Eighth lesson; or "Mission Impossible"

Last post for this semester! Woohoo!

Now, its presentation time again. But this time around for me…

Task: make a ToK presentation

Team: solo, a pair or three people

Topic: self-chosen (“How ethical is it to kill?”)

WOKs: any and any number

AOKs: any and any number

The task is to practice for our ToK presentation by making a sample one over the winter break. Any topic, any length, any number of ways of knowing and areas of knowledge. This is a tutorial, a practice. With 25 days to spare, this should work out quite nicely. But blog and CAS and other things also await, so I’ll need to be efficient to finish before 15^th (if the teacher sends what she needs to send). Lock and load!

Weather: cold, snowy

Loadout: internet, PowerPoint, brain, coffee

Rules of engagement: anything goes

See you after the break and the presentation. And you know what to bring ;)

Seventh lesson; or "Religion 'n' Prince Ali"

Welcome to next lesson. I bet you had faith I would deliver, and you were right.

Topic - faith.

Now, I’m an atheist. And I tried, truly tried, to see how faith on its own can be a way of knowing. And tried. And tried. And failed.

Until I realized this isn’t about faith on its own. This is about faith in symbiosis with other ways of knowing. Regardless of its usefulness, I made another mistake: faith isn’t the same as belief.

Belief would be the system of church and religion, an organization, while faith is simply trusting that something will happen. One can have faith that his friend will take something where he should.

And a superstition is a belief not based on any organized religious foundations, only different from religion since nobody made a Church of the Lucky Red Thread (or coin, or elephant, or black cat…).

Or  seventy-five golden camels
Purple peacocks he's got fifty-three!
 

That’s it for this time. Next up: last post for this semester!

And remember the towel ;)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLjbMBpGDA

Sixth lesson; or "Prisons&Empiricists (IB Dungeons&Dragons)"

Welcome to Hitchhikers’ Game Night! Tonight: Prisons and Empiricists

A party of four Rationalists enters the Stanford prison: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Random IB Student. The beginning seems fairly easy, as they follow their trusty instincts. They know that they will be a part of an experiment, but there is still a large amount of surprise as the Game Master Plato announces that Spinoza and Random IB Student will be placed in the Empiricist camp for the rest of the experiment.

Uproar.

Spinoza rolls for “fainting”, but fails.

Leibniz rolls for “punching Plato”, and succeeds. Leibniz +10XP; Plato -3HP

Without further ado, the party is split. Spinoza and Random IB Student receive the batons of Nurture and the Empiricist manifesto. Leibniz and Descartes leave for their cells, and they receive their outfits. To pass time, they start a Rationalist discussion. Empiricists tell them to stop. Descartes refuses.

Empiricists roll for “sense experience”, and hit. Descartes  -2 Faith

Leibniz rolls for “language”, and fails.

Descartes rolls for “language”, and hits. Empiricists feel it physically: -2 Faith and -3 HP

Empiricists roll for “summoning Locke”, and succeed. Locke summoned.

Leibniz rolls for “morale” and gets 13.

Descartes is too scared to act.

Locke rolls for “morale” and gets 20.

Locke rolls for “power” and gets 19.

Leibniz rolls for “mother instinct” and hits. Locke absorbs.

Locke rolls for “adoptive family studies” and hits. Leibniz paralyzed.

Descartes rolls for “criminal gene” and hits. Locke -1HP; Leibniz revived.

Locke rolls for “language acquisition device” and hits. Descartes and Leibniz lose.

The next few days are uneventful. Prisoners Rationalists slowly start to obey the Empiricists, and the Rationalists in the Empiricist ranks are molded into new Empiricists. Random IB Student and Spinoza start a discussion, which Leibniz overhears.

Spinoza rolls for “mathematics are learned” and hits. Leibniz -999 Faith and -999HP. Leibniz dead.

In the end, Stanford prison proved that men placed in certain positions may start acting as they usually wouldn’t, because of the expectations, and how easy it is to make free men slaves.

Join us for the next game night for CASopoly: collect at least 150 hours across three areas before the time is up!

Like this, with Sith lords

And don’t forget a towel ;)

Fifth lesson; or "Thorium, Panama and presentations"

Okay, everybody, presentation time!

Not yours, not mine, but IB2 had their presentation week. And boy was it fun! There were two topics I listened to, and none left me without a comment. In case you don’t know, these presentations must include a real-life story which illustrates their subject. So let’s just quickly cover them.

PANAMA PAPERS

 Not these, though

These news didn’t receive due attention when they surfaced, for whatever reason. Essentially, a group of famous and powerful people used an offshore company in Panama to evade taxes. Now, you might be in an uproar because of this, but how is it different from traveling abroad to shop or building your house in Monaco or buying from unregistered street vendors? In all those cases you use some… rather morally-gray devices and schemes to avoid paying even a dollar over the minimum price. Simply, it’s in human nature to look for a larger profit, and many did.

CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER

Being scared of nuclear energy in fifties and eighties was normal, for known reasons. But this disaster was thirty years ago, caused by intentional overloading of systems, and it was mishandled.

Nowadays, we have thorium power plants, which are much safer than uranium ones. And even further, fusion plants are being designed to produce power. Essentially, fusion is combining two or more somethings to make a single something (in this case, an atom). It is literally counter-intuitive to expect any waste/residue from this. One literally ends up with less matter than before. Go nuclear (and not in a military way)

So far, that’s it. Next time: Prisons and Empiricists (IB version of Dungeons&Dragons). Don’t forget Doritos, soda and a towel for that ;)

Fourth lesson; or "Truth, Africans and PLATO TIME"

Welcome, reader. How are you feeling today? Are you feeling today? Are you today?

What is true? So far, there have been multiple theories about that (just like about any other subject), and not all of them can be true. Thus, I will be making a small competition amongst them, rating them by complexity and applicability in life. Ready?

1. Coherence theory of truth

This theory states that one claim is true if it affirmates other, already affirmated or proven claims. One good example would be the claim that the human race has already made contact with an alien species. If we consider the universe to be infinite, then that means there is an infinite number of planets. Those planets, since there is an infinite number of them, have to contain a certain amount of planets with size similar to Earth’s. Those planets, in turn, contain some which have a position similar to Earth’s. Going further and further on, we conclude that there has to be at least one advanced sentient civilization besides us in the universe, and that that civilization can and has visited Earth. Ahh, the power of infinity…

COMPLEXITY: Basically 4/10, although it seems complex

APPLICABILITY: Large, but sometimes incorrect (remember the NSDAP and “Jews caused the defeat in World War 1”?); just because the whole world believes that the US government isn’t made out of lizards doesn’t mean that it is true 😀

2. Correspondence theory of truth

According to this theory, anything that can be proven true by observation is true. This theory works finely in regular conditions; for example, if you observe a person talking on a subject, but giving false claims, it is easy to observe that the person has no real knowledge on the subject or is lying.

COMPLEXITY: 3/10 in regular conditions

APPLICABILITY: Even larger than the coherence theory, but with a huge roadblock: the moment you enter the world of subatomic particles, quantum realm, or systems moving at Mach 2 or larger, you cannot see anything. Anybody with completed primary school can tell you that atoms are made of neutrons, protons and electrons. People with higher education and/or knowledge know that those particles are made out of bosons, mesons, quarks and so on. But one cannot see quarks, or something flying at Mach 5; or, even worse, in quantum realm a binary number can be 75% “1” and 25% “0”. Then what?

3. Pragmatic theory of truth

This isn’t as much a “theory of truth” as it is a critique of other theories. It simply says that it doesn’t matter whether something is true, as long as it works what it should. You must have heard about the Matrix. Let’s say you live in the Matrix and have 1 trillion virtual dollars, for which you buy food, clothes, medicine, services, transport, etc. You survive from that virtual money. The money itself isn’t real, but it gets you what you need to live. So does it matter whether it is real? Would you rather live in the barren wasteland of “real” Earth or in the Matrix as a trillionaire?

COMPLEXITY: 3/10

APPLICABILITY: Unparalleled in the practical world, nearly useless in the philosophical one

4. Eve theory of truth

This theory originated in a remote African tribe, and it claims that nothing bad for humanity can be true. Something along the lines of “this isn’t a drought, it is just a dream”.

COMPLEXITY: 1/10

APPLICABILITY: Imagine if somebody told you that the Holocaust, Titanic sinking, both world wars, famines in China and Soviet Union, nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and invention of the new Toblerone were only just a dream, because they didn’t help humanity? Draw the conclusion yourselves

 You bastards!

PLATO TIME!

In Ancient Greece, the belief of Plato was that there exist two planes: spiritual (unreal) and physical (real). There was an archetype of sorts for everything in the spiritual plane, a perfect version of every object, person and occurrence. Everything in our, physical plane (e.g. a man) was but a pale and imperfect picture of the archetype in the spiritual plane (man-ness).

That would be it for this lesson, interstellar travelers. Guardians, rise! And don’t forget a towel ;)