Cause . . . And How It Doesnt Alway..., Gregory Smithsimon
Cause . . . And How It Doesnt Alway..., Gregory Smithsimon
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Cause: . . . And How It Doesn't Always Equal Effect

Author: Gregory Smithsimon

Narrator: P.J. Ochlan

Unabridged: 10 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/13/2018

Categories: Nonfiction, Psychology


Synopsis

When we try to understand our world, we ask "why?" a specific event occurred. But this profoundly human question often leads us astray. In Cause, sociologist Gregory Smithsimon brings us a much sharper understanding of cause and effect, and shows how we can use it to approach some of our most daunting collective problems.

Smithsimon begins by explaining the misguided cause and effect explanations that have given us tragically little insight on issues such as racial discrimination, climate change, and the cycle of poverty. He then shows unseen causes behind these issues, and shows how we are hard-wired to overlook them. Armed with these insights, Smithsimon explains how we can avoid these mistakes, and begin to make effective change.

Combining philosophy, the science of perception, and deeply researched social factors, Cause offers us a new way to ask "why?" and a hope that we may improve our society and ourselves.

About Gregory Smithsimon

Gregory Smithsimon is associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and the City University Graduate Center. He is the author of September 12: Community and Neighborhood Recovery at Ground Zero, and co-author, with Benjamin Shepard, of The Beach Beneath the Streets: Exclusion, Control, and Play in Public Space. He is an editor of the new online journal Metropolitics, and has written for the Village Voice, Dissent, In These Times, and the Daily News. He lives in Brooklyn.


Reviews

Goodreads review by John on September 17, 2018

I think the author had some good reflections on loneliness and solitary confinement, and how this may be a cause of some bad effects not typically associated with our being alone. I did not really know what to think of his second chapter on the social construction of race; how the concept of “white”......more

Goodreads review by Maynard on June 19, 2018

A very nice piece of work indeed. The book feels like a collection of essays, each on dealing with a different aspect of social behavior, but united by the theme that people are astonishingly irrational (ie self-serving) in how they analyze other humans and their behavior. To give some examples, the......more

Goodreads review by Ambrose on December 22, 2018

This is a painfully tedious read with a rather simple message..that we tend to believe what we want to believe and ignore what we don't want to hear...that's it and there is no need for pretentious terminologies such as dynamic causality. The title of this book sounds scientific and is deceiving in......more

Goodreads review by Geoff on October 24, 2018

This is really well done and interesting. Apparently we're a lot more complex than I was thinking.......more