07-20
De: Iain McGilchrist
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Everything Is Tuberculosis
- The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
- De: John Green
- Narrado por: John Green
- Duración: 5 h y 35 m
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In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story.
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An unsanitized glimpse into inequality
- De Amazon Customer en 03-23-25
De: John Green
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The Abolitionists
- De: Kellie Carter Jackson, The Great Courses
- Narrado por: Kellie Carter Jackson
- Duración: 2 h y 31 m
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While most of us are familiar with the Underground Railroad, there was much more to the movement than helping individuals escape their bondage. In the eight lectures of The Abolitionists, Professor Kellie Carter Jackson of Wellesley College will bring you along as she traces the history of the fight to end slavery in America, from its relatively quiet origins to the turning point at Harper’s Ferry to the Civil War.
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Highly Informative
- De Gilbert M. Stack en 02-23-25
De: Kellie Carter Jackson, y otros
Lo que los oyentes dicen sobre The Half-life of Facts
Con calificación alta para:
Reseñas - Selecciona las pestañas a continuación para cambiar el origen de las reseñas.
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Ejecución
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Historia
- 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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Ejecución
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Historia
- 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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Ejecución
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Historia
- 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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Ejecución
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Historia
- 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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Ejecución
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Historia
- Erin Redmond
- 04-12-25
keep reading forever
the only way to avoid being left behind by reality, is to keep learning every day
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Ejecución
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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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Historia
- 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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Historia
- 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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- 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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