TOK HW Due 12.02.09

Pg 52.
1. a. Triangle: Three straight lines that are enclosed completely so that it becomes a shape.
b. Table: Furniture that has a flat top that's held up by legs and such. People usually write or eat on top of these, since it has a flat surface.
c. Love: A feeling where one person looks at another in a special light, and where that other person is liked very much by that one person.

2. I think that there would be no way to explain the colour red to a blind person, because the blind person does not have any idea on what colour is, and what shaps are. Although some things can be felt, giving the blind person an idea, red cannot be felt, and it cannoy really be visualized without already having to seen the colour red. this suggests that definitions cannot mean a thing if one does not understand the concepts behind it. If the person who is listening to the definition cannot connect at all with the definition being given, there is no real way that the definition could be fully grasped.

Pg. 56
1. a: "Planes that are in flight are dangerous." to "It is dangerous to fly a plane."
b: "They saw Mrs. Jones and also a dog sitting under the table." to "They say both Mrs. Jones and the dog sitting under the table."
c: "Bob tickled the man who was with the feather duster." to "Using the feather duster, Bob tickled the man."
d: "Refuse, the food that is to be dicarded, is to be put into the basket." to "To refuse, to resist, to be put into the basket."
e: "Mia wanted to see the pop star actually sing really badly (a lot)." to "Mia wanted to see the pop star sing really badly (off-tune)."
f: "Going to visit relatives can be boring." to "Relatives that are visiting can be very boring."
g: "Many monetarily poor students are on scholarships." to "Many people who are poor in condition are on scholarships."
h: "Johnny ate the bacon that was on the sofa." to "Johnny, who was on the sofa, ate the bacon."
i: "I didn't sleep in the same house as my spouse." to "I didn't have sexual intercourse with my spouse."
j: "I saw her duck, the animal." to "I saw her do the action of ducking."

2. If one puts the correct punctuation, such as a comma, then they will know if the one thing is modifying one thing or the other.

3. A man walked into a bar. Ouch. [The man could have either walked into a bar, as in a pole, or a bar to drink.]
*This joke should be said, not written* How long (or the name Hao Long) is a Chinese man.

This is about ORBITZTRAVEL. This states that Orbitz is the best choice there is just because of the hotel offer. The others were very happy that they got the discount while the person who didn't was very sad. There was a very limited amount of information. Also, this was an example of Hasty Generalization in the fact that there was only one man who was said for not getting the discount, and that was supposed to represent everyone else who did not have Orbitz. There is also an Appeal to Popularity, because everyone around the man who didn't get the discount were extremely happy, and it was the popular view. Becuase of this, people might be tempted to buy the product, since it was a popular view.

What Was I Thinking

Just like it says in "What Was I Thinking", I think it is true that people really just go with whatever is given to them, or whatever they see. Just like how people look at the prices and see the value of the item as it is, people learn to just take everything in the world in just as it is given to them. Their minds are so easily tricked into not thinking much. They never take the time to really think about things.

People learn to accept things such as prices. One example is clothing. We just see the price tag and we usually take it as it is. Abercrombie sometimes sells T-Shirts for $20, when it really can be bought for around $5 or sometimes even less. However, we just simply look at the brand, and we accept the price. We dare not to argue with what society has been telling us. We just learn to accept. Honestly I do not think that it is a good thing to accept things as they are because we should learn how to think for ourselves, and we should be reasonable with things such as prices. Also, just as how people are easily deceived, the mind is easily deceived as well.

There was one experiment explained in the article where the victims were told to write down the last two digits of their social security number. Afterwards, the tester was to ask the test takers to write down reasonable prices for some things. The people were unconsciously affected by the last two digits of their social security number, and put down every price within that range. This just shows how much the brain tries to make connections, and how much the mind can be easily affected. We should learn to really think things through instead of going about on our things in such a flippant manner. People should try to train their minds to be quicker with things.

As the years go by, people are starting to get lazier and lazier. They start to become very lazy even with their thinking, and they start to accept whatever is given to them, accepting it as the truth. Tests have shown that people are very used to accepting things as they are, and that everything around the people influence them, even something as random as the last two digits of one’s Social Security Number. This has come to show that people are becoming more accepting as well as thinking less.

Love is a Fallacy

There are eight types of fallacies listed in the story Love is a Fallacy. They are the following:

-Dicto Simpliciter: an argument based on an unqualified generalization. This is when someone makes an argument based on a generalization. However, that generalization is very off, because there can be other arguments based on that.

i.e. Milk is good for you, because it builds strong bones and it helps your body. However, some people are lactose intolerant, so in that case, milk can be very bad for them.

-Hasty Generalization: It is just using too little information, and basing a huge generalization on that. In other words, the number of samples being tested is too small to figure out anything.

i.e. I love music. She loves music, and because of this, everyone loves music.

-Post Hoc: Believing that something happened because of something else when those two have a high chance of not being related at all.

i.e. There is a spider, and when i tell it to move left, it moves left, and when I say right, it moves right. However, i take off its legs, and then give them the same commands, but it doesn't move at all. Therefore, if you take off all of the spider's legs, it cannot hear.

-Contradictory Premises: There are two premises that contradict one another, but they are happening at the same time. So therefore, there can be no interaction or a conclusion.

i.e. What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

-Ad Misericordiam: This is when one relies on another's sympathy and pity to argue things.

i.e. I deserve to get a good grade on the project (which I was notified of a month ago) I didn't do, because my dad died, and right now my family is in a very bad situation where they are extremely destitute; we can't even eat three meals a day.

-False Analogy: The analogies cannot even connect to each other, yet it is still used as an analogy to throw people off.

i.e. Not bringing your pencil and paper to class is like a soldier going to war without a gun.

-Hypothesis Contrary to Fact: Saying what could have happened in the future, when it cannot be changed.

i.e. If Josef Stalin was taken out of the picture, the Cold War would have never happened.

-Poisoning the Well: When one condescends another person, and says negative things about them, saying that whatever they say is wrong.

i.e. That guy always does something that seems suspicious. So no one should get close to him.

The Five Other Logical Fallacies:

-Appeal to Authority: Just because a person is an authority in a certain subject does not mean that all of his/her claims are true.

i.e. A doctor who makes false claims so that he could get money off of his patients.

-Appeal to Fear: This is when someone uses fear to get another to do or believe something, when it has nothing to do with the claim.

i.e. A man who says that people should believe in God or else they will go to hell.

-Appeal to Flattery: This is when someone flatters another, and because of that, the other person feels good and does whatever that someone wants them to do.

i.e. Complementing the principal on how well he runs the school, then asking him to lessen your punishment.

-Appeal to Popularity: This is when people believe something merely because it is a popular view.

i.e. People once believed that the sun revolved around the earth, because it was a popular view.

-Appeal to Ridicule: This is when one ridicules an opposing claim so that people will support one's claims.

i.e. "Obama said that he will bring back the troops from Iraq once he is elected president. HAHA. And that's just ridiculous."

What is Reality (Truman Show)?

Are you living in the Truman World?

I believe that I actually am living in the Truman World, because I have never thought about truly finding out whether or not I am living in reality. I have never thought about questioning this reality-- I always just accepted it as it is, just like Truman did in his “real” world.

How do you live in the Truman Show? In what ways do you live in the Truman Show?

One lives in the Truman World by not really questioning how life works. If you just take the world for granted, and live life just following to the rhythm of the world, then you are pretty much living in the Truman Show. Truman always believed what everyone around him told him, when in actuality, they were all lying to him. He believed them because he thought that they were trust-worthy, and in his perspective, they were speaking logically. However, logic does not always lead to truth. Taking what other people say to be true and making it to one’s own truth is not truth at all. What if this truth is still confusing to that person? Should he or she still accept it? But that’s exactly how we are, and that’s how we live in the Truman Show.

A way to live in the Truman Show is to be satisfied with anything the world throws at you. You can also live in the Truman Show by remaining complacent, not really wanting to step out of your comfort zone to find out things that seem to be obvious to you. Accepting things for how they are is also another way you can live in the Truman Show. Let’s say that someone told you that all babies were carried by storks to the front of their parents’ doorsteps, and that’s how they were born, and you believed it. However, this is not the truth; you simply accepted what was given to you.

A way that I live in the Truman Show is by just going with the flow, and being complacent in my life. I am very uncomfortable with the way I am, but I don’t want to do anything about it, because I believe that this is probably the best it could get at the time being. I am shielded from the truth in many ways, because sometimes the truth might be something that is too much for me to deal with. Sometimes I’m scared from the truth, so my passion to find out the truth is sometimes shadowed by my own fears of truth.

What is real to you? How do you know?

I do not know what is really real to me. I do know that uncertainty is a real thing. Another thing that I know that is real is my being. I know that I am not anyone else, and that I am myself. There is a possibility that I am a clone or such, but I know that I am myself. I do not know much of what is real to me, because as I began to think, everything can deceive you. Honestly, I do not know what is real, except for deception and uncertainty.

The Truman Show

-What do you think of Christof's speech?

When I heard Christof's speech, it seemed very intelligent and very ingenious that he would think of using a person and shaping his life to show how easily people can be fooled. Christof shows that people can be easily deceived by the everyday things that surround them. He has a point when he says this, and he proves it by using a person who lives a life that is nothing like reality.

-What is the "real world"?

I believe that the real world is something that people should rethink. I hope I am living in the real world, because honestly the Truman Story scared me, and it made me rethink who to trust and what to trust. I think the real world still exists, but we will never know if we are living in one or not, because just like Truman, we might be believing that whatever world we are living is real. To Truman, his world was real. To me, this world, and this reality that I am living in is real, because this is what I get to experience and such. To me this place is my reality, and it is a reality for many people.

-Does Truman have it better than other human beings?

Truman does not have it better than other human beings in a sense that he does not get to do what he wants to do the most. He wants to be able to travel, but he is being kept away from doing so. I believe that everything else about Truman is not better or worse than other human beings. I merely think it is the same. People, just like Truman, are controlled by others, no matter what. They will always be influence and shaped by their surrounding as well as the people around them. Also, just like Truman, people go through life not knowing much, and just accepting everything as they are given to us.

-Do we accept the world given to us-- like Christof says?

We do accept the world given to us, and we do not question it. Until now, I had never questioned reality seriously until I saw this movie. I always accepted this as the reality, and accepted whatever was thrown at me because others have told me that I must just accept everything as it is. I stopped questioning like I once did. I stopped asking 'why' to everything like I used to. As I aged, I lost the art of questioning everything. Until now, I have accepted the world just as it is given to us. However, I know that in the future, I still will absent-mindedly because it is so well programmed into my mind to do so.

-What do you think has kept Truman in the show for so long?

I think the thing that kept Truman in the show for that long is because he grew up with everyone telling then that whatever is given to him was the reality, and that he had to embrace it and accept it. Every time there was a strange incident that might have led him to the truth, everyone else guided him into thinking that it was just him, and no one else. However, when he sees his dad that he loved so much again, he starts to realize that something in his world is not right, and that he is being kept out from a big secret.

Is Truth Absolute, Relative, or Subjective?

I believe that all truth is relative. Everything is related to how different people perceive things, and how the culture influences them. There is no such thing as an absolute truth, because everything is based on everyone's way of thinking and perceiving things.

Our truth is in actuality related to us and what we do. Also, people come up with these truths based on how they perceive things and how they feel about something. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and truths. Do some people, due to their culture, cannibalism might be something that is a very regular thing to do. However, in places like Britain or America, it is an illegal action, and it is looked down upon by society. All cultures and such are different, and the reason why they are different is because to their won country, whatever custom or way of thinking may be right to how they are thinking in its own way.

Also, our truth has to deal with the way we feel. Based on our emotions and feelings towards certain things, we can make bad judgment. Also, one can look at something, and give it a misjudgment just because that person was not feeling well or something. When someone simply sounds like they know what they are talking about, we tend to believe them more, simply because of their tone. So to someone, when a man is saying something with a lot of sympathy in his voice, it might seem like he is really sincere. However, to another person, it may seem like the man is just trying to gain attention, and in reality, they are not sad at all.

If truth is said to be absolute, how do we know for sure that it is absolute? People simply say that they know it's true, when it is something that is true to them. In example, Jews believe that there is only one God, and no trinity, while the Christians believe that there actually is a trinity and only one God at the same time. Both believe that their truth was the absolute truth. However, looking at this from an Atheist point of view, it seems as if both religions are just trying to push their relative truths, not the absolute truth. That is how it is for all things. What might seem like the absolute truth for one person might not be the absolute truth at all.

If truth was to be subjective, that means that only the person’s individual truth matters, and it’s not the actual relative truth that matters. However, one might say that something is red when in actuality, it is green because the person is colour-blind. Also, someone might say that it’s all about the individual, so if someone does not see a tree falling in the middle of a forest, they do not acknowledge it when it had actually happened. However, others were there to witness it, and they had seen it fall. This is just like being overly skeptical, not believing in anything that anyone else is telling you.