Double Paradox

Download or read book Double Paradox written by Andrew H. Wedeman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to conventional wisdom, rising corruption reduces economic growth. And yet, between 1978 and 2010, even as officials were looting state coffers, extorting bribes, raking in kickbacks, and scraping off rents at unprecedented rates, the Chinese economy grew at an average annual rate of 9 percent. In Double Paradox, Andrew Wedeman seeks to explain why the Chinese economy performed so well despite widespread corruption at almost kleptocratic levels. Wedeman finds that the Chinese economy was able to survive predatory corruption because corruption did not explode until after economic reforms had unleashed dynamic growth. To a considerable extent corruption was also a by-product of the transfer of undervalued assets from the state to the emerging private and corporate sectors and a scramble to capture the windfall profits created by their transfer. Perhaps most critically, an anti-corruption campaign, however flawed, has proved sufficient to prevent corruption from spiraling out of control. Drawing on more than three decades of data from China—as well as examples of the interplay between corruption and growth in South Korea, Taiwan, Equatorial Guinea, and other nations in Africa and the Caribbean—Wedeman cautions that rapid growth requires not only ongoing and improved anticorruption efforts but also consolidated and strengthened property rights.

Download or read book Paradox written by A. J. Paquette and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans of James Dashner's Maze Runner series are sure to love this post-apocalyptic adventure about a girl who must survive an alien planet in order to save the Earth.

Download or read book Paradox written by Margaret Cuonzo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to paradoxes showing that they are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. Thinkers have been fascinated by paradox since long before Aristotle grappled with Zeno's. In this volume in The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Margaret Cuonzo explores paradoxes and the strategies used to solve them. She finds that paradoxes are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. A paradox can be defined as a set of mutually inconsistent claims, each of which seems true. Paradoxes emerge not just in salons and ivory towers but in everyday life. (An Internet search for “paradox” brings forth a picture of an ashtray with a “no smoking” symbol inscribed on it.) Proposing solutions, Cuonzo writes, is a natural response to paradoxes. She invites us to rethink paradoxes by focusing on strategies for solving them, arguing that there is much to be learned from this, regardless of whether any of the more powerful paradoxes is even capable of solution. Cuonzo offers a catalog of paradox-solving strategies—including the Preemptive-Strike (questioning the paradox itself), the Odd-Guy-Out (calling one of the assumptions into question), and the You-Can't-Get-There-from-Here (denying the validity of the reasoning). She argues that certain types of solutions work better in some contexts than others, and that as paradoxicality increases, the success of certain strategies grows more unlikely. Cuonzo shows that the processes of paradox generation and solution proposal are interesting and important ones. Discovering a paradox leads to advances in knowledge: new science often stems from attempts to solve paradoxes, and the concepts used in the new sciences lead to new paradoxes. As Niels Bohr wrote, “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”

Download or read book Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes written by Bryan Bunch and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stimulating, thought-provoking analysis of the most interesting intellectual inconsistencies in mathematics, physics, and language, including being led astray by algebra (De Morgan's paradox). 1982 edition.

Download or read book The Twin Paradox written by Charles Wachter and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Twin Paradox is one of the best science thrillers to come along since Andy Weir's The Martian." Chris Weitz, Screenwriter, Rogue One With ten years passing for every three minutes on a remote stretch of Texas coast, planes fall out of the sky, evolved species are on the hunt, and people die inside one of the most vicious ecosystems ever grown-all a result of the government's efforts to slow down time. A lot can happen in ten years. That's the point. Governments are always racing for supremacy, for scientific breakthroughs, for technological advantages-and these things take time. Until something goes wrong. With the grounded yet massive world building of READY PLAYER ONE, thrilling scientific questions of JURASSIC PARK, and the time-bending teen drama of BEFORE I FALL, Wachter's THE TWIN PARADOX is a brilliantly plotted tale that is both intimate and massive, relentless yet deliberate, and explores the themes of self-acceptance, self-confidence, and natural selection in a richly hued and unforgettable world. Ultimately the eternal question of Nature versus Nurture is boiled down into this fast-paced thriller told over the course of five days and culminates in one single question: Do we get to choose who we are?

Download or read book The Paradox of Self-consciousness written by José Luis Bermúdez and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Jos� Luis Berm�dez addesses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms of more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Berm�dez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given. Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox of self-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer.

Download or read book Paradox written by Catherine Coulter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter delves into the mind of an escaped mental patient obsessed with revenge in this “eerie, unsettling, and breathlessly terrifying” (The Real Book Spy) twenty-third installment in her FBI series. When an escaped mental patient fails to kidnap five-year-old Sean Savich, agents Sherlock and Savich know they’re in his crosshairs and must find him before he continues with his kill list. Chief Ty Christie of Willicott, Maryland, witnesses a murder at dawn from the deck of her lake cottage. When dragging the lake, the divers find not only find the murder victim but also dozens of bones. Working together with Chief Christie, Savich and Sherlock soon discover a frightening connection between the bones and the escaped psychopath. Paradox is a chilling mix of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, old secrets that refuse to stay buried, and ruthless greed that keep Savich and Sherlock and Chief Christie working at high speed to uncover the truth before their own bones end up at the bottom of the lake.