S. S. O'Connor – författare

Why does the gene behave like a hedge fund manager? Why are mutations like a gambling scam? Why does nothing ever become top dog in life and win forever? Humans only arrived after 99.99% of the time there's been life on earth. So what was here before us? And how did these species, and the evolutionary process that created them, end up with the unpromising creatures that were our ancestors?In this, the first book of The Secrets of Life quartet, SS O'Connor brings his outsider's, questioning eye to reveal the great forces that lie behind life: from the laws that arose with Big Bang, through to the 'decisions' that organisms make to determine their chances.But how did everything come about? And what made some life forms succeed - while others would join the 99.9% of species that appeared, yet went on to become extinct? The story goes right back to our single-celled forebears - the only things that were on the planet for 80% of its existence, and then continues as it lays out the ways that successive transmissions built increasing complexity, and how the resulting species found their synergistic ways of coexisting. In an easy-going, conversational style, O'Connor explains in lay-man's language how the gene is the great conductor of life's orchestra, how it helped millions of life forms to refine themselves - yet why it also sees failure, death and extinctions as opportunities rather than disasters. Lastly, the book tells the story of the men who unpicked the mysteries, what they meant by fitness and 'the fittest', but why they continued to be baffled by organisms that broke the rules by helping each other. Why would some even choose to be sterile when producing the next generation was the overriding compulsion in life? And how does the answer to this question explain why altruism is the proof for the 'gene-based theory of evolution' - and why cooperation would become the strongest force in life?

How is it we humans only arrived after 99.995% of the time there's been life on earth - and yet we're now so dominant? If mutations take generations to have an effect, how did we manage to change so completely in just a blink in time? And why were our rulers and societies always so horrible - yet we endlessly put up with them?Book One of The Secrets of Life quartet began the long narrative of existence by showing how the forces that Big Bang unleashed drove the Earth's evolutionary developments, and how after 3.8 billion years of life and the extinction of many billions of species, our obscure forest-dwelling ancestors emerged in East Africa. Yet what, Book Two asks, were the steps that led to us humans becoming so totally different to anything that had appeared before? If we really were just another kind of animal off the production line of life, then what were the revolutions that turbo-charged our unique abilities?How did we evolve so that we could alter ourselves in an instant, and avoid being stuck in an evolutionary niche like every other organism? How did we manage to create the intelligence and insights that allowed us to make our own decisions in life? And where did the free will come from that would let us override the drives of our animal pasts? We alone of all the world's species have ever been able to predict the future, and then change our behaviour so that it suited our ambitions. But how did we grow our brains and imaginations so greatly that we could achieve this? And only we have evolved the capacity to reject the genetic instructions that shaped us. But why do we think this helps - and how has it affected our lives? Now, using the same easy-going conversational style of the other books in the series, O'Connor answers these and other questions to explain how we evolved to break away from everything that had existed before us. And yet why the effects of our heritage so often still emerge in how we exist.

Why is life like a poker game? How did a failed robbery help to explain human nature? Why are we so certain bad men will win - and yet we're so wrong?In this, the third volume of The Secrets of Life quartet, SS O'Connor once more uses his easy-going, conversational style to explain how the science of decision analysis developed, and why it has come to show us not only the reasoning behind how humans arrive at their choices in life, but why so much of the apparently bizarre behaviour of the natural world has the same hard logic to it. Instead of the confusion and chaos one might expect, O'Connor lays out how the options organisms face when they interact can actually be analysed, and how we humans then refined this process through the addition of our intelligence and language skills.Starting with the extraordinary new ways of thinking that Adam Smith opened the world's eyes to, the book progresses to the 20th century - and shows how the mathematical reasoning behind our thought processes was revealed at a time when the very future of the world was at stake. From these earliest investigations, through to the fevered disagreements of later experts, this third volume of the Secrets of Life series explains how the science of game theory illuminates the reasons for our behaviour. In particular, the book provides insights into how the interests of the individual should be balanced against those of the group, and why the mechanism of trading would extend far further into our lives than we could ever have imagined.As the story unfolds it becomes ever clearer how cooperation has evolved to be the catalyst at every level of life. It explains how it was the force that built our world, and why it would settle so deeply in our hardwiring that it's become instinctive and innate in us. Perhaps most pleasingly, the same logic also shows that the benefits of collaboration are always bound to ratchet upwards - and how this will inevitably lead humans to ever-increasing levels of moral behaviour.