Decision-Making: Emotion vs. Reason

1.) The role of myelin in the frontal lobe and decision-making is that since the frontal lobe isn't fully connected yet and doesn't have much myelin, which basically acts as insulation for the nerves, it is less capable of making good decisions. Adults have fully developed frontal lobes and more myelin, thus their brain signals can flow more freely than that have teenagers.

2.) The role of the cerebellum in decision-making is to coordinate the thinking process and to smooth over the thoughts resulting from life experiences in an organized matter. The cerebellum doesn't fully develop until the late 20s, so it is certainly not completely developed in a teenager, and thus the adolescent thinking process is less organized, leading to worse decisions.

3.) The role of socialization in the moral development of children is to shape their possibly already existing moral codes so that they adhere to the norms. The implications of socialization on the possibility of a universal moral code are that if our morality can be molded from that start, we can aspire as a race to achieving a universal moral code where we can all understand each other and be truly unselfish through cultural experiences.

4.) When I'm making a decision, I try to consider all of the pros and cons of that decision, and the results of it if I take action. In doing so, I  weigh the benefits of that decision against the costs, and can determine if it is a good decision to take action on or not. For example, I'm looking at colleges right now as a junior in high school, and when I'm narrowing colleges down it's a matter of weighing the good against the bad. Eventually, I'm going to have to make that big decision and choose my college, and to do that I'll have to determine whether or not the benefits of that college will outweigh the costs by just trying to predict all the possible outcomes. I'd say that being able to make good, smart decisions,   is extremely important and definitely matters. The decisions I make now determine my future, so it's worrisome that my brain isn't as capable of making them according to the neurological studies.

The 16th Man Blog Post

1.) Knowledge issue question: Can sports really change people's minds so drastically as to significantly change the world, or it something else beyond the sport itself?

2.) My CAS activity: World Challenge Ecuador
  
In relation to Mandela Quote: Mandela believed that something like sport could change the world, and it's the aspect of sports that involves people of different cultures being able to work together that is what has that ability. When I go to Ecuador this summer, I'm going to be doing some community service for mentally challenged kids who speak a totally different language and who have grown up in a completely different culture. We will be working together, and will be simultaneously understanding each others' lives better while doing so. In that way, we will be bridging cultural gaps, like the rugby teams did, but on a bit smaller scale.

Reflection Assignment

1.) Emotion and memory have many links, and can be quite dependent on eachother. When a person feels an intense emotion, it is more likely that they will have a more vivid memory of the situation surrounding that emotion. Conversely, memories are often based upon what someone felt at a time rather than what they saw, smelt, or touched. For example, I can remember times when I was really sad, but not exactly what was going on at the time. This however is not always the case. Sometimes intense negative emotions that are scarring and traumatic can cause someone to subconsciously rid of the memories of that situation. A memory can actually cause new emotions too, for example remembering a lost loved one can stir up emotions of grief and sadness. Basically emotions and memories are connected in various ways that directly affect one another.

2.) High reason is "the point of view that someone other than you might take with respect to your future," it "values pure reason and logical deduction above all else." Somatic hypothesis is when you have a gut feeling about something, a feeling about something that affects you physically and affects your decision on something. For me, when I'm making a decision I tend to try to be as logical as possible but I don't disregard my gut feeling either. I'm currently looking at colleges and I look logically at their benefits as well as if they just feel right for me in my gut. That being said, I'm not terrific at making decisions as I put a lot of thought into each one I make.

Thoughts and Questions on Language

Concept: Is human language innate or learned?
Packet: B "Language"
Pages: 80-81
My thoughts: I believe that language is innate in humans, and that there is an inherent ability in humans to communicate with words/sound. However, that doesn't mean that I don't think society and culture affect language, as they certainly do. It's just that society forms the language that is already there; it shapes it but does not create it.

Two "good TOK questions" for this concept:
1.) What causes society to have such a large influence on language?
2.) Is it possible to understand abstract ideas of others properly without verbal language?

Save the Ainu Language!

1. The Ainu language is a language of Japan, specifically the Kuril Islands and Hokkaidu, that is nearly extinct. The word Ainu means human in the language.

2. The Ainu have unknown origins but once they came into contact with Japanese people they experienced racism and various conflicts, leading to the banning of their language and near slavery in the Japanese fishing industry. Many Ainu today like to identify as Utari instead.
http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Ainu

3.
                                                      
This is an image of 5 Ainu gathered around reciting a "Yukar", or tale of a hero. I feel this supports the saving of the Ainu language as the Ainu valued oral literature and within the language reside many stories to be told.
http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/en/study/eng13.html
4.
                                                           
This is an image of an old Ainu man. It is reflective of the Ainu culture as all men had long beards like him and he is wearing traditional clothes. I feel that this photo just carries within it the feeling of how old and important the traditions were to the Ainu.
http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/en/study/eng01.html

Symbols

http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/30/3061.html

1. The Cultural Origins
This is and Egyptian hieroglyph thats means "underworld" or "kingdom of death." The star in its center is an Egyptian hieroglyph that means, not surprisingly, star.

2. What it Represents
This was mostly explained in #1, but it also can a computer sign that means "system" when it is upside down.

3. Emotive, ambiguous, or vague?
I'd say this symbol is vague, as it is just a circle with five lines in it, and I can't really deduce any real knowledge about what it means from that.

 4. Knowledge Issues
 The problems of knowledge that I identify with this symbol are that it can easily be mistaken by people who are computer savvy as the symbol that means system instead of an Egyptian hieroglyphic. Additionally for people who don't know Egyptian hieroglyphics and aren't involved with computers, it wouldn't be able to be understood. Lastly, since it is round and has what look like spokes, the symbol would probably be assumed to have something to do with wheels when first guessing its meaning.

 5. Similar Symbol
A symbol that looks similar to the one I originally chose is this http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/30/3019.html. This is a symbol within Buddhism called the Wheel of Life. Symbols.com says that "Its eight spokes represent the eightfolded way: right knowledge, right state of mind, right speech, right action, right way of living, right striving, right vigilance, right meditation." This symbol looks very much like mine, and it actually does have a meaning that involves a wheel and spokes. 

WOK Language-Global Views

Quote: "...learning additional languages enhances the learning of the 'mother tongue' as well as broadening a student's worldview."

As an IB student, I strongly agree with this statement. I take French, Latin, and, of course English, and I'm also in Greek Club.  I personally love languages, and learning them is a really interesting process. I've noticed that I'm become significantly more aware of other cultures while learning French, Latin, and Greek, and I've broadened my world view immensely. Learning another language also helps me more clearly understand my mother tongue, as I can see how other languages work grammatically, and pick out the differences between that language and my own. 

Alex and Ray
Alex and Ray display real enthusiasm for learning languages. I couldn't believe how fluently and easily Alex spoke the languages he demonstrated in the video. Not only did he know it, he had a natural accent as well. I aspire to be able to speak multiple languages one day, even if I didn't have the advantages Alex did at traveling around at a young age. 
Ray also was able to travel around the world because of his job, and that traveling is what triggered his love for learning languages. Both of these people showed how nice it is to be able to speak to people around the world, and how it facilitates traveling and working in other countries. Their international abilities and worldliness are definitely qualities that support language learning. Lastly, I do know someone who demonstrates the same qualities in my school: Meredith Sullivan. She travels often and is so eager to learn new languages that she does whatever she can to go to the native countries. I've heard her speak multiple languages, and she is always so committed to learning more about them. 

The Best Way to Learn a Language
I think that I am more of a auditory and kinaesthetic learner. I find that in French class speaking out loud and hearing the vocabulary that Madame Blanc uses helps more than when I am studying vocabulary off of a sheet. Also having the experience of talking with others in a group and trying to find the right words to convey our thoughts together is really helpful. Whenever I am forced to come up with new vocabulary to convey an idea, that usually sticks in my mind. That's why I really want to go to France, so I can have the experience of being surrounded by the language and being immersed in the culture.

Sources of Illogical Thinking

Skepticism: Skepticism can be appropriate and almost necessary in certain situations, but if it is taken up as a permanent attitude then it can have the opposite effect. If one enters every situation already skeptical, it "subverts the reasoning process before it even gets started." There are two kinds of skeptics, the extreme skeptic and the moderate skeptic. The extreme skeptic claims there is no actual truth. The moderate skeptic claims the truth can exist but the human mind cannot attain it.

Evasive Agnosticism: An agnostic, often heard about when talking about religious beliefs, is someone who claims that they don't have enough knowledge to make a solid judgement about it. They "claim ignorance" in a sense. Agnosticism can be appropriate when there is not enough evidence to make a clear judgement, but mistakes in reasoning come in with evasive agnosticism, when one uses ignorance as an excuse. If there is enough evidence to make a judgement, or if one hasn't even looked into the matter, agnosticism becomes a mistake in reasoning.

Narrow-Mindedness: In order to learn more about the truth, one should keep their mind open to all possibilities. If someone is narrow-minded, they are limiting their scope and closing opportunities for finding the truth.

Hypothetical Situation with Narrow-Mindedness: If I've noticed that my friend is a bit out of sorts lately, and I want to find out why without directly asking her so not to put her on the spot, I would need to consider all the aspects of her life that could be influencing her. If I'm a narrow-minded person though, I might completely eliminate the possibility that her friends, including myself, could be causing her sadness. This would limit my scope and lessen my chances of finding the truth.

Logical Fallacies

1.

• Middle Ground-When someone justifies the truth of a claim by saying that it's in the middle of two extremes. Example: "I hear that Kylie is a genius," said Adam. "I hear that she's actually quite dull," said Alasdair. "That must mean that she is somewhere in the middle, just of average intelligence." said Kit.
• Two Wrongs Make a Right-When someone justifies a claim because they believe someone else would do the same thing. Example: "It's okay for me to eat some of Jack's lunch, since he would do the same to me if I walked away for a second."

2. Hasty Generalization-When one specific example is given about something and then general conclusions are drawn from it about that something. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky7ic1Ro9yw. The Hasty Generalization being made in this commercial is that since the boy got to kiss the beautiful girl of the popular guy at prom, that all Audi car owners will be able to be brave like that.

Reaction Time, Synesthesia, and Sense Perception

Activity A—sense perception, reaction time, and learning
3.) Played the game 5 times, here are the recorded results:

Trial	Number of Dots	Percentage Change in Score*
1	32	0%
2	35	(35-32)/32 * 100=9.40%
3	39	(39-32)/32 * 100=21.8%
4	40	(40-32)/32 * 100=25.0%
5	40	25.0%

4.) Sense perception and reason affected my score because as I continued to do it I became faster as I was more focused and therefore aware of the blog dot, I also realized I could click quicker and still wouldn't miss any most of the time. My reaction time improved each time, and I definitely learned from early trials.

Activity B—synesthesia and the Stroop test

7.) Synesthesia is condition where senses cross over, for example, when someone hears certain sounds when they see certain colors, or tastes certain tastes when they hear certain music intervals.

8.) When I listen to various sorts of music I just experience the hearing sense, unfortunately. I feel like I would like to have synesthesia, it sounds like you can experience life more that way.

11.) Records for Interactive Stroop Effect Experiment:

 

Word Set 1 Time =20.182

Word Set 2 Time = 20.826

Difference:20.826-20.182=0.644

(I expected the first word set to be words with different colors, I didn't realize it was just all the words with their own color at first, so I went a lot slower than I would have if I had known that.)

12.) The Stroop Effect is when the brain has to deal with two stimuli simultaneously and thus its operations are slowed, like when it is trying to name a color of a word that is a different color. This shows that the interference of different stimuli in the environment can slow down the brain's basic processes as it gets overwhelmed with, for example, determining a color and reading a word, which is does at different speeds to begin with.

The Biology of Sense Perception

Chosen concept: the just noticeable difference.
Definition: The just noticeable difference is when there are two or more things that look extremely similar but are different by just a very small aspect. It's when we don't perceive something because of what we expect from perceiving, visually, something very similar to it.
Two examples illustrating the just noticeable difference:
a.) Personal experience-I remember when I was child I would play games in coloring books and school magazines where I would have to look at two images and find differences between them, circling the small things I found. The reason it can be so difficult is that when looking at one image you immediately perceive its general appearance, so when you look at the other you become unsure whether something very small and particular was in the first image. This demonstrates that prior visual perception has affected your perception of the other image because your brain notices that it is almost the same at first glance, and glides over the smaller details.

b.) Related to an area of knowledge-This ties into the area of knowledge called the arts. For example, an artist sometimes takes advantage of this aspect of the human brain and can base a painting, for example, off of it. If said artist paints two pieces of art that look the same at first, but he actually painted it in slightly lighter hues or moved the main focus a little to the right, it can be considered an art display to have the two paintings next to each other, as one may have to really study the pictures to find the differences, and may even find they prefer one to the other due to the just noticeable difference.

Vegetative State Situation & January Presentation Topic

1.) A real life situation related to vegetative state patients is one where a family must be faced with the decision to keep a loved one alive if they are in such a state and completely dependent on machines for survival. We discussed situations like this in French class one day and debated whether or not it was right to decide for the person in the vegetative state whether or not they should live. It was a really interesting debate, everyone had varying views, since it is about a life. 

2.) TOK KI questions for this situation:

• Can someone's life be put in the hands of another?
• Is technology getting too advanced?
• Is it wrong to depend on machines despite the convenience?
• Can we ever really know how someone is feeling?

3.) Our topic for the January presentation is: "What's more important to growth in knowledge in the sciences: facts or ignorance?" A real life situation involving this topic could be a group of scientists working in a cancer research facility: is it the previous facts about the human body and disease that will aid them in their research or will it be delving into the unknown that leads them to the answer?

TOK KI questions for this situation:

• Are "facts" ever really set in stone?
• Are discoveries made because of prior knowledge or because of curiosity due to ignorance?
• Is our ignorance more valuable than our knowledge?
• Is it better to know of something before hand, or to know nothing of it and not be limited by prior "facts"?