tok blogpost #8? I think

Algorithms? More like no thanks I'llgomakesomerythms. Hahahaha why do I make puns nobody reads TOK blogs anymore that is so grade 11.

This article was written by Leo Hickman and is entitled How algorithms rule the world. In this article, the author shows the ways algorithms are used in everyday life in specific fields. He firstly talks about examples of its uses such as the police department, the US National Security Agency, dating websites, internet searches etc. After that, he goes on to explain what are algorithms, how they have been in society for such a long time and the possibility of human error. The brief mention of possibility in this article is essential, as after all algorithms are used as a tool to try to find possible correlations in data. I find the statement to be vital, as it is the question I have asked myself from the start of the reading; how is it possible for a set of calculations to determine a certain behaviour. Since the use of algorithms has been used in a context beyond pure mathematics, but rather has a predictability value. 

There is always the saying that correlation does not equal causation, and therefore anyone using these tools or are being marketed them should understand that this may not appeal to whatever is at stake. As per anything on human disposition, there are advantages and disadvantages to the predominant use of algorithms nowadays. It is clearly illustrated in the article that one should recognise the big place algorithms have in our societies, and not be too fearful of them, although they can ruin a life if not used cautiously. Algorithms leave a big space for assumptions and generalisations and trying to understand the extent to which they can be relied on. This answer does not have a conclusion easy to reach, as different areas of knowledge will have different data sets and instances that may influence the data, which shows how it can have different usages in various fields.

Did 13 Reasons Why Spark a Suicide Contagion Effect?

Second order claims about the assigned reading:

• To some extent, it cannot be agreed upon whether or not this show has increased suicide awareness or led to be a source of trigger for suicidal viewers
• The knowledge of Google sources is somewhat secure, although this article does not take specify if these searches about suicide are international or national
• Psychological knowledge about sensibility of human mind regarding exposure to certain things remains to be accurate, as the methods of research in psychology remains to be somewhat scientific.

Knowledge question about the article:  To what extent can the media be held liable for repercussions of it?

Exploration:

In a world where technology is everywhere, the media has taken a big place in our everyday life, in forms where even mindless scrolling on facebook feed can affect one's mood. When it comes to more prominent influential sources such as TV shows or movies, the effect can be accentuated. In the case of 13 reasons why, the producers allegedly disregarded the recommendations of health experts not to release the series, as it could have severe drawbacks on the viewers. In the creation of this piece, the producers have a different representation of what the effect of the show could be, which causes them to disregard the expert's advice. On one end when it comes to ethical considerations, the media should make sure that the content they are producing will not cause harm and distress to consumers in the media. On the other hand, the show had put a trigger warning, to make sure viewers are aware so this could be the responsibility of the viewer since they had been made aware of the content. This places a hard confliction on which of these should be put the blame on if there are increased suicide rates around the time of this show coming out. Surely the makers of the show had shown that their intent was to start a conversation about suicide, and it is arguable that the media cannot control other effects of their products that were not anticipated. There is also an economic aspect to as logically the first aim of this show is after all to make money. But beyond these capitalistic motives, the media still must put into consideration their viewers, as they shape the future of their society.

                                               Here's a meme because this is depressing

Ethical Guideline Investigation

Psychology is the study of the human brain and its functions; it can be on a biological, social or cognitive level. With all subjects that are the study of organisms, there is a need for experimentation. The first gathering of psychologists to make ethical guidelines was in 1956 in the USA and only concerned experiments testing on humans, and this has evolved since.

One example of a study that has ethical issues that are questionable but has contributed to great progress in the field of psychology is the longitudinal study of Henri Molaison. He has received  a bilateral temporal lobectomy to be able to cure uncontrollable seizures and was consented to this, which essentially means that an area of his brain which is the hippocampus was extracted. After the surgery, he has received retrograde amnesia, meaning he could not acquire remember semantic (general knowledge) nor episodic (memory for events), but his intelligence and procedural memories were maintained. This was able to discover that the medial temporal lobes are for the formation,organisation, consolidation of memory; meaning the conversion of short term to long term memory. The issues with the ethics is that even if HM was protected from harm, his identity was not kept anonymous. Since he was not able to remember everytime he had participated in a study, he was not in a fit state of mind to make decisions, and he also has donated his brain for science after his death in 2008. That being said, there was minimal damage done to him, the whole situation was not anticipated and this was able to make major breakthrough in the field of psychology.

This study is contrasted by the study conducted by Money in 1974, he believed that gender association is controlled merely by which sex organ an individual has. So with the birth of identical male twins, he took the opportunity to test so during their whole life, and give one of them a female genitalia as it was deformed. He received consent from the parents, but had deceived both teenagers during their entire life as they did not know they were being in a study. Once the twin that underwent the procedure went through puberty, the twin went through complete confusion as she was a girl but was going through male changes. Once both twins had found out it was a study as teenagers both had committed suicide. The researcher has not put the participant's well being into consideration and this has caused huge suffering to the ones being tested and their surroundings.

Measuring out the consequences and implications of both studies, it is safe to say that to be able to make a balance, one must look at the possible consequences of the study and the possible breakthrough and make sure that the casualties are little to none, and if they are of significance, with the variety of research methods being available today, I think they should be avoided at all cost.  Surely it is difficult to establish balance but one with the danger is to place oneself above humans and forget ethics as the observation of humans may elevate one's stance, making them forget the humanity in themselves, which is also important to approve the ethics before the research being conducted by ethical boards.

Surely, the ways of knowing when it comes to ethics are not all applicable, or not all used to their full capability. When deciding whether a study is ethical or not, there is reason and sense perception that are involved in that decision making. But there is also a lot of emotion and intuition that play in as well as faith; religions or lack of have different stances of what is ethical and what isn't, and this isn't only in the field of psychology. All these factors make ethics different from culture to culture, as it is being taught differently as well as from individuals and how they perceive things around them.

Scientific language

Science as a whole is deemed to be straightforward and precise ,and no matter which region you may be from, the culture you identify with or what languages you speak, the concepts within the scientific community and the area of study should remain the same.

It is known that science has it’s own jargon, meaning a group of special words or expressions used particularly for a group, which may sometimes be difficult for others to understand. Both readings assigned for this blog post written by Caled A. Scharf and Philip Ball discuss another component of scientific language, which is the use of figurative language in science (in this case metaphors) each taking a stand of the argument. 

It is certainly easy to get carried away when using metaphors as it could confuse the reader, but could also give the reader a better understanding of the topic as well as make it more enjoyable. All individuals do not understand quantitive reasoning and scientific knowledge and the fact that a metaphor may trigger one’s imagination could make them understand, appreciate and value science more. Not all areas in science are built merely on quantitative facts, but also some beyond anything us as humans could have lived.

That being said such practices could cause what is called the “pathetic fallacy” which is the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature. One popular example of this is the “selfish gene” proposed by biologist Richard Dawkins and his metaphor although gave the idea he was trying to convey, also reminds us that genes are not selfish in the same way people are as they are merely heritable factors consisting of a sequence of DNA that occupies a specific location on a chromosome and has a specific trait.

Writers of science want to be able to convey their message in the most understandable way possible, as it is their main goal to be able to publish their findings or previous knowledge and pass it on to others. Figurative language will help it stick more into the brain vividly but this will also cause it to more resistant to change as the human language and brain are both imperfect and very resistant to change. 

In other domains such as literature metaphors are to be poetic, in politics it is to argument and slightly manipulate by analogy, but it's purpose in science is until not fully identified. In all domains good metaphors are golden (that was a metaphor itself) and bad metaphors are just painful. It is up to the writer that has enough expertise on the content and the audience that should know what amount and quality of the figurative language is good enough to be published.

Science and the public

Science dominates the field of knowledge in our modern day society and this domination is the result of uninterrupted progress discovered and led by scientists. Scientists seek to construct reliable knowledge of the natural world by means of careful observations combined with reason and imagination which will possibly be beneficial for mankind. 

Scientific knowledge is being discovered on a regular basis, which could lead us to wonder to what extent should scientific knowledge be open to the public? Should the general public be aware of findings, should it be kept secret or be exclusively to the scientific world?

Keeping the public of scientific research and progress will allow the general population to be able to have more scientific knowledge and develop more their capacity which can allow them to have the capability to themselves make scientific discoveries and be more educated individuals. Keeping scientific research open is also a risk as if it purposed for the government or private companies and the population is aware of it there could be issues in theft and using the newer technologies and discoveries for negative and harmful uses, or selling them on the black market for a greater price it is worth.

History has shown that it takes around 300 hundred years to accept scientific discoveries, showing that social context can truly affect methods and findings.The researching of socially unacceptable topics could get the scientist into trouble by their family, friends or even the government. For example it is illegal to do abortions in Saudi Arabia so researching this topic or conducting experiments can get them punished. The scientist will have to pursue a different topic or have their reputation tarnished, but if general public would not be aware, it would be easier for scientist to pursue the experiment. 

There is no direct answer on whether the public should be aware of findings, as them being aware can empower or limitate resources, methods, findings and ideology of the experiment of the researcher. It is fair to say that each situation differs, and could possibly be up to the scientist to want to publish their work or not, and them also having obligation on the scientific world and respecting ethics concerning their findings.

The Limits of Logic Blog Post

What is the purpose of argument? 

The purpose of augmenting is for people to have access to anthropological reflexions to be able to conduct them to think on their own condition. Argumentation can be a reasoning destined to prove or defend one's opinion and we find it everywhere; in advertisements, in the press, in literature and even in spoken every day language, having a crucial and much more important role in our lives when we think it does. It could be going from a mother trying to convince her son to go to another university up to a environmentalists encouraging the limitation of water consumption. However this does not mean all arguments follow the same aim; depending on the speaker, they could have the intention of proving, convincing or persuading. 

Is it important to argue with proper reasoning? 
Arguing with proper reasoning is important because reasoning enables people to improve their knowledge, look for the truth and improve cognitive capabilities. Why is that sometimes we spend so much time and energy to do an activity that does not give good results in terms of finding the truth? It is because in such a complex world, and with our brain not being fully capable to simplify it, there is a need for humans to understand it; to convince others and evaluate their arguments. That being said, reasoning is not only to improve knowledge and decision making but also convincing your interlocutor in a debate or even unmasking those that maybe wanted to wrong you. Why do humans have a confirmation bias? Why is there motivation behind reasoning? Why are decisions based on the easiest justification? Argumentative reasoning is based on evolutionationary thinking therefore it is the only way an answer to any of these questions can be proposed, but this does not mean reasoning today is merely for augmenting.

My views on culture

At some point of the class, we talked about culture and how it can be defined in many various ways.
Is culture some observable habits like food, clothing or flags? Is culture more about behaviours and customs that have been learned and passed from generation to generation? Maybe culture is based on beliefs, symbols, values or even how problems or particular situations are approched. And most importantly, does culture define an individual?

I think that culture defines our way of life. It assembles our values, beliefs,customs, languages and traditions. It is also reflected by our history and our way of expressing ideas and creativity. Culture can be a good indication of one's quality of life, how dynamic we are and the health of our society. It gives us a sense of belonging (shoutout to Mr James for knowledge I have learnt in Psychology class) that is after all one of the most basic needs of humans, as well as the ability to feel empathy and create relationships with other people. People from more solid and dynamic cultures will understand health, well being, self esteem and a lot of other important topics better.  Nature is one thing that can be transmitted by heredity, but culture is transmitted by heritage. That being said, it can be concluded that culture does that an influence on how we behave because it is based on the values and norms of a society and it is transmitted by education. And it is also very interesting to study different kinds of culture to be able to comprehend better and be able to be more appreciative towards cultural differences.

Culture doesn't need to have to come from a particular region a person is from, it can be also art as that is a part of cultural creations. These artists whether they are writers or musicians are in the heart of the process of making a variety of artworks that contribute to our daily lives, and it doesn't mean that the artist doesn't belong to the same culture as we identify that we cannot enjoy their work.

What made me think is the expression of a "cultivated person", making culture define the result of a process that made an individual. Cultivated people are known to be open minded people that have knowledge in many domains such as science, art and philosophy. Does this mean that the process of the education that this individual has had forms them into having a larger spirit therefore larger culture? Depending on where you are, your culture will be different, but doesn't you are in a group with people that you all have the same culture. Having different backgrounds makes us all different and we have the chance to discover different people and learn more about cultures we may have never found out about. But does that mean that in a small city where everyone knows each other and don't really have contact or exchange with the outside world mean they are all culturally identical? I don't have any particular counter argument to that so I think they are probably culturally identical or at least 90%.

Now if culture defines all the ways any society may act the same way, that means that there is no human society that lacks culture. There is no segregation between civilised and uncivilised people but rather different civilisations. Therefore, every society has a tendency to confuse their own culture or civilisation with the culture or civilisation which can go to drastic consequences as rejecting other people that belong to different cultures.  I would like to end this blog post with a conclusion that culture is so vast and complicated and it just gave me a headache.