2011 - 2012 Reflections 3

October 6, 2011
Today we talked about the accuracy of social science experiments. Generally, if people know that they are in an experiment, they would act differently than they normally would because they know that they are being watched. This reminds me of the surveys done in school. When the students know that the surveys will record their name, they are either hesitant to answer the survey or they lie in the survey. Humans...we always want to look good.

October 10, 2011
The discussion about the connection between history and memory was interesting. I think sometimes memory can be very manipulating because we might imagine something or dream of something and mistaken it as history. By saying this, I also mean that a memory doesn't necessarily have to be true, because as long as it happens in our mind, it becomes a memory. Sometimes dreams are so true that I'm not even sure if they are dreams or if they really happened in my life.

October 12, 2011
Historiography is written based on primary sources. Are primary sources reliable? Not really. Documents, diaries, and photos involve humans, thus they include opinions, bias, emotions, and possibly manipulation. Unfortunately, we still have to write historiography based on primary sources, because if not, we will not have any knowledge about history.

October 14, 2011
"You should have done this...you should have done that..." This is hindsight bias. We blame people for their actions for causing a negative consequence. However, it is easy for us to do so because we already know the outcome. Learning all these concepts in TOK sometimes make me wonder if I have been living my life in the right way. If I didn't know about all these biases and fallacies, would I notice them and see how unreasonable sometimes people and I could be?

October 25, 2011
Nature versus nurture - is an artist made or born? It seems to me that it is unfair to say that one can only be consider a true artist if he or she has talent. Einstein once said, "Genius is 1% talent and 99% hard work." If an artist is consider as an artist by talent, then the number of artists would be comparably lower. Hence, do we consider the creations of those who are not artists as artwork?

October 27, 2011
 Economics, one of the areas of knowledge, uses a lot of graphs to show trends and prove claims. However, the problems with graphs is that they can be manipulated in so many different ways that they can present something different that the original data is supposed to reflect. We should apply this knowledge to our real life that we must be skeptical and aware when looking at graphs. We definitely do not want to let our knowledge to be manipulated by graphs that are meant to be misleading. Oh, how useful ToK is...

October 31, 2011
Mr. Nomer showed us a very interesting presentation about signs and symbols and the concept of beauty. In certain cultures, being tan is considered as being beautiful while ugly in other cultures. Our concept of beauty is shaped by our culture, background, and living environment. This reminds me of the video that was showed in class last school year, when a blind person was first able to see after his operation. For a person who has never seen before, what is beauty?

November 2, 2011
I agree with Mai Vi that art has to have a response from a viewer. If a piece of art evokes a person's emotions, then it is a piece of good art. However, if an artist creates a piece of art that only the artist can understand and connect to - including the fact that the artist has high technical skills - then is the piece of art still good? Is there a universal agreement on what is a piece of good art? What is the purpose of judging whether a piece of art is good or bad?

November 7, 2011
I do not believe that 2012 is the end of the world! <-- Controlled by fear and rejection. What is the purpose of working so hard if the world is going to end soon? If I truly believe that the world was going to end soon, I would not go to school, go back to Malaysia, and then travel around the world with my family. As a result, I would be very disappointed on the first day of 2013 because the world didn't end.

November 9, 2011
I presented my TOK presentation today with Phil and Marie. Our real life situation was about a gay man who couldn't donate blood to his dying mother because of the high possibility that he has HIV. I remember while researching for the presentation, I became very angry because all the claims that were against gay men donating blood were just absurd. We live in the 21st century! We have technology to test blood!

November 11, 2011
Tadhg's presentation was very interesting - he talked about nature versus nurture. According to his presentation, our personality are based on genes, regardless of the environment that we grow up in. I started to question myself - I know that I changed a lot after coming to Vietnam. So is my old self part of my genes or my current self part of my genes or are is my personality as a whole part of my genes? If our personality is truly based on genes, then why are we, humans, easily influenced by other people?

November 15, 2011
Does Math exist in nature even before human existence or is Math invented by humans? In my opinion, math exists in nature. This can be seen through the creation of beehives, of DNA, and the shapes of snowflakes. The representation of mathematics - such as numbers, symbols, and equations - are then invented by humans to use math to understand the world.

November 22, 2011
We unpacked the prescribed TOK essay titles today. I thought there was going to be an essay in which I could write about language, there was one - "The vocabulary we have does more than communicate our knowledge; it shapes what we know." Evaluate this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge. Why is it AoKs instead of WoKs...

November 24, 2011
The three essay titles that are my top choices are (1) The title mentioned in the last reflection (2) Knowledge is generated through the interaction of critical and creative thinking. Evaluate this statement in two areas of knowledge. (3) As an IB student, how was your learning of literature and science contributed to your understanding of individuals and societies. I am overwhelmed. I am not really sure what to do at the moment because it just seems so difficult to pull what I've learnt over the one and a half years together to write an essay.

November 28, 2011
The TED talk by the mathemagician Arthur Benjamin was short but fruitful. I think what he talked about was very meaningful. We should change the math that we learn in high school. I know as a fact that many students who are not interested in Math complain about learning Math because it just seems so useless to learn about calculus when we are not even going to use it after we graduate from high school. If we change the education system, it might even be more beneficial to the society.

November 30, 2011
We learnt about different concepts of ethics in class today. Whenever there is a topic that is related to religion, I am always a little bewildered. Today, the topic that was related to religion was the divine command theory. It states that an action is moral or immoral because God either allows or prohibits us from doing it. Because I don't have a religion, I am very skeptical of that statement, especially when I see news of people doing terrible deeds that are ordered by God.

December 2, 2011
Today we learnt more about concepts of ethics. To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm enjoying myself while learning about ethics. Whenever a question is asked, it is common for me to be taken aback and not know how to answer the question because I've either never thought about the question or I really don't know if there is an answer to it. I also realized as I grow up, there are more and more situations in which I don't know the answer to. I'm not very sure if I like the trend..

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