Week One & Two

Week One & Two

Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynam

According to Cargo Cult Science, Feynman indicates that people tend to fail the science experiment by always missing the essential information. Whenever people are investigating the new theory, they always take credit from others that they use other peoples claim without testing it first themselves. With the uncertain claim, there will be a high possibility that one fail the experiment. Just as a valid argument, one has to have right premise in order to lead to the right conclusion. As the criminal punish system or educational system, people had assume many ways that will work with these systems, but it all seems to fail because they are missing the essential parts – there are various of people, they all have various characters, to use one fixed system on various people, I believe it will never work out  perfectly.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynam

It’s a really interesting interview that from the beginning he talks about an argument he had it with his friend about how scientists usually cannot appreciate the beauty of an object since they always break things apart and analyze it; however, Feynman disagrees with him that he believes instead of passing over the beauty of every object, whenever scientists analyze it, science actually add beauty to an object because science makes people appreciate things not only from the appearance, but also from various dimensions. I also admire the way Feynman’s father educated him. One popular fallacy people have nowadays is that people believe they already know a great deal about the world from school. From the school, we may get in touch with different names from different subjects, such as the name of a mathematical method or the name of a scientific theory, but in fact we have no idea where or how the idea came from. Feynman’s father indicated this fallacy to Feynman that knowing the name of something do not mean you know anything about the actual thing.

Viruses of Mind

The author uses the idea of computers been infected by virus as a metaphor of human being been infected by religion. In human childhood, people tend to soak up all the culture of the people around them; however, infant is lacing the ability to differentiate right or wrong. Children believe whatever they been taught, and unable to abandon inaccurate information as adult. His idea can not only be use on religion, it can also be use on morality. I agree with him that children are prone to mental infection than adult that they are getting virus from parent versus adults are getting infection from all the media. For example, in the present day, we are receiving all the information from online, TV shoes, or movies that creates vanity among adults. People start to value money or things more than anything else. I will say this materialization is other type of infection as author uses religion as an example. But then who can determine what is the mental virus what is not? Who can decide religion is the virus or atheism is truly the best thing for human? I believe as long as one will not use any beliefs as an excuse to harm oneself or others, no one can say that one’s belief is a false one.

What is Cold Reading?

As I am an international student, I am really aware of how popular the fortune tellers are in China. We have a saying that says “It is always more preferable to believe its existence than to ignore it” that makes most of the people in China become superstitious, they believe in ghost, dream, prophet etc. I think as long as people believe in it, it will be easier for the fortune tellers to manipulate them. Just as my mom has had a fortune teller to predict my future. She predicts that If I get marry after 30 or so, I will be able to find a rich nice guy. This is a vague prediction. From the rational side, people are usually more mature as the age goes up, so they will have better ability to determine who the nice guy is. From the emotional side, people are usually more aware of their age when they get marry after they heard the prediction, and this will probably make the prediction comes true.

Clarity and Exact Thinking by Bertand Russell

I agree with Russell that I believe clarity and exact thinking are important qualities we have to maintain in our life. I remember when I was old enough to making most of the decision in my life; my father always accompanied me and gave me important exhortation. There is one question he always asks me: Do you know exactly what you are doing? When I stepped in to the world, I encountered various types of people. If I lost the clarity of my life, I would easily be influence by others. If I did not what I was doing, I would only drift around the others. Thanks to father, now whenever I feel lost in my life, I will just simply ask myself: Do you know what you are doing? It never failed after this question, it always change the whole thing or whole perspective around.