The Illusion Of Control

A challenge to the conventional wisdom surrounding financial risk, providing insight into why easy solutions to control the financial system are doomed to fail. Finance brings prosperity and danger. We use measurements of risk to try and control the dangers of investments while maximizing our growth. Current strategies rely on mathematical techniques and historical data to predict future risk, but ignore the human component, failing to take into account the nature of risk inherent in the system. Jón Daníelsson argues that critical risk is generated from within, through the interactions of individuals and perpetuated by their beliefs, objectives, abilities, and prejudices. He asserts that the widespread belief that risk originates outside the financial system frustrates our ability to measure and manage it, and the likely consequences of new regulations will help alleviate small-scale risks but, perversely, encourage excessive risk taking. Daníelsson uses lessons from past and recent crises to show that diversity is the best way to safeguard our financial system.

This provocative book assesses the implications of a disturbing trend in U.S. security policy: an increased willingness to use military force as an instrument of diplomacy. In The Illusion of Control, Seyom Brown shows how U.S. officials are relying on force to counter a wide range of threats to America's global interests—eclipsing previous strategies that restricted the use of military force to situations in which the country's vital interests were at stake. Brown points out that a disposition to employ military power broadly as an instrument of diplomacy was on the rise well before September 11, 2001— and it shows every sign of persisting into the future. While resorting to force may seem to be a reliable way to establish control over a disorderly world, Brown cautions that expecting to gain and maintain control through military prowess could turn out to be a dangerous illusion. In fact, employing new military technologies in an effort to control international terrorist activities, wars, and civil conflicts is likely to pull the United States into excessive commitments and imprudent action. Brown analyzes the growing willingness of U.S. government officials to use force, then critically assesses the strategic, political, and moral implications for the United States. Adapting traditional "just war" concepts to contemporary strategic, political, and technological realities, he offers a set of guidelines to help ensure that use-of-force decisions are approached with the judicious care and gravity they warrant.

A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

"Pompian is handing you the magic book, the one that reveals your behavioral flaws and shows you how to avoid them. The tricks to success are here. Read and do not stop until you are one of very few magicians." —Arnold S. Wood, President and Chief Executive Officer, Martingale Asset Management Fear and greed drive markets, as well as good and bad investment decision-making. In Behavioral Finance and Wealth Management, financial expert Michael Pompian shows you, whether you're an investor or a financial advisor, how to make better investment decisions by employing behavioral finance research. Pompian takes a practical approach to the science of behavioral finance and puts it to use in the real world. He reveals 20 of the most prominent individual investor biases and helps you properly modify your asset allocation decisions based on the latest research on behavioral anomalies of individual investors.

The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal. “Deeply reported, deeply frightening . . . a techno-thriller of the first order.” —Los Angeles Times “A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. . . . fascinating.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten. Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.

This book comprehensively assesses the growing importance of project data for project scheduling, risk analysis and control. It discusses the relevance of project data for both researchers and professionals, and illustrates why the collection, processing and use of such data is not as straightforward as most people think. The theme of this book is known in the literature as data-driven project management and includes the discussion of using computer algorithms, human intuition, and project data for managing projects under risk. The book reviews the basic components of data-driven project management by summarizing the current state-of-the-art methodologies, including the latest computer and machine learning algorithms and statistical methodologies, for project risk and control. It highlights the importance of artificial project data for academics, and describes the specific requirements such data must meet. In turn, the book discusses a wide variety of statistical methods available to generate these artificial data and shows how they have helped researchers to develop algorithms and tools to improve decision-making in project management. Moreover, it examines the relevance of project data from a professional standpoint and describes how professionals should collect empirical project data for better decision-making. Finally, the book introduces a new approach to data collection, generation, and analysis for creating project databases, making it relevant for academic researchers and professional project managers alike.

One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI – and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience of time and the future and challenges our identities, yet we are blinded by its efficiency and fail to understand how it affects us. At the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase our control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future. This happens when we forget that that we humans have created the digital technologies to which we attribute agency. These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care. As we try to adjust to a world in which algorithms, robots and avatars play an ever-increasing role, we need to understand better the limitations of AI and how their predictions affect our agency, while at the same time having the courage to embrace the uncertainty of the future.

Exposes the fallacy that an increased degree of socio-cultural understanding leads to a greater chance of success in counterinsurgency operations.