Final Blog

This is the first semester that I started to post my assignments on the blog,it feels cool.
I really enjoy seeing others' posts. It is much more easier to make a comment than looking at their papers. I really had fun with fellow classmates. Nice meeting you guys. One thing I'm sure about is this cluster is much more fun than other classes I had before. Thanks to you guys.
What I learned from the cluster is beyond what I expected before this semester began. I do feel that taking a cluster helps me better understand the idea from different perspectives. It also helps me to have same in-depth thinking. Thanks all the professors. They all did a great job.
Happy Holidays.

Critical Thinking Blog Post #5

After learning so much about human cloning, robotics and computer technology, I do think that my way of thinking has changed gradually, and it's both good and bad. First of all, it's great that we have many machines can help us do the hard job, but sometimes we rely on them too much. Like what I read in the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Many people have changed reading habits from deep reading to scan the information they need (Carr 20). Moreover, a lot of people get used to use calculators when they need to count something simple, and many people I know don't even know their phone numbers because their cell phone can memorize for them. From my own experience, I understand deeply cell phones changed my thinking. Since I have started to text messages in July, a lot of conversations are  through texting. I wasn't so into text messages before because I always believe interacting with friends face to face is the best way to get to know them better. Now, I still believe so, however, I can't change anything in the situation as most my friends are prefer texting to phone calls. Sometimes it is sad that when we have a chance to share our feelings by talking, many of us choose to keep the distance, spending time to text and waiting for the response. On the other hand, human cloning is another popular topic that many scientists are debating today. As a humanity person, I think human cloning will destroy our identity and uniqueness although it may be a great help in reproductive technologies. Many fiction stories about human cloning have shown what problems we might have if it is allowable, such as Churchill's "A Number" and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.
In the Brains, Minds and Consciousness cluster, I noticed that many things that I learned from philosophy, psychology, and writing class are connected. I really feel that the interaction of these three courses have helped me improve my writing, I've also learned to think more critically from different perspectives. It was very challenge for me to write research paper with sources as back up information. I was confused of when I should quote, and when I should not. Now, the semester is almost over, I've overcome the problems.

Critical Thinking Blog Assignment #4

The human cloning story in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” is very tragic and immoral. It is a novel about how cloned humans lived and how human beings treated them. In this imaginative plot, all cloned characters are living in a school, called Hailsham. Over there, all cloned humans are treated three meals a day, and they have to obey very strict rules, and they are not allow to be in the relationship, neither do they get out of school. It is like a school for robotics for me. As long as their missions accomplished (which is donate their four different organs), their lives are near the end. The biggest difference between robotics and human cloning besides organ donation is that their functions work almost exactly like humans except they cannot give birth. Robotics can be created that look like humans too, and they are capable of some things that human beings are not good at. However, cloned humans are made of the same genes from the person himself. Some scientists are aware of the benefits of cloning since Dolly the Sheep, such as Ray Kurzweil. He proposed in the article “The Singularity Is Near” that cloning technology can help replace one’s organ and tissues with their reproductive genes without surgery (Kurzweil 123). It is true that our problem of short of matched organ donation will be solved once the technology is perfect (Kurzweil). However, it also sounds very optimistic that the author ignored the negative impact of it. Perhaps he has thought the details that once we accept human cloning, how it affects our life. It is a sensitive ethical issue that has been remained for over 10 years. It will bring more ethical and other problems if we allow human cloning technology. “Never Let Me Go” is a great example for people who lack of consideration of human cloning to think about.

The Things I Can Revise to Pass My Research Paper

I am not so happy when I get my research paper back.........Accidental Plagiarism is the biggest problem, but I did quote what I read from my sources, however, without quotation marks because I didn't copy exactly the same words, I paraphrased a lot of them, and quoted every thing I know from scholarly articles.
I don't know, but I guess I have to revise them again. Another thing is that I have many misused words, professor always says it is awkard. That's one of my biggest problems too. Anyway, I'm gonna go to writing center a lot this week.

Critical Thinking Assignment #3

Human Cloning--one of the most controvertial issue that a lot of scientists are debating about, especially after the success of Dolly the Sheep.
From different points of view, the benefits and drawbacks are so distinct.
One of scientists who supports human cloning which I know is from course back of Eng101 class-- Ray Kurzweil. He points out that cloning is a very important and significant technology for human life (Kurzweil 121). For instance, cloning can help improve breeding by offering genetic traits from the same animal (Kurzweil 122). Moreover, it can apply to therapeutic cloning, which is one of the most valuable application (Kurzweil 122). For me, it is great idea that we don't need to worry that we are shorts of organs to donate because of human cloning. Notwithstanding, the movie "The Island" which shows how a human clone helps to give birth a child for the original mother, it is sad when the clone's mission accomplished, the doctor murdered her. If we humans have rights to decide our lives, why cloned humans don't have any? They become useless once they accomplish the task, just like robots. That's not what we call "benefit" from the cloned-human's point of view.
On the other hand, another play which is called  "A Number" represents some other problems of human cloning as well. It is a tragedy story of a father who used to abuse his son accidently cloned 20 copys of his son to make up his mistake and then his orginal son found out his father had other cloned sons, he was upset and killed his cloned brother whom his father loved the most, and committed suicide after that (Churchill 146-200). From this fiction play, we find out that human cloning is very complicated. Although we humans deserve second chance when we make mistakes, we can't pretend nothing happened to make another clone to redo things. Moreover, The father in this play also states that human cloning destroys humans' uniqueness and damage their identities (Churchill 151). It is true that if we lose our uniqueness and everyone is replaceable in the world, there is no value and meaning for us in the world.
All in all, human cloning may not be acceptable today, but many consider that it may happen in near future which is not what I really want to see. I can't imagine there is a cloned me exists in the world. I might feel I'm not a complete person any more.

My Research Paper Status

So far I've collected 8 sources, and I read most of them. The main source I'm using is a scholar article from encyclopedia. It includes specific information of schizophrenia, especially the details about six types of schizophrenia. With these informations, I figured out which type does David fall into in the movie "Shine."
The actual symptoms are quite serious since there is one percent of world population has this disease. However, it is not impossible to cure it since our medical science has getting better and better. Hopefully, we'll have a good medication or therapy to help these patients in efficient way.

Critical Thinking Blog Post #2

        Artificial Intelligence--intelligence of machines ("Artificial Intelligence") which have been assist our life for over two decades. Technology itself as fastest growth in the world, indeed is another great revolution in human history. Today, people are expecting more from this kind of technology, and scientists aim to invent smarter machines to help us do the hard and dangerous jobs, so we can just lay back relax. One of big invention of this AI is robotics. Living in 21st century, the capabilities of a robot may surprise a lot of people. Like what we watched from LIB100 class last week, certain robots are created for military purpose. I remember there is an interesting robot has human facial expression, it leads us to wonder that whether robots have conscious or not, the same thing happened in the movie of Artificial Intelligent, when the little boy was about to be destroyed, the audiences were trying to stop it although they were told that the boy was just a machine. Many people believe that it's just a matter of time that one day robotics can think, just like humans. However, David Gelernter, an expert of computer science and humanist disagrees the idea (Gelernter 202). He states that "today's mainstream ideas about human and artificial thought lead nowhere (Gelernter 202)." In this quote, he thinks that there is no way artificial thought is comparable with human minds. There are several reasons to support his idea. For example, we humans' minds can wonder around, like teens sometimes are absentminded in class. David claims that there is no way computers can do something like this unless it can free-associate (Gelernter 202). Another example is that the way people think when they are alert is very different when they are not alert (Gelernter 203). No matter how strong AI will be in the future, it will never have the ability to function like humans.
      Notwithstanding, other scientists have different opinions with David Gelernter, like Ray Kurzweil. He argues that we humans cannot be enhanced like robots to share the vast of interneuronal connections and neurotransmitter concentration levels of knowledge, skills and learning (Kurzweil 138). In addition, robots have more accurate and reliable memory than humans. They don't need to worry about how big or how long the memory can be since they will memorize exact events (Kurzweil 138). Humans misconstruct their past events.
     Every new technology has been criticized by some people. After all, most of these are like two-blades knives, you have to be aware of both sides in order to utilize them efficiently. For me, I do like the idea of strong AI help our life easier. However, I don't think that the assumption that one day robots will have conscious and emotions like humans can happen in the future.