Another Ice bucket challenge..... just kidding, its a post about the ALS ice bucket challenge! (TOK post)

Article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/aug/25/ice-bucket-challenge-drought-henan-california-animal-rights-rice


Another article ripping apart the ice bucket challenge, this article talks about the more serious effects of performing the ALS ice bucket challenge. For those who dont know, ALS also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a motor neuron disease in which the individual loses all control of motor functions in the body. A more widely known person suffering from ALS is Steven Hawking the famous english theoretical physicist who speaks with the assistance of a computer.

In my opinion this article is blowing this problem way out of proportion. They are trying to justify their claims with 1 in a million cases that probably happened because there was no caution practiced before performing the ice bucket challenge. Okay, this article does raise some points about the occuring drought in California, but there is one simple solution to this problem... Donate instead. But who am i to judge this, I was nominated for the challenge, but i never did it. Just purely out of not being bothered to. In a TOK perspective, this raises an interesting question of, is it ethically acceptable to perform the ice bucket challenge and not donate? well for some people, who arent in the most favourable economic situations, the ice bucket challenge is all they can do. They ask that if you dont do it, you should donate 100 USD, considering the main demographic that this is aimed at, young adults and teenagers, 100 dollars is a lot of money. I personally believe that you should do as much as you can without having to go out of your way or affect your life negatively in a sever way at all, and it would still be okay. But those are my morals. Other people are entitled to their own morals and may have different views, which is why this article is a perfect example of people expressing their views on the ethics of the subject. The ALS ice bucket challenge has been and will continue to be a heated topic in the ethics field. I would gladly initiate discussion on the subject with an opposing viewpoint.

TOK post: David Christian: History of our world in 18 minutes

In TOK class we watched a TED talk video by a man named David Christian. Christian is a well known historian responsible for a teaching method called Big History. Big history is a teaching method where we learn history on a large scale, like his TED talk, he covers the entire history of our universe and planet in a quick 18 minute video. While i thought his talk on the subject matter was very interesting and easy to understand, i cant help but think that his approach may be a bid vague. There is so much more history within the gaps of his explanation. So therefore it raises a lot of questions. TOK wise, it brings us into the matter of how do we know that his explanation is the correct one, as apposed to a religious explanation like the universe was created within 7 days. The problem with the theory of the big bang idea is that its only a theory, whereas the religious idea is also just written in a book that was written in more recent history to the big bang. Theres no cold hard factual evidence that something like this even occurred. So the problem it raises is essentially whether it is a true fact instead of theory. Is it okay to be teaching high school students something that cannot really be proven 100%? From my atheistic point of view, David Christians explanation makes more sense and i feel more comfortable believing it, but i would be interested in hearing what other people have to say. Maybe we could discuss this in TOK class one day?

Personal Post: Oscar Pistorius Trial

Anyone that has been following the news in anyway has most likely heard of Oscar Pistorius. If not, let me get you up to speed. Oscar Pistorius has been sentenced to 5 years prison for shooting and killing his girlfriend at the time, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius claimed he heard what he thought was a trespasser in his bathroom and grabbed his gun and fired shots through the bathroom door, hitting and killing Reeva. Although this incident occurred back in February of 2009, the trial has only recently ended in recent months. This article was extremely interesting to me as it was such a high profile and intense trial and no one other than Oscar really knows what actually happened. The final verdict delivered by the judge was that although Oscar no doubt shot and killed Reeva, It was unintentional and cannot be considered planned murder.
What i am interested in is how we can justify that someones life is worth five years in prison. It might have been unintentional, but the cost is a loss of a life, and the resulting mourning of the family. How the judge come to the decision to sentence Oscar to 5 years in prison? Do you think this was a reasonable sentence? Does his disability give him an advantage in this trial? This last question is one i would like to address. Oscar Pistorius is famous for being the "fastest man on no legs" or "the blade runner" as he is a double amputee below the knee but competes at a higher level with full bodied athletes. Would his athletic abilities give him less of an advantage over a normal double amputee in the same situation? will he be sentenced to an equal trial to an able bodied individual? Its a very insightful and interesting trial that raised a lot of controversy over his light sentence.

IB post: IB SL Korean B track

Currently in Korean class we began to look at societal issues in Korea and some parts of the world. The main issue we are discussing is the appropriate name for jobs in our current society. some examples of this are like using postal worker instead of postman, as not only men work delivering post, nowadays women do as well. It makes you think about how far society has come in the recent years. This is also a matter or women's rights, as more women are taking on jobs originally dominated by the male gender, hence the names that primarily contain the word man in them. In our Korean class we not only looked at ways to address job roles with a particular gender in mind, but we also learned about the proper way to address people with disabilities. In English it would like the addressing of mentally disabled individuals as "Retarded" over "mentally challenged" or "disabled". In this context its more of an issue of morality, is it right or wrong to address someone who has a mental handicap as "retarded"? The word "retarded" stems back into history, it used to be the socially accepted name for the mentally handicapped, but now as societies are changing and becoming more socially aware and sensitive, names for certain demographics are changing. The same goes for the black race in North America, in the past it was more socially accepted to use the word "negro" to describe a person of African descent. Nowadays the more socially accepted name for individuals of African descent is either just simply "Black" or "African american". I would be interested in seeing where our society moves on from here, as the socially accepted names for individuals, could continue to change and words that originally were frowned upon could become the new accepted word.

"ROA's graffiti rabbit faces removal by Hackney council" Article blog post

Article: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/oct/25/roa-graffiti-rabbit-hackney-council

Quick summary:
The article talks about a Belgian graffiti artist that goes by the name ROA, who created a piece of art on the side of a recording studio of a rabbit. The artist allegedly obtained the permission to create the art piece from the owner of the building, however the city council has issued a warning to the owner saying he has to paint over it. Local consensus say that the artwork is not an eyesore and do not understand why it is being painted over. The article then goes on to talk more about the artist himself and his work, and the councils view on the subject matter.

This is an interesting article as it does raise the question whether what the artist did was right or wrong. You may say that he is in the green, because he got the owners permission before painting the wall, but his art is in a public area. The building owner is not the only person who will be looking at the artwork. Although this is a rather small issue in terms of the ethics involved, considering its not an obscene or graphic image being depicted, just a rabbit. It is still a matter of thinking about oneself instead of thinking about the community as a whole. The city council's justification for the request of removal does seem more ethically justifiable, as they asked the building owner to remove the work as they want to "keep hackney's streets clean". But in the end, this article does raise some more questions on ethics. Is it the owners right, as a building owner, to allow whatever he wants on the side of his building? Is the council in the right to ask to remove the piece, even though the public consensus say they like it? Is something okay to get removed just because it doesn't "go" with the look of its surroundings?

TOK blog post 5th september 2014

TOK blog post.

One of my higher learning classes in IB is psychology. In my opinion, psychology probably shares the most with theory of knowledge. Both explore the way our mind works cognitively. Also in psychology, an interesting area that we learn about is sociocultural level of analysis; this is essentially the study of societies and societal tendencies and people who live in different societies. I think this is interesting and relevant to theory of knowledge because of the relation to ways of knowing. A certain society shares a way of thinking, doing and morals, but how are these spread or passed down from generation to generation? In theory of knowledge, we have the ways of knowing: emotion, faith, imagination, intuition, language, memory, reason and sense perception.  In societies, the most prevalent ways of knowing are probably language and faith. A lot of different people have faiths that they believe in like Jews in Israel, Muslims in the Middle East, or Christians in South Korea. People tend to base their morals off of a religious belief. In Christianity, there are sins that if one commits, they get sent to hell, so people tend to avoid the act of sinning. Language as well is a largely prevalent way of knowing in most societies. There is a tribe in Africa that has broken the colour spectrum into different categories to what we perceive as being ‘normal’ categories for colour. Because of this they are able to distinguish between shades of green that look almost identical in our eyes, while struggling to even distinguish green from blue. I think this is interesting because it shows that language as a way of knowing within a society has changed not only how they categorise colour, but how they even perceive different colours. It just goes to show the power of our brains and language itself.

Final lesson

What are the three most important things you have learned?

In TOK this year i learned more about different ways of thinking more than anything, things that i didn't even know existed as 'ways of knowing'. classifying different methods of learning into different WOK's had made me think about how we can be sure that what we hear and how we hear it can be trusted as fact. presentation skills are also something i learned to improve upon this year because of all the worrying about the end of year TOK presentation, it has forced me to learn more about presenting techniques than any other subject. and finally, i have improved upon my ability to think about things in a TOK way and to convey those thoughts into a discussion.

In TOK?

different WOK and applying them to RLI's and classifying different learning situations to WOK. like mentioned in the above question.

In general?Why?

in general, i would say it was my presentation skills that have improved over the course of the year, as TOK requires quite a bit of presenting and discussion. conveying my thoughts and points of view have been something i have been forced to do, so i think in the long term, those areas of me have definitely improved. 

TOK:

• What does it tell us about the nature of knowledge – or the inherent value of knowledge – or the different classifications of knowledge?

By classifying different WOK's i think it shows that this is in fact an important field to be studying, that not all knowledge is the same and that we as a community have different views, ways of knowing, and ways of teaching knowledge.

• How has your understanding of knowledge developed across the year? How has it changed?

Coming into TOK this year, i honestly had no idea about the different ways of knowing, over the course of the year i have learned what each way of knowing is and classifying different situations into each way of knowing.

• How are the categories – the Ways of Knowing – helpful or unhelpful? 

They become helpful when you want to analyse a situation, how trustworthy it is, by applying it to a WOK, you can come to conclusions about how reliable it is, for example, shared knowledge over experiential knowledge.

TOK presentation Self Reflection

I feel as though my group (leonardo migliardi & I) didnt perform poorly, but also we didnt perform amazingly. I think we fell right into the middle. Our knowledge question and our approach was good in my mind as it was all relevant to TOK and interesting. Our delivery is probably where we were let down slightly. We were bombarding our audience with waves of information and just looking into the audience it was easy to see that some people were just not following along. we often found ourselves reading straight off of a piece of paper. reading directly tot eh audience. Next time i perform a presentation, one thing i have to keep in mind is the whole Zen presentation idea, less is more. Along with zen presentation, i need to come more prepared with a fun/more interesting way to convey this information to the audience, without boring them to sleep. Overall it was a good experience as it was insightful into presenting methods, research methods, and presenting in front of an audience and it was a learning experience that i can take a lot from and improve future presentations and deep thinking in the TOK world.

April 25th

Task 1 - Respond to the following:

What are emotions?

 A strong feeling that comes from an individuals circumstances and/or relationships

Does physiological arousal come before or after

emotional experience?

The physical feelings achieved from situations that are emotionally stimulating.

Does thinking come before or after feeling?

 I think it comes after thinking, since we have to process the situation

Are emotions learned – or are they part of instinct?

They instinctive, you see babies that have obviously not learned anything that show signs of different emotions such as happiness, anger and confusion.

Are emotions useful – or just a legacy of our animal roots?

In a way they could be used as a moral compass, as something that makes you sad could be against what is perceived as right 

Are emotions for communication – or self knowledge and understanding?

Both, they can be used to understand other people and to communicate to other people without even talking with them, for example, you wouldn't want to bother someone that LOOKS angry, you can tell this just from recognizing the emotion on their faces. As for self understanding, it helps you understand your own situation 

Task 2:

Describe how your body feels when you are:

• Scared

discomfort, unsure with your surroundings

• Angry

Discomfort, hate towards someone/something

• Sad

confused, disappointed 

• Bored

Tired, lazy 

• Anxious

excitement, nervousness 

• Jealous

lust, want for attention

• In love

want for attention from someone, butterflies

Question: Can we change our emotion by changing our thinking?

Im not entirely sure of this, but i were to give my uninformed opinion on this matter, i would say that changing the way we think would not change our emotions, since emotions go deeper than just what we think.

Task 3:

Individually – then in groups - look at the following dilemmas – and decide what you

would do in each case.

TROLLEY DILEMMA

A runaway trolley is headed toward 5 people standing on a track. You are the controller of the tracks. The ONLY way to prevent their deaths is to switch the trolley onto a side track by flicking a switch – but that will definitely kill one person. What do you do?

 • What would you do?

I would switch the tracks and kill the one person/

• Why would you do it?

if it were completely necessary, you could not help it, and saving the life of 4 is far better than killing 5 people and not being able to save any

FOOTBRIDGE DILEMMA

You are now on a footbridge overlooking the trolley track. Another runaway trolley is heading toward – and will kill 5 people. You are standing next to Fat Tony on the bridge. If you push Tony onto the tracks in front of the trolley, it will kill Tony – but his size is sufficient to derail and stop the trolley preventing further death. Would it be right to push him?

• What would you do?

I would not push fat tony

• Why would you do it?

Because the death of those 5 people were out of my control, whereas if I pushed fat tony, his blood would be on my hands

LIFEBOAT DILEMMA

You and 6 others are on a lifeboat in icy waters – but 6 is too many people and it is beginning to sink. If you push a person overboard, the raft will not be washed over by the waves – and you will survive. Would it be right to push someone out of the boat?

 • What would you do?

Push someone over board, but only if they volunteered to die for the rest of us

• Why would you do it?

Because in the process you would be saving 5 people, instead of 6 people dying unecessarily

 HOSPITAL DILEMMA

You are a surgeon and 5 of your patients will die soon unless they get organ transplants. Each needs a different organ – heart, liver, kidney, lungs and pancreas. A nurse bursts into your office. “Great news, a visitor to the hospital has arrived – and has the same tissue type as all your patients. We can kill the visitor and save 5 patients.” Should you kill the visitor?

• What would you do?

I would not do it               

• Why would you do it?

It is morally wrong to kill someone in order to use them for other purposes unless they agreed to it and died of natural causes.

Come up with a response to all 4 dilemmas.

• Are all your decisions the same? Why/why not?

No they were all not, in situations where some ones death would be directly due to my actions I chose to not kill someone in order to save some people

What is the role of emotion in knowing what to do?

You consider the emotional result of your actions, and try to reason ways to make yourself feel better, buy telling yourself that you couldn't have done anything anyways. This is to suppress the emotional impact of the event.

April 21st

To what extent is our social behaviour controlled by our brains chemistry?

I think our social behaviour is almost entirely based upon chemicals in our brain. if oxytocin can increase our trust, mood, arguments and general outlook on people. then there really leaves not much space in terms of social interactions that is not left to chemicals such as oxytocin.

Can we trust our feelings when making a decision?

I personally dont believe people should be making decisions when they are too happy, angry, sad, or confused. i find emotions tend to cloud a persons mind with thoughts that could lead to an individual favouring one thing over another even though it may not be a good choice for them.

How far can we trust the feeling of 'falling in love'?

Falling in love is considered a chemical feeling, but what determines what causes this chemical to be released when we see someone? studies have shown that a majority of what determines if we love someone is is body language and tone/speed of their voice, only 7% is up to what they say. its also found that it takes 90 seconds to about 4 mins for us to determine if we fancy someone. i personally feel maybe this is a bit like prematurely jumping to conclusions. someone could put on an "act" within that moment when we determine that we fancy someone. i guess thats why there is saying that first impressions are important.

To what extent should we chemically interfere with our feelings?

if we dont chemically interfere with our feelings, then how else are we meant to feel those feelings if they are brought up by chemicals? and can we even control the release of these chemicals?