Liars and Outliers

Tonight, on Skeptically Speaking, Desiree Schell will interview Bruce Schneier, author of Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive. From the Amazon page, the author notes: "This book represents my attempt to develop a full-fledged theory of coercion and how it enables compliance and trust within groups. My goal is to rephrase some of those questions and provide a new framework for analysis. I offer new perspectives, and a broader spectrum of what's possible. Perspectives frame thinking, and sometimes asking new questions is the catalyst to greater understanding. It’s my hope that this book can give people an illuminating new framework with which to help understand the world."

The Book, Liars and Outliers.

You may remember the Marshal McLuhan Incident that recently happened on Sam Harris's nonBlog. Harris had been pushing blatant racial profiling and was heavily criticized for this. So, he went to the expert, Bruce Schneier and asked for a guest blog post to evaluate Harris's ideas. To his credit, Harris ended up Marshal McLuhaning himself when Schneier essentially backed up the ongoing critiques of his, Harris's, arguments.

As usual, Desiree will conduct the interview before a live radio audience on line. The edited interview will be provided at the end of the week, along with a special guest appearance by me, in which I will talk about an issue related to Schneier's book.

This week, we’re talking about trust and cooperation, and the implications these social values have for security in the era of global networking. We’re joined by security technologist and author Bruce Schneier, to talk about his book Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Survive. And on the podcast anthropologist/blogger Greg Laden returns to discuss speculation about cognitive limits on the use of social networks.

We record live with Bruch Schneier on Sunday, June 3 at 6 pm MT. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, June 8.

Details and links, including a link to the live show, are HERE.