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.

In my own research paper, I will.......

From a sample research paper that professor gave us, I learned that in order to make my ideas clearer and stronger, I have to organize my sources and quotes before I started to write. Most of important thing is to write a thesis statement on the last sentence of introduction. In this sample paper, I do see a thesis in the introduction, but I don't understand the author's point of view because he or she doesn't make any position. In the body paragraphs, I got some idea about his idea which is he or she believes that Artificial Intelligent will take over humans. It sounds not that pleasent for me, so I'm kind of wondering that how author felt comfortable to write this when we human beings will fail the combat one day.

An Important Source I found

Since my topic is portrying mind, the movie I'm going to talk about is Shine. It is about a very intelligent pianist, David Helfgott, suffering from schizophrenia, and comes back to stage at the end. The source I got is from Gale Encyclopedia of Genetic Disorders. It analysises six symptoms of schizophrenia, which are Paranoid, Disorganized, Catatonic, Undifferentiated, Residual, and Schizoaffective Disorder. I figured out the main character David is belong to disorganized schizophrenia since the symptoms he shows in the movie fell into that catagory. It also helps me to compare the real symptoms and the way it was showed in the scenes.

Critical Thinking Assignment #1--Pessimistic about Technology

Hello, Everyone;
This is xiaoxiao, one of your classmates in Fall 2010, you may not remember me when the semester ends, it's ok, just have fun in school. I wish you all did well in your midterm.
About technology, I haven't know that much until  I took this class, for me, it is part of science that fill our needs, help save our time, money and energy, as well as do labor, heavy, dirty, difficult and dangerous jobs for us. Then we human can relax. The purpose is to serve us. As prelavence of IT so far, I suspect that many people have turned the purpose the other way around without their notice. Others prefer this new excited technology and start to ignore the traodiational and marvelous way to do things. I guess I'm more a humanitist than sciencetist. One thing I really want to mention about is handwriting, which fewer and fewer people care about today. Perhaps I should call it calligraphy in a formal way. In a background where I grew up, it is a big deal. There are several reasons. First of all, calligraphy represents your personality and gender. It might sound so strange to you guys, so let me explain, Chinese characters are a lot different than English. I can tell whether it is him or her and a little bit about personality only from a person's writing. At this point, I should point out that this is nothiing about fortune teller, many Chinese can do it. I remember when I was in elementary school, my mom told me that she used to practise her handwriting all the time when she was little, and she is proud of herself that her handwriting is beautiful, which hinted me that I should do it well too because I can do it if she can do it. Writing tools become very important to us too, students mostly learn to write with fountain pens since they can help write well, but not the kind of pens we are using right now. When I started to learn English, I was also fancinated about the beautiful writing too. I even bought a little English alphabet writing book which helped me built my present writing style. Second, calligraphy is something we can have personal connections, not just typing in front of computer. Everyone can type, even can pretend to be a friend of yours talk to you online while handwriting is an unique symbol of yours, not so many people can fake it. Third, it is a very important tradition from my culture. I shouldn't talk much about that since I didn't dig into it, but I will learn it again one day.
This is one way that technology distant people. On the other hand, people stay at home more with computer than their friends and relatives now, which is sad I should say. A native friend of mine who has been to China  several times is really interested in this country which caught my attention. One day I asked him why he is into my country so much, he responses that in China, everyone gets together with friends, play outside, the olds go to parks or big squares doing exercise, dancing, singing, playing Chinese chess, talking, kids playing on the ground, couples walking around. These he doesn't see here, only people drinking at bar after work, watching movie, kids have playstations and computers. I paused, I recalled I used to do Taiji when I was 10 with many grandpas and grandmas in front of my building at 5am for a while, I liked to play hide-and-seek so much with neighbors kids all the time and other games which were not involved with technologies at all. I remember these the most.
Today, I feel a lot of things are cold. I had to wait 30 minutes and talked to a machine when I called HP company about fixing my laptop. I have to talk my true feelings with some strangers online instead of my real friends either because they don't have time listen to me at the moment or I'm afraid they tell my secrets to others.
People are attracted by incredible technology so much and forget about the beautiful things among people. The world the way it is right now is not exactly what I like the most, of course I don't have power to change anything. All I can do is  to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can and to know the difference with wisdom.