Book Three in SS O'Connor's non-fiction series – The Secrets of Life: From Big Bang to Trump

The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly, needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters for years after reading! O’Connor’s easy-going, conversational style brings an outsider’s questioning eye to the great forces behind life.

The third in the four-part series explains how game theory developed, and why it came to show us not only how humans arrive at their decisions, but why so much of the apparently bizarre behaviour of the natural world has the same mathematical logic to it.

Instead of the confusion and chaos one might expect in life, O’Connor shows that there are profound reasons behind the choices organisms make when they interact, and how we humans refined this process through the addition of our intelligence and language skills.

Starting with the mind-blowing new ways of thinking that Adam Smith opened the world’s eyes to, the book progresses to the 20th century—and shows how there’s a coherent rationale behind our thought processes—and how this was gradually revealed by scientists at a time when the very future of the world was at stake.

As O’Connor unfolds the story in Why Do We All Behave In The Way We Do?, it becomes ever clearer how cooperation has evolved to be the critical force at every level of life. It was what built our world, and it would settle so deeply into the hardwiring of living things that it would eventually become instinctive and innate in us. Perhaps most pleasingly, game theory explains how the benefits of collaboration are bound to ratchet upwards—and how this will inevitably lead to ever-increasing levels of moral behaviour in our societies.

It is so often an accepted fact that bad people will win. And yet, as Book Three so clearly explains, collaborative societies are bound to grow, that it’s rational to forgive to overcome vendettas and feuds, and that nice folks will always win in life by coming second.

Example questions posed (and answered) in Book Three –

Why Do All We Behave In The Way We Do?

What’s Game Theory - and why is it so critical to understanding how to make the right decisions?

Why, if humans are so convinced that most of us are bad, are we concerned about being fair in our lives?

Why do we value trust so highly?

What are the reasons for our surprising wish to care for each other?

Why do we share things, even though we might not have to?

How did a failed robbery explain human nature?

Why can it be rational to be irrational?

And why is life like a poker game?