The Awakening

I was thinking about the movie we are watching in this class and it made me think about using inductive leaps to 'know' something. So my question is, are there any instances in which you used inductive leaps to know something like Dr. Sayer did in the movie? If so, did you later find out whether or not it was true based on legit ways of knowing?

Creationism Has Been Proven

(Sorry to all of you viewing this as school because the videos won't work)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zwbhAXe5yk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFG5PKw504

Based on the evidence given is this a PJTB? and if it is do you agree with it?

Documentary Film Partners and The Poughkeepsie Tapes

So, sometime this year (I believe) the Documentary Film Partners will be releasing tapings of a serial killer's stalkings and murders, known as The Poughkeepsie Tapes. It'll be the actual footage of how the he stalked and murdered his victims, shot by the killer himself. Click on the title for a link to the official page, where they have the trailer for the video.

This is the message given by the Documentary Film Partners:
"Documentary Film Partners is a new, independent filmmaking collective looking to develop and produce hard-hitting documentary programming with unflinching dedication to the facts.

The Collective, as we call it, is made up of both student and veteran filmmaking professionals who strive to teach and learn from one another while producing a style of filmmaking rare in today's festivals. This brand of collaboration is in the DNA of our company, and every film we develop and produce.

Our independent spirit drives us to tell stories that shock audiences out of their comfort-zones. This isn't your prime-time news magazine, expose fare, but rather a startling view of the world as it is. Sometimes, the world at its worst.

The DFP promise is to deliver audiences film experiences that change them forever. Films that awaken the mind, inspire the heart, and even anger the soul. No subject is off-limits, nothing is sacred. Documentary Film Partners is committed to this promise, and we believe it is our responsibility to produce films that achieve so much more than entertainment."

What's your reaction to this, based on a ToK standpoint?
Is releasing such material moral/ethical?
Is it a necessary part of knowledge?
What purpose does it actually serve?
(I don't care if you answer these questions; just comment in general...)

Maybe its just one of those days...

We have already done this in class, but I was just thinking aobut it since I started crying after watching the Pedigree commercial (link)

Why do humans respond more emotionally when the animal dies (I am Legend, Volvo ads (the foreshadowing), etc.) than when humans die?*

*I know humans are technically animals. But I'm using the very generic separation term

Some thoughts on emotion and who we are

1) In class we discussed whether it was possible to know solely through emotion. We came to the conclusion that no, one cant because emotions are responses to sensory stimuli.

If this is so, how can we as mankind reconcile the fact that no two people experience certain stimuli (qualia) the same way? How can everyone agree as to exactly what a headache feels like, what colors are, or what being in love feels like?

2) Jung suggests "personalities are shaped by feelings and thoughts while sensations color the deetails and inutition interprets the currents".

Is this true? What exactly are personalities? Are they our personal interpretations of a person? Or their expression of themselves as they see? Or something else entirely?

Love

So since it is the week of Valentines Day I figured that a love question would be appropriate. So using the WOKs explain how someone can know that they are in love. (5th hour discussed this in class in reference to the Love is a Fallacy article that we read, this can be a continuation of that discussion.) Also what role does the media play in people’s view of love?

The Giraffe Test

Check out the Link above...

Try "The Giraffe Test".

What does this say about you as a thinker/knower?

Weblog Mania

So (contrary to popular belief) I was not slacking off today but at a business competition, FBLA. While my partner and I were competing, we overheard that our speaking prompt might be about whether or not it is ethical for employers to look at the myspace or facebook profiles of any current or future employees to determine their position in the workspace. It turns out that the other team was trying to trick us into thinking that was the prompt and it actually wasn't. But that's okay.

I thought the problem was much more interesting than the inappropriate-relationships-at-work problem we thought and I would like to pose it to you guys.

Do you think looking at these profiles should factor into the judgment of possible employees in determining their effectiveness? For example, a person that is portrayed as a very social and unfocused individual on a myspace page versus a person with the exact same resume but no online profile are weighed and the one without a myspace gets the job. Do you think this is fair?
We came up with the solution that in order to ensure equal opportunity, an applicant should be informed that all public records concerning him or her would be looked at, just like they are required to talk about past convictions on an application. This would allow the applicants to have more equal chances in applying.

Please use personal examples and logic to justify. For example, I know that at Poudre a while ago there was some sort of situation with a teacher or coach looking at myspace accounts.

Getting Duped

I was reading one of my favorite magazines today-Scientific American Mind-and there was an article on fallacies in the media with special relation to politics.  I thought it was very applicable to TOK right now.  Click the link above to read the article.  

What can you do to keep yourself from "Getting Duped" by the media? 

If you have a complete understanding of fallacies does that mean that you will not be able to be swayed by the media?  

-Graham P

Political affiliations

Yes, I know that many of you are getting sick of hearing about politics eventhough many of us will be able to vote in the upcoming election. For that, I'm sorry

However, I'm interested in how many of you know who you support and whether it's because you agree with their views or just their general image/message.

The link provided is a test that shows who you mostly likely align with as far as ideology; for how many of you does it match up? (I'm not sure how accurate it is...but it was the best I could find).

Now, why do some people defend a candidate just because they are of the same party? Has politics become so Democrat vs. Republican that many people cant see beyond the party and into what a cadidate stands for? How many people would vote for someone merely because they are in that party, without stopping to consider their view beyond that it "should fit because thats what the party always represents"?

Fallacious Speakers

I recently got into a political debate amongst a group of people at school and I found that as we each defended our presidential candidate/political parties we started using more and more fallacies in our arguments, except you could tell how invalid we sounded which led to the end of our debate. What I am wondering is: What differentiates the fallacies used by professionals (ex: politician's speeches) and those used everyday (ex: my debate)? Is there a difference? Which one makes it easier to believe the fallacies as truth?

"Money is the root of all evil"

Sorry, it’ll be long. This is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, though I’m editing the middle out because otherwise it’d be longer and I really wanted the beginning and end.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

…

If you ask me the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.

Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-as, I think, he will.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns- or dollars. Take your choice- there is no other- and your time is running out.”

My question to you guys is; what do you think? Is money the root of all evil? Is it the root of all good? Or neither? And, of course, please justify.