Inattentional blindness

There was a concept that we read about while we were researching for our Tok presentation called "inattentional blindness." Inattentional blindness is a condition where a person only sees where their attention is paid and disregards all other elements. An example that we saw was the gorilla test in the room where many of the people were focused on counting the number of white shirts in the room and did not see when the gorilla appeared. This is called inattentional blindness. In many situations this occurs such as when athletes are extremely focused to get the ball that they disregard who they may be dodging and could potentially injure. This is a form of a fallacy where if applied to knowledge, people would not be able to acquire the truth because it has been hindered by what they are looking for. For instance when one is searching for knowledge about a specific cause regarding an event: say, militarism regarding World War 1. They would solely look into the aspects regarding militarism and associate that with being the single cause rather than looking at other potential triggers of World War 1 such as alliances, nationalism and imperialism. This blindness occurs in the search for evidence, and also on a regular basis where we disregard other aspects due to our focus on a particular thing. 

Is harming an individual for the sake of benefiting the human population justified?

Mr Michel was telling me about an event that took place the year of his graduation, 1983 where in South Dakota, students of his college were offered compensation for enrolling themselves in human experimentation. They were all given contracts where the ones devising the experiments stated that they were not responsible should anything happen. This was was an experiment held for researchers in the field of medicine. When I heard about the event, I immediately thought how ridiculous it was. People at the time that they are most needy of money and have to get jobs while coping with living alone and paying tuition will definitely feel as if earning easy cash is the simpler way out. However what they do not realise is the extent of drastic consequences they may have to face some of which are not even mentioned and the experimenters do not even take any responsibility. They claim that they are helping the world, perhaps through some tests conducted to learn more about the body or for claimed cancer research. There is no guarantee that any of these will absolutely lead to a fruitful outcome, and I feel that it is a question of ethics to be testing on other humans in order to potentially attempt to helping the entire humankind. It is somewhat of a contradiction to be doing that. Even prior to World War 2, human experimentation was frowned upon and it was one of the vile acts committed solely by Nazi doctors on Jews. Human subject rights also demand that no physical or emotional harm is induced to those that are a part of the experiment however these rights are violated and without risk as those who have been paid cannot legally accuse the ones carrying out the test since they had already stated they would not be responsible. Many would say that it is the individual's responsibility and that no one is forcing them to be a part of human experimentation, however, I feel that people take desperate measures and rely on the chances that things may turn out okay which is why they agree to do this. It isn't as if they are engaging in the experiment for fun, but rather because circumstances have pushed them to and for this reason they do not deserve to be impaired and I find that harming an individual is never justified in cases such as these.

Propaganda influence

In History we have been learning about World War 2 and one of the major components used by leaders to spread awareness of their ideology was through various means of propaganda. One of the reasons why the Nazis were so successful was due to their use of potent publicity which leads us to question to what extent does propaganda influence our beliefs?

Nazi ideology was indeed very twisted but it was one that attracted the attention of so many. There were many techniques involved in order to achieve this. Firstly was the subtle condemnation of the races/kinds of people that the Nazis disliked. There were storybooks published depicting the Jews as criminals and monsters so children would grow up with a falsified perception of them. For adults and children alike, there were museums built to downgrade art made by the Jews and communists and all their pieces were shown to be disgraceful to the name of art. On the other hand, there were museums built to showcase the art made by the Aryan master race and this was considered the epitome of art. Everything that they made was somehow superior and contained in depth meaning as opposed to the pointless babble created by other races and religions. This was a message that since art by the Jews and communists held no meaning and undermines the value of art as a whole, it should be eradicated and the artists should be arrested for creating such work. Later, this symbolised the people in general and that by comparing such work to that of the super race, the people were also being shown as inferior to the Aryans and as they were portrayed as a disgrace to the name of art, they were also given the status that they were not good enough for Germany itself. Hence their eradication meant loss of citizenship and many of them were arrested and sent to camps. This shows that the showcasing of their art and using propaganda led up to what the Nazis had  initially wanted to do. By subtly feeding these ideas into the minds of people and having them believe that the Jews and communists were inherently inferior lead to less tumult when they were eventually marginalised and suffered grave penalties. Propaganda was used widely throughout Germany. All of Hitler's speeches were also given on radio and people were dismissed from work so they would be able to listen. Having been fed these ideas daily influenced them to think that Hitler knew what he was doing. He already had a way with words and public speaking and having that heard by his people incessantly made him and his ideology that much more popular. 

Pointless questions? Or do they aid us?

Often while we are having discussions regarding knowledge issues (and I've noticed this in small groups where people speak more) questions tend to be posed that have seemingly little or no importance that may have some correlation to the topic but entirely they tend to distract the persons focus from what they're trying to answer. Such questions can be mind boggling. For instance, something very vague like do we share the same reality with someone else, is something that can make you really think about it because we never know if we see the same shade of a colour or hear a sound at the same volume and frequency as another. One specific scenario where such a question was roused was when we were discussing whether inanimate objects begin acting on their own accord when not being monitored by humans. This reminded me of a personal experience when as a kid, a little girl in my class insisted that her sleep was interrupted by the commotion caused by her barbies and that they were behaving as we do. She told everyone that very few people get to witness catching barbies in the act as they are very skilful and only come to life when they are certain their 'owners' are asleep. Even then this sounded stupid to me and it made me embarrassed of my own kind when other girls became so fascinated by this and discussed schemes they would implement to spy on the barbies. Now that I come to think of it, although this scenario was a little too absurd, there are various things I am ready to ponder about that are still realistic such as cats seeing the world differently than I do in terms of senses or even whether we see people differently and what one person looks like to another could be different from the way I see them. However, are these questions of any use to us? Using the pragmatic theory, these are situations that do not affect our lives in any way, and trying to figure this out is simply a waste of time and won't help us gain any form of truth as what it isn't useful to us isn't knowledge. 

Change in socio-economic classes

We are discussing Reza Khan's Iran and a lot of that in the beginning revolves around reforms that he made. There was an aspect that came up about the poor supporting his changes because they were desperate whereas the more affluent were not particularly keen on bringing about change because they were content with the way their lives were. So a question was posed about change in socio-economic classes and about how the lower in status that they are, the more they believe that they should work to ameliorate the society. The elites disengage themselves whenever they can because they are ultimately selfish and do not want things to change for themselves as to aid the poor and grant them more privileges. Looking at history, there is a pattern where this continuously happens where the rich do not support change, and the poor are willing to do anything for it. This is because the poor feel they do not have anything to lose and that any hope of change would be better than the lives they're leading. In addition to this point is that whenever things are looking up and more people are employed and there is no hyper inflation, people begin to stop supporting radicalism. Before world war 2, when the Weimar Republic induced a 200% raise in unemployment, everyone looked towards the NSDAP to bring about change, whatever it took. But as Stresemann, the foreign minister at the time introduced the Dawes Plan, reducing overall German reparations, the NSDAP temporarily became unpopular because people were content. This shows us a recurring prototype where people looks towards bringing about change only in times when they are desperate but when their personal situation is not declining, they immediately stop caring about altering circumstances for the rest of society.