Life is good, enjoy

Here is a math blog that I had written a long time ago, (I wrote it last quarter actually… but didn’t turn it in on time) before we studied the AoK math. It’s a very good journal, but I’ll expand upon it in Math 2 Journal.

I consider that among the areas of knowledge Math is the most certain. I don’t really think that many will disagree with me on that. For what I’ve seen, math works on a specific way and it tends to agree perfectly and make a lot of sense, as long as the person who is doing the math does it in the proper way.

I think that there are certain aspects of math cannot be doubted and are not ambiguous. Alluding to our first TOK class, 2+2=4 was the only thing that I was able to argue for a long time, that I knew. Now I do know that nothing can really be known, so it is clear to me that I don’t know that 2+2=4. Still this is one of the things that I can say I have overwhelming evidence about. There are several reasons why logic tells us (humans) that the concept of 2 things and 2 things equals 4 things. I mean, I do know that the symbolic value, name and etc. are irrelevant and can vary. But taking it from the fact that the only way I can explain myself in this journal is by considering that 2 equals what we know as two, and 4 equals what we know as four, and = means equals… I may say that I can be mostly certain that 2+2=4.

The reason why I argue that the 2+2 equation is, to the highest extent possible, certain, is that it is a very simple equation and it builds up the rest of mathematics. I find that the “building blocks” of math are very non subjective. There is one way to see adding, multiplying, dividing and subtracting. And this is derived from pure reasoning, and logic; fitting in the pieces to formulate an equation.

At the same time, there are biased parts in math. As I said sometime ago PEMDAS is in my opinion biased. I find that the parenthesis part of the method does make a lot of sense because it is enclosing a particular fragment of the equation, but why has one to multiply first and then add? I mean, I know that if we did it the other way around, we would get different results than the ones expected; the same if we placed the parenthesis in another position. But, the reason why we are expected to do this procedure in that specific order, is that it is the way in which the rest of math will work out properly. The thing is that those equations will always work out fine by doing that method because they were built on top of this one; so basing on the results already obtained, people obtain other results at a more complex level. If, people had taken the decision that one should add before multiplying, or just say that every person should always do the equation from left to right… or any other different consensus; results at a complex level would vary completely. Suppose that we had to add before multiplying, then when one addressed the equation by multiplying first, people would think that the person is doing nonsense and getting an erroneous result. Now, when analyzing this, people would not think that the person was that dumb… since we know the other side to it. We should think that the same would apply in our case when addressing PEMDAS by addition before multiplication.

I can see how math is in fact, something that can be supported by overwhelming evidence; but it does have its flaws. The basic “building blocks” of mathematics have no failures, but when the complexity of the equation reaches a certain degree, and people use their creativity to kind of “innovate” the results, math becomes biased. No matter if the whole system of operations by itself makes sense entirely, if the equation is not addressed in all of its possibilities, presenting more than one result when necessary, then at that point math is biased.

• Leave a comment... (1)

This quote symbolizes some of the aspects that I learned about the AoK history. One of the reasons why this is a separate AoK from the Social Sciences has to do with the bias that comes from the fact that all of the evidence that we have from this one is something that was recorded by a human and that we cannot recreate in any scenario. The fact that history is written by people makes it “tilt” at least somehow into the direction of the writer’s opinion.

In this case, the quote refers to two particularities of this AoK: first a person writes that it and therefore it makes it biased, and secondly the fact that history is written by winners.

Looking at the first aspect applied to the quote, if Churchill intends to write history, history will only be perceived from Churchill’s viewpoint. If one refers for example to WWI, history would be studied nowadays from the Triple Entente’s perspective, and people would always just see the Triple Alliance as the enemy (let’s ignore the outcome of the war for a while). At the same time, it would not only refer to the Triple Entente’s views, but England’s specifically. For example, if Churchill had had a problem for example with Orlando, it would have been recorded that way for future generations and that would be the view that we would have of Italy. History needs to be written from more than one perspective, and we must understand that being on the same side doesn’t necessarily mean same views. Thanks to the fact that history was written with the different perspectives, we are able to see the Triple Alliance’s reasons for war and even when we tend to incline to Churchill’s “side of the issue”, we don’t see the Triple Entente as complete heroes or Triple Alliance as complete enemies; we see both sides’ mistakes.

At the same time, winners write history. Churchill said: “history will be kind to me”, why? Cause “I intend to write it”. Churchill is portrayed in most history books as a hero. There are not many sources that contradict this “known fact”. People, who win for example a war, have power, and having power gives people the authority to transmit to the world whichever message intended to be transmitted. For example, all of Costa Rican social studies books portray the Caucasians as “us” and the indigenous people as some inferior people. That doesn’t make much sense to me, since the indigenous were actually America’s inhabitants. But… Caucasians had the power, so they had the power to write history the way they wanted it.

The same happens with male power figures. We don’t know much about important women in history, in many cultures. I consider the possibility that there may have been several, but they were carefully eliminated from history. The same happens with all of the enemies of power figures, they seem so brilliant and without opposition, but they truly do have a lot.

Or all of the archives from the Stalin times that were published to the Russian people… at last. People like Stalin brainwash their civilians and they rewrite history the way the want it, and obviously the way they want it is the way that favors their purpose. This is a fact that limits history. We are tied to what we have evidence about, but this evidence may not be the way in which history really happened, but the magnificent way in which someone was able to cover what really happened. Some day in the future, I hope that North Koreans are able to see what Kim really is… but for the moment, the figure is a motive to wake up in the morning for the people…

Whichever mistakes Churchill secretly had, we’ll never know. He had some that weren’t written in his history of course, but that were discovered through the other perspectives, but some mistakes, we’ll never know of.

This quote encloses all of the aspects that we learned in history: it is the study of the past, it is not tangible, it’s written and biased by the people, and there is no way to verify it for ourselves. It is recorded and that is the only evidence that we have about it. It is our decision whether to believe or not believe in it.

• Leave a comment... (1)

• Leave a comment... (2)

Benazir Bhutto:

Married to: Asif Ali Zardari

Nickname, Surname: Bhutto

Clothing and Appearance: traditional Muslim attire

 Voice: Strong voice, womanly, strong accent when speaking English.

Political career:

·         First and to date only female prime minister.

·         On 27 December 2007, Bhutto was killed while leaving a campaign rally for the PPP at Liaquat National Bagh, where she had given a spirited address to party supporters in the run-up to the January 2008 parliamentary elections.

·         She has been an influential figure in politics.

Michelle Bachelet:

Married to: divorced

Nickname, Surname: Bachelet

Clothing and Appearance: She uses formal attire, women suits, kind off manly.

Voice: strong voice, womanly, her voice is somewhat calming, tranquil

Political Career:

·         In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked her as 25th in the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world. (she was #27 in 2007, and #17 in 2006). In 2008, TIME magazine ranked her 15 on its list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

• Leave a comment... (0)

I just found out about these first 4 TOK journals that I had no idea that existed. These were the first ones we did before knowing about blogging. I found it interesting to publish them. They’re found in September file. Enjoy.

• Leave a comment... (0)

One of these days, I was in my Spanish class and we were analyzing Muerte en Venecia, from Thomas Mann. As a class, we read the following fragment: “Fue un ademán de bienvenida; un gesto alegre y lánguido, lleno de indeciso placer” (Mann, 64). When my Spanish teacher read her version, it used the word “aceptación” instead of “placer” (agreement instead of pleasure); and we realized that the meaning varied. It is a fact that the meaning would not change abruptly, but it does change. I think about how a single word in a different translation of the novel changes the meaning, and thus makes the clarity of the message that Mann tried to evoke, ambiguous. This is a fact that happened between two different editorials from the same language; I just cannot imagine how the meaning of a single piece of writing varies by a translation. It does not even have to be a large or a complex piece of writing; it can be a short simple one, and it would still change the original meaning. For example, two sentences, just TWO sentences; with a wrong translation those two sentences could change the meaning completely. Or a poem. A few verses of a poem are not really many words (in most cases), but if a word is modified the whole significance of the poem is “re-customized”.

This change does not even necessarily mean a negative thing; in some cases the translated version of the original one is better than this one. We were talking also in Spanish about the movies: Finding Nemo and Shrek, and how these two are funnier to watch in Spanish than English. Talking about Finding Nemo we talked about a song that Dory (female fish) sings, in which she sings: “Nadaremos, nadaremos, en el mar, en el mar…” (Swimming, in the sea). By playing with the phonetics one can give another effect in which the song would be exactly the same one, but changing the technical wording. It would be: “Nada haremos, Nada haremos, en el mar, en el mar…” (We will not do anything in the sea). This is a very insightful joke because the context in which it is said is that the fish are swimming because they have nothing else to do. Referring to Shrek, it is also better in Spanish since the accents fit better the characters’ personalities, such as the donkey speaking with actual Mexican accent.

In the example that I just presented, the outcome of translating the movie (originally in English) to Spanish, came out better than the actual plan. There is still an important aspect to consider. By writing something in a language, there are some cultural factors and expectations that the author had when writing. I consider that the original language of anything is a very important aspect for the writer and something that he/she had to think through. There are the cultural expectations that relate to the language, to the setting, and in most cases to the actual life of the writer. By translating this ‘masterpiece’ to another language, this essence that comes integrated with the writing is perturbed and the writing changes.

How does this relate with TOK?

This is exactly the way I see Language (WoK) applied to everyday life. The way in which language is conflicting and ambiguous since it will never be able to communicate to others the thoughts going through the head of the person saying them. Language is the most expressive way that we have discovered up till now, and it is our aim to portray these thoughts, throw the use of this one. Nevertheless, one will never be able to fully express by language, since language is shaped by one’s culture and since words will not always exemplify perfectly the thought. By translation; which is what I just talked about; there is an even greater barrier since there is not only the barrier of language expressing a thought, but also language being challenged and modified by another language.

• Leave a comment... (1)

Linking to my journal about Why TOK, I would say that there is a strong belief in wanting to understand reality and therefore address this one properly. People are “rushing” towards knowledge, and are experimenting and questioning everything around in an attempt to explain inexplicable phenomena.

We have achieved several things with this rush; we are now able to understand gravity and other natural laws. This has been extremely helpful, since it evidences how humans have inclined to thinking rationally in the last years. Thanks to Areas of Knowledge such science and math; which can be considered mostly to be certain; people can now say that they understand more about this reality surrounding us.

But now that a degree of reality has been achieved, is this really what we were looking for all along? It is true that several aspects of reality can be overwhelming for a person. For example being able to conceptualize the principles of math can make one proud of understanding what surrounds us. This can get to a point that it might even make some people become “addicted”, to a certain degree, to incline towards understanding reality more every time.

This seeking of reality has turned us to be skeptic and question everything that we do not have concrete evidence for. This can be a positive aspect in the sense that we now do not theorize or believe everything that someone else hypothesizes, but we drag our own conclusions from either experience or an external source with enough credibility to be considered as knowledge.

Examples, in which people have been skeptics about certain topics that have been discussed in the latest years, are religion and alien life. There is this tendency to find more agnostics and even atheists in recent years than years before. Some people claim that there cannot be a God since there is no evidence that this one could exist. The topic of God is a very abstract topic that a person must grasp in order to believe in this one. The concept of a God being a supernatural phenomenon just does not fit into the minds of people who take skepticism to an extreme. This is due to the fact that they cannot explain it since there is no evidence about it. The same thing occurs with aliens which are a very popular subject of discussion for some lately. Some people do not believe that aliens can exist because there is no picture or any factual proof that indicates their existence. In times before, people would have probably believed most of what they were told, and even without hesitation; but due to the skepticism in recent times, people now doubt this sort of occurrences.

Some people refuse to believe what they cannot explain; myself included. I cannot say that there are aliens; I do not discard the option but I do not believe it either; at the time. I do believe in God, and my belief for this one is very strong. I do not need to be inclined towards scientific facts (I am making allusion to Darwin’s God) to know that my belief in God is traced to a gene that … blabla… I mean, I just do not need overwhelming evidence in this case to be able to believe.

That is where I think that there is a balance between the seeking of understanding reality to the highest degree possible; and with overwhelming evidence to support this view; with the search for a reality that suits each person’s reality. I may have a lot of support to say that 2+2=4 and understand that this is most likely to be true. At the same time I can ignore the skepticism and believe in the existence of God; and this does not affect my skepticism for math. Therefore I conclude that these principles apply the same way to other people and their ideas, but obviously not with the same exact examples.

• Leave a comment... (1)

“We automatically, and often unconsciously, look for an explanation of why things happen to us,” that was a quote that I found in the article: Darwin’s God. This quote really attracted my attention since, even when it fit with the context in which it was placed in; it is a quote that can be taken out of the text to be analyzed independently of this one. The other reason why I liked this quote is because it encloses the general essence of what TOK is, plus its purpose.

As we all know TOK stands for Theory of Knowledge; in its name there are two important keywords: theory and knowledge.

The fact that humans have an innate tendency and desire to know why things occur, describes how most of our beliefs have been built from what started as simple observations.

An example of this is science. Explanations for common phenomena and events are explained by the scientific method. From a random observation, such as Newton with the apple, three of the most important laws that we believe in were derived. We observe and from there we question. To find the explanation of why that specific event happens is explained by hypothesizing. Afterwards experimentation to support what one thinks and therefore, thanks to overwhelming evidence, being able to say that the hypothesis has acquired a certain degree of credibility. This is an important point to make: in our views, we see science as one of the most reliable sources of what theorizes why certain things happen. We pay too much attention to science and ignore whatever else might be out there to support something that might contradict science; or at least partially disagree with this one.

As well as in science there are other ways to question and to test these questions. That is where philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge take part. These studies are disciplines in which people wonder the whys of everything that surrounds us. We wonder about life, about death, about the universe and all these complex phenomena that seems impossible to explain. Why try to contradict the standards and look for our own answers; that is how human nature is.

Since the beginning of times, humans have wondered the whys of things and have innovated ways to facilitate our existence. The most primitive of us got to discovering fire. A few years after that, some invented other means such as the wheel. With discoveries such as these, I cannot imagine how things in the world would work nowadays; or if they would. What one should always take into account is the fact that these major events have occurred because people have looked for explanations of the why things happen.

Whether it is conscious or just an automatic way of reaction that is innate in human nature, Theory of Knowledge tries to emphasize this idea of wanting to understand; to know. Even when we now understand that we cannot know, we still seek to find this light and inspiration that hints us that we comprehend what is around. I certainly think that this search is very interesting, but consider that it is better for us to not be able to know; since this interminable quest is the spark that keeps the flame of human knowledge burning. It is what keeps us going on as humans altogether, united by the want to grasp unnatural events, and always questioning the standards. I think that that is what TOK is all about.

• Leave a comment... (2)

A moral judgment is different from every other judgments since this one is based on each person’s own standards, viewpoints, ethics and experiences. Everyone is different and has a distinct background; due to this factor everyone’s judgments are personal and will vary from individual to individual. Since these judgments are personalized, they may also differ from other types of judgments in many occasions. For example if one is killed, reason indicates that the murderer should be killed too, to be even. Still, one’s principles may forbid a person to kill, making many incline towards the decision based on one’s morals. This is an example of the difference between the judgment based on morals and other types of judgments, which may predispose a person to make “biased decisions”.

Many times, people base decisions on moral before weighting the other options and stay “blind” to their personal convictions. These are the cases in which one may argue that moral decisions are “biased” and even “wrong”; since as these being personalized, there is no consensus on the resolution. While some may argue that it was a “wrong” choice, others may agree with the person and consider the choice as “right”. This concept applies to every person in every decision and there are no standards which indicate what is “morally correct”. Other types of judgment (such as logic and reason) are more defined and less open to variation; that is the main difference between moral judgment and other types of judgments

Dani Víquez and Mario Escalante

• Leave a comment... (1)