Blink #2

1.) Three Fatal Mistakes.

People make assumptions about other people within seconds of meeting them.

"When someone says "I love you" you look into their eyes to judge their sincerity"

2.) The Theory Of Mind Reading

Tomkins believed that the face shows the inner emotions of a person. Tomkins was able to predict a persons actions and guess emotions based on the face.

"There are three hundred combinations of two muscles."

3.) The Naked Face

The face is the window into what the subconscious is thinking.

"The information on our face is not just a signal of what is going on in our mind. It is what is going on in our mind."

4.) A Man, A Woman, A Lightswitch

Autism is basically the inability to gather emotions from someone's face.

"When someone is autistic, he or she is "mind blind""

5.) Arguing With A Dog

In extreme stress, temporary autism can occur causing extreme focus but eventually leading to serious problems(e.g. shooting at a person and seeing them as only a target.)

"At 175 bpm, the forebrain begins to shut down"

6.) Running Out of White Space

The more white space there is, the more time someone has to react. When pressed for time,temporary autism can occur.

"Under time pressure, they began to behave just as people do when they are highly aroused. They stopped relying on the actual evidence of their sense and fell back on a rigid and unyielding system, a stereotype."

7.) Something In My Mind...

The more an action is repeated, the less and less stressful it becomes.

"That kind of training, conducted over and over again, in combination with real world experience, fundamentally changes the way a police officer reacts to a violent encounter."

8.) Tragedy on Wheeler Avenue

Regardless of the training, temporary autism and thin splicing can have terrible consequences.

"Carroll sits down on the steps next to Diallo's bullet-ridden body and starts to cry."

Biology of Perception

The lecture from Dr. Gilligan was incredibly informative. The most interesting this was the inclusion of the absolute threshold. The values were so much smaller than I would have guessed.

The information covered was very helpful in understanding how we physically perceive something, but the average person doesn't need to know very much of this. Anyone going into the field of science though, but to the average person, none of this is very useful.

The test was interesting. The only question I got wrong was the circle spinning around the cross. I was focusing on the cross, not the circle. Over-all the presentation was very helpful to the understanding of perception and I wish I had it last year. Outside of ToK though, I can't see much of the information being useful.

Blink #1

1.) Harding rose within the Republican party and eventually became president not by being qualified or a good candidate, but by being good looking and confident.

2.) People were in error in electing Harding because he was not the best candidate for the job he was elected based on looks and not on anything that was necessary to be a president.

3.) The IAT has the purpose of testing whether or not someone has an affinity to one race over another. It does this by using a series of pictures and the subject has to associate the pictures to words.

4.) The computer has the advantage of forcing a lightning fast reaction and also being able to calculate the reaction time of the person taking the test.

5.) Gladwell was mortified that his results indicated that he had a preference toward European Americans over African Americans. This came as a shock seeing as Gladwell was half black himself.

6.) No matter how many times the test was repeated, the answer always pointed toward a slight preference toward European Americans.

7.) Our subconscious may form underlining opinions about our environment, but it is only the background and we have a level of thought and opinion above it that is capable of overcoming the subconscious.

8.) Gladwell says that there is very little outward manifestation to ones preference. Unless that person is Trent Lott. When in a position of power these slight preferences can become an issue.

9.) When a person (not including models) is hired for a position based on looks and not experience or skills then the entire project suffers and if someone can be hired based on looks, what's the point of earning skills anyway.

10.) Golomb's ability to thin slice people and adapt his sale strategy to what he believes is best suited allows him to sell more than his competitors because he constantly changes.

11.) The results of the Ayres study show that slight preferences toward one race over the other are observable and can manifest themselves but are for the most part benign.

12.) Scores on the IAT test can be changed by reviewing positive material about the otherwise non-preferred group. (e.g. to raise a score for African Americans one would read about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., etc.) Test scores are proven to rise slightly when the method is applied.

How Do We Know What We Know?

We know what we know through many different forms of knowledge. There is being familiar with something or knowing something (as in a fact). There's Knowledge by Introspection which is knowing something by knowing your own emotions. Knowledge by Practice is knowing something because of the repetition of doing a task. (e.g. knowing how to ride a bike). Knowledge of Acquaintance is knowing something by being so familiar by a person and their mannerisms. We use all these types of knowledges to for a net of ideas, or a paradigm. This paradigm is how we see the world around us, and this has drastic consequences (e.g. racism; sexism; etc.). Knowledge by Authority is particularly dangerous when it is mishandled, especially since people have a tendency to believe anything someone says based on the ranking that they hold. Instead of reviewing the information ourselves, we assume that based on the title a person holds (e.g. Dr. etc.) that the person has done that already and found the information to be valid. The reputation is held to be more valid that the information itself and this is extremely dangerous and tends to be easy to manipulate for outside purposes.

Platonic Notes

Relativism- there is no such thing as a universal truth, instead truth is relative

Ways of Knowing-
Knowledge by description (platonic knowledge; propositional knowledge; knowing that)- can be communicated and had to be described and be understood by any reasonable person.

Requirements of Knowledge
Justification- empiricism (induction)
- authority
-Rationalism (deduction)
- memory
Truth- must be public, independent, eternal
Belief- necessary but not sufficient

Kennen to have knowledge that (zinuoti)
Wissen - to have knowledge of (pazysti)

Who knows more about childbirth?

An OBGYN or a woman with 5 kids?

The OBGYN knows more of "knowing that"
The doctor is familiar with the medical practices and innermost workings of childbirth

The woman knows more about "knowing how"
The woman knows how to give birth in terms of how to push the baby out and is familiar with the pain involved in the birth process.


Knowing how can be broken down into knowing that, but knowing that, can not be built up to knowing how.

I can know how to ride a bike because I know that I should pedal now.
I can know a math equation, but I can't know how to do math, just from reading it.

Who Are We?/ First Class Analysis

I am of the opinion, and strongly so, that we are the things which we can not change about ourselves. I can change my name, so that can't possibly define me as a human being. I can change my parents ( e.g. adoption) therefore that also can't define me. I can change friends/ peers very easily, therefore they are also useless in defining who I am. I can not change the country where I was born, and it is common from an individual to be raised in the country in which they were born (although possible for a movement to happen). The location, and more importantly, the general accepted paradigm of the area can be very useful in determining a person's identity. (e.g. I have a immense sense of Lithuanian nationalistic pride, resulting from my immersion in the culture) I can not change my genetics. To an extent I am nothing but a series of chemical reactions occurring in my brain. (e.g. Should my family have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism or another disease, this may effect myself or the view I hold of myself). 

A counter argument exists to this, however. The Theseus Paradox tells the story of Theseus's ship. It was pondered that how many things on a ship can you replace until it is no longer the same ship? The same principle was applied to George Washington's ax. If the ax had its head replaced twice, and the handle replaced three times, is it still the same ax? How many things can I change about myself before I am no longer the same person? Can it be as drastic as changing my name and moving across the world, or can it be as simple as getting my hair cut?

Fries and the Trouble With Them

This information is very surprising as to the actual science that is involved in the fast food cooking industry. I think that consumers are unaware of the choices and changes the industry is making to accommodate a general sense of the desire to make healthier choices by the public. The public seems to have a half hearted view on the desire for healthier alternatives. They want healthier alternatives, yet do nothing to demand them. It's more of a "It would be nice if the ingredients weren't killing me, but it's alright if they are." It is completely up to the individual to be responsible as to what they eat. There are always alternatives to the terrible food that corporations provide. Granted the options may involve more hassle and may be more expensive, but in the long run, it will keep you alive longer. The knowledge wasn't exactly kept from anyone seeing as anyone could go and look for the information if they put a bit of time into it. My responsibility as a knower is to now do something about this and stop putting these chemicals and corn products into me and to opt for a healthier, less processed life.

McDonald's Ingredients Analysis

Southern Style Crispy Breakfast Chicken Breast: 

Chicken breast filets, water, sugar, salt, modified tapioca starch, spice, yeast extract, sodium phosphates, carrageenan, maltodextrin, natural (plant source) and 

artificial flavors, gum arabic, sunflower lecithin.  Battered and breaded with: wheat flour, water, sugar, salt, food starch-modified, yellow corn flour, leavening (baking 

soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate), wheat gluten, spice, gum arabic, natural flavors (plant source), extractives 

of paprika. 

Prepared in vegetable oil ((may contain one of the following: Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve 

freshness), dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent). 

French Fries: 

Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*), citric acid (preservative), dextrose, sodium acid 

pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt.  Prepared in vegetable oil ((may contain one of the following: Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with 

TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness), dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent).

Yellow = Corn/ Corn derivative 

Red = Unknown/ Chemical

Blue = Non Corn Product

As far as I can tell, the only thing that counts as a processed food that does not contain corn is the salt packets that McDonalds hands out. Even the packets of ketchup contain corn.