Comments on: Review: True Enough by Farhad Manjoo

By: Review: WTF? How to Survive 101 of Life’s Worst F*#!-ing Situations | FocuSoft Tech Blog

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:46:52 +0000

[...] aspect that our readers expect of our posts. We strayed from that path a bit by publishing one book review back in October, which apparently was a sufficient signal to book publishers that CrunchGear is [...]

By: Review: WTF? How to Survive 101 of Life’s Worst F*#!-ing Situations

Review: WTF? How to Survive 101 of Life’s Worst F*#!-ing Situations — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:08:41 +0000

By: Станислав

Станислав — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:43:12 +0000

Не смог удержатся и не сообщить, что у http://www.crunchgear.com появился еще один постоянный читатель ;).
Пишите чаще!

By: Hanna

Hanna — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:49:20 +0000

Eliza Jane Scovill was far more doomed by the discredited beliefs of her mother than by the HIV that crippled her immune system such that she presented with end-stage PCP (a specific pneumonia only seen in people who are severely immune-compromised). Of course then Eliza Jane’s mother, Christine Maggiore, asked a Toxicologist on her company’s advisory board to perform an “unbiased” review of Eliza Jane’s autopsy. For starters, how can someone on your own advisory board, who knows you, be unbiased? Secondly and most importantly, this Toxicologist wrote a paper entitled “HIV does not cause AIDS.” So….is it any wonder he would disagree with Eliza Jane’s autopsy findings?

A medical examiner who doesn’t believe that Cobra venom is lethal can be given a thousand cases of autopsies done on patients who died of snake bites and will find an alternate theory of death, no matter how implausible – because he CANNOT rule any death was caused by an agent he deems harmless. Likewise, Maggiore’s Toxicologist, Mohammed Al-Bayati, was NEVER going to agree with the cause of death of PCP as a result of AIDS. Clearly, Ms. Maggiore didn’t care what killed her daughter – only that she could remain steadfast that HIV doesn’t exist, no matter who dies.

HIV is a treatable disease that Christine Maggiore decided didn’t exist. Even with her daughter’s declining health and in her final hours dying in the hospital, the hubris of Maggiore didn’t allow her to speak up and tell the hospital personnel that her daughter was at risk of HIV – anything but to reveal HIV to the doctors who may have saved Eliza Jane’s life.

And HIV laughed in poetic justice and the ease at which it was able to snuff out the life of a three-year-old.

You can deny something until the end of time but if it exists, it’ll always have the last word. Eliza Jane would tell you that, if she could.

By: Christopher Herot

Christopher Herot — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:51:07 +0000

Great summary of the book. The one thing I would add is that Manjoo shows how the tendency to jump to conclusions is not new but is in fact a necessary aspect of human nature. Without it we would drown in a sea of raw data. One hopes that more people read books such as these and by becoming aware of this mechanism can guard against its more pernicious effects.

I put some links to the underlying stories here:
http://herot.typepad.com/cherot/2008/09/true-enough.html

By: SlushPile.net » True Enough

SlushPile.net » True Enough — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:34:49 +0000

[...] Farhad Manjoo’s True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society for CrunchGear. Click here to read the entire [...]

By: Holly

Holly — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:19:56 +0000

“…in today’s society we can select our own version of the truth…” –McKenzie makes this passing comment that, most likely,he is agreeable with. However, it is a fallacy on its face: there is only one truth, about anything. Not a “version” just only one truth.
Most people living in the US would certainly NOT agree with this simple assertion; the reasons are many, but their origin is in the twisted beliefs on “personal freedom” and “individualism.” They are certainly legitimate, but not when they are “adapted” to personal convenience, of any kind.

Plus, the fact that television, besides being deeply embedded in mainstream American culture, it has an enormous negative influence on most everybody. Most Americans would certainly become suspicious/incredulous if someone expresses the “strange” belief that television IS fantasy. There is more: TV is coming to your cell phone…

The tragic example of the little girl dying of AIDS in the book is not an isolated case: there are many, many more. Just consider the “Christian Science” members who have harmed and even killed, by neglect, children in need of medical care.

Consider now the widespread [false] belief that vaccines cause autism. Several “celebrities” are expressing it now, as is Jennifer McCarthy, a dubious TV actress, who is blatantly engaging in shameless self-promotion, causing untold grief to many mothers, who ultimately would refuse needed vaccination for their children.
There is much, much more about this…

Holly

By: Uxbjo

Uxbjo — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:59:58 +0000

JBmsfbezbotxfsfeuijt!

By: Marin

Marin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:49:30 +0000

I read this a few months ago, and it was a very well-written interesting read.