Trump at G7: How Photos of the Same Scene Can Tell Different Stories
June 17, 2018
Author: Mr. Lakhaney
TOK Teacher
The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud.
June 17, 2018
The most famous psychological studies are often wrong, fraudulent, or outdated. Textbooks need to catch up.
The findings have long been subject to scrutiny — many think of them as more of a dramatic demonstration, a sort-of academic reality show, than a serious bit of science. But these new revelations incited an immediate response. “We must stop celebrating this work,” personality psychologist Simine Vazire tweeted, in response to the article. “It’s anti-scientific. Get it out of textbooks.” Many other psychologists have expressed similar sentiments.
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication
The Lifespan of a Lie
The most famous psychology study of all time was a sham. Why can’t we escape the Stanford Prison Experiment?
Medium Article that goes into greater detail.
View this collection on Medium.com
Fascinating Facts About Human Memory.
June 10, 2018
Let’s Stop Talking About The ’30 Million Word Gap’
June 4, 2018
This is an interesting article about a famous experiment that has been hugely influential on our perceptions of educational development of children. Despite its influence, there are some questions about the rigor of the study itself and the veracity of some of its conclusions.
This offers an interesting study on what it means to do “good science” in the natural sciences but also how hard it is to produce knowledge that stands up to scrutiny.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/01/615188051/lets-stop-talking-about-the-30-million-word-gap
Deductive vs Inductive Reasoning: Make Smarter Arguments, Better Decisions, and Stronger Conclusions
June 4, 2018
The essence of reasoning is a search for truth. Yet truth isn’t always as simple as we’d like to believe it is.
For as far back as we can imagine, philosophers have debated whether absolute truth exists. Although we’re still waiting for an answer, this doesn’t have to stop us from improving how we think by understanding a little more.
In general, we can consider something to be true if the available evidence seems to verify it. The more evidence we have, the stronger our conclusion can be.
What Religion Gives Us (That Science Can’t)
June 4, 2018
My claim is that religion can provide direct access to this emotional life in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder at the majesty of nature, but there are many forms of human suffering that are beyond the reach of any scientific alleviation. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike previous secular tributes to religion that praise its ethical and civilizing function, I think we need religion because it is a road-tested form of emotional management.
Which approaches to curbing gun violence are effective? How do we know?
May 27, 2018
Often, the conversation around gun violence becomes a conversation around political identities and ideologies rather than one about truth and how we arrive at it. This website is interesting in that it focuses on what we know through science. It uses appropriate, often cautious, language to come to its conclusions. The site is worth exploring. The table below summarizes the meta analysis of existing research done by the Rand Corporation. Click through the image to find the appropriate page. You can click in the table to see what research and evidence there is to support conclusions about efficacy.
Here is a link to the main page. Worth exploring for those curious about gun policy but also as an interesting case study on the use of the scientific method to help us understand and evaluate a problem in society.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2088.html
White House accuses China of ‘Orwellian nonsense’ over airline rules
May 8, 2018
Chinese authorities ask airlines to change references to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau
“This is Orwellian nonsense and part of a growing trend by the Chinese Communist Party to impose its political views on American citizens and private companies,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
What is worth learning? Reading? What should a school’s curriculum include? “The Return of the Canon Wars”
April 28, 2018
“The multiculturalist syllabus was shaped by a belief in relativism and its daughters. The multiculturalists hold that it is impossible to determine the very best works of literature humanity has produced, because there can be no objective standard of quality or merit. Thus, students should be guided to read texts from as diverse a field of authors as possible and to view texts as political artefacts and nothing else; they are to be understood as evidence of ‘identities,’ the prima facie reality of human life.”
“The timeless storytelling of Homer, the complex characters of Shakespeare, the unparalleled wit of Voltaire are all of enduring value. But in many ways these texts are also, in this context, tools for the sculpting of the human spirit. The multiculturalists were wrong to abandon this fundamental goal 30 years ago, and they are wrong to abandon it now. Education must be more than a mere scavenger hunt for instances of oppression, cruelty, and hatred. It must ask how each of us can live better. The multicultural canon offers the voices of more individuals, but fewer opportunities for the student to look beyond the polis and into his own being.”
Did Math Kill God?
April 28, 2018
The Galileo Affair becomes part of a metanarrative, or, in Jean-Francois Lyotard’s term, a Grand Narrative. It says that early seventeenth-century Europe hung at a crux, with religion pulling it backward into medieval ignorance and science straining to push time forward into modernity…
Scholars began thinking “with empty and abstract information symbols,” which catalyzed a revolution from “thing-mathematics” to “relation-mathematics.” Because this form of knowledge went beyond ordinary language, which previously was the primary means of conveying information, people slowly began to conceive of a world contingent on “natural” laws rather than the word of God.
TOK Topics 