This chapter has all to do with checking sources, which sounds like a quite a basic thing to do. All throughout high school, we as students are given guidelines and lists of ways to check our resources for validity. In college we're warned time after time of plagiarism and it's horrifying consequences which could leave our future marred and possibly ruined.
But even if we do check these sources as valid, and as set up by respectable people and organizations, who's to say the people behind the source haven't been tricked in some way? Though it may not effect a grade on a paper, there is then a falsehood which is continuing to be spread via misled sources.
Though "un*Spun" discusses multiple ways of thoroughly checking facts, including scanning for holes in arguments and statements that just don't quite line up with the rest of the text, they stress the fact that information should be repeated in multiple sources in order to relay the most comfort in regarding that fact as true. No matter the amount of academic credentials, information received only from one text has a higher possibility of being "spun" than information that is verified through multiple sources.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
"Un*Spun" Chapter 6: The Great Crow Fallacy
To be perfectly honest, the 'great crow fallacy' seems to be a finding based of an extremely rare coincidence, which [eventually] was correctly documented at such. Though I acknowledge and believe animals to be extremely intelligent and capable in many different areas, I feel this 'fallacy' was created off of someone's whim of finding human ways of thinking in animal beings. Perhaps this is just the strange knowledge of a person who watched too much Animal Planet as a kid, but I find it common knowledge or assumption that birds would drop nuts, snail shells, etc. off high areas to try and crack open the protective husk to find their food. Granted, it shouldn't seem surprising that crows would do this over a road - most birds when using this method look for rocks or other hard surfaces - such as a road would appear.
Allow me to return to the idea of humans interpreting animal actions - this has been done for decades, centuries perhaps. When I was younger, my grandfather always told me that you knew it was going to rain when the cows laid down in the pasture. We base our length of winter off if a groundhog sees his shadow on a specified day of the year. Now, we do know that animals have innate senses which we as humans will never be able to tap into, but I feel like when we try to interpret their actions in order to provide backing evidence for a case, that we extend beyond our appropriated sense of data and information pool.
Allow me to return to the idea of humans interpreting animal actions - this has been done for decades, centuries perhaps. When I was younger, my grandfather always told me that you knew it was going to rain when the cows laid down in the pasture. We base our length of winter off if a groundhog sees his shadow on a specified day of the year. Now, we do know that animals have innate senses which we as humans will never be able to tap into, but I feel like when we try to interpret their actions in order to provide backing evidence for a case, that we extend beyond our appropriated sense of data and information pool.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
"un*Spun" - Facts can save your life.
I found it oddly interesting that the basis of this chapter brought my thoughts to one of the basic human principles our parents [attempt] to teach us from the minute we're aware: "be honest", "don't lie", "tell the truth". from the moment we are able to recognize that we ourselves can create 'spin' [though at the time we just realize it to be 'fibbing', 'white lies', or an avoidance of what really happened], our superiors and elders pass down the moral lessons which tell us to be a forever good, honest, human being.
Of course, it needs to be realized that hardly any human being goes throughout life telling the truth, 100% of the time. And, just as our parents warned us, we experience consequences - when we're younger, we receive a time-out, teenagers get grounded, and once we're adults, we feel our disappointment in ourselves and have to deal with any effects of our dishonest actions. The latter is pointed out in multiple examples throughout the chapter, though the dishonesty discussed in the text is very much intended. Unfortunately, dishonesty in advertising and politics is spread to a much larger group of people, an audience that grows exponentially with every commercial or click of a computer mouse. Therefore, more people ["innocents"] may also be affected by the lies spread about for want of personal gain and/or profit, which may ultimately lead to unfortunate consequences for the victim, as in the case of the tax shortcut.
Of course, it needs to be realized that hardly any human being goes throughout life telling the truth, 100% of the time. And, just as our parents warned us, we experience consequences - when we're younger, we receive a time-out, teenagers get grounded, and once we're adults, we feel our disappointment in ourselves and have to deal with any effects of our dishonest actions. The latter is pointed out in multiple examples throughout the chapter, though the dishonesty discussed in the text is very much intended. Unfortunately, dishonesty in advertising and politics is spread to a much larger group of people, an audience that grows exponentially with every commercial or click of a computer mouse. Therefore, more people ["innocents"] may also be affected by the lies spread about for want of personal gain and/or profit, which may ultimately lead to unfortunate consequences for the victim, as in the case of the tax shortcut.
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