Today I learned that Professional Skills Development is divided in 4 subjects. It is divided in Thinking and reasoning, What’s in my backpack, Information Skills, and Html. For this lecture, thinking and reasoning, we all have to keep up a blog of what we discussed and learned during the lecture. The first lecture was an introduction to the Theory Of Knowledge which is about how we know if something is true or not. We have to think critically about things and therefore you want to think about how you know something is true. For example one plus one equals two. We all agree on it, but how do we know it for sure. We can learn if something is true by means of Perception, Emotion, Language and Reason. But I think we have to look at the advantages and disadvantages of each way in which we learn about the world. We learn most of the things by our environment or with education but we have never figured out ourselves if that is true. at the beginning of the class we were shown an upside down map. The inverted map is made to question visual assumptions. how do we know what is true? Don't believe everything you think. Your brain can make false assumptions very easily. If you observe your thoughts you can control it more easily.
Today we had to do a presentation about the senses. With the sight presentation we were shown an optical illusion. You could see 2 different colours but when you take away the surrounding colours you can see that the two colours are actually the same. What we see is not really what we see. Our eyes see it but our brain interpreted it as different so your mind fools you so you can’t always trust your own eyes
The next presentation was about sound. We listened to music videos and were asked to write down our emotions that were felt during the songs. The first one was sad, second was happy and the last one was kind of aggressive. It made you think about why you get those feelings from the music. Although most of the things they told me were already known to me I still very much enjoyed the presentation
The Touch presentation was very interesting. Two students were asked to hold an object but only one person was allowed to use his fingers to figure out what the object was. Your fingers are the main aspect of touch how to identify an object. Your hand not so much. Your sight is mostly needed to identify the object. It was interesting but I already knew that the person who couldn’t use his hands was less likely to tell what the object they are holding is. We also watched a video that showed that our senses are very much connected. Touch is for example connected to memory. Your hand memorizes the shape.
today I learned about system 1 and system 2. System one is about quick thinking. When you encounter something that makes you think they are your first thoughts. System one is often used rather than system 2. system two is more slow and deliberative than system one. For instance when someone shows you a horrible picture you immediately make a disgusted face. While using system two you really think more about something. System two uses reason but I think system one is more used than system two. People have to think more about using system 2.
In the lecture we were given claims which we had to think about and answer. I already thought after the first question that these were kind of trick questions. I answered some of them wrong because I was using system one. I think while using system one you think too fast about it The answer seemed the most logical. For instance if you see a big guy with an angry face you might become scared of him but he may be the nicest guy you ever met. I think these kind of things will come in your mind at your first impression very fast. By learning about system one it became even easier to figure out that there was a pattern and that they were trick questions. System one is also about intuition for example a question like 2+2=? Or if you detect a hostility in a voice is all instantly. I don’t think you can turn off system one, because it is natural. System one is implanted in your brain and there can be biases. System one focuses on existing evidence and ignores absent evidence. I think it was really useful to learn about this because I haven’t heard of it before and it made me think about thinking more.
Today’s lecture was about IQ and EQ. I’ve never taken an IQ test before. But I am interested in the results of one and the type of questions in the test. IQ is based on the results of a test which tests you in different subjects. I had to answer some questions and tell what the questions were testing. Some tested mathematical skills or spatial visualization ability. Some tested common knowledge and mathematical skills.But I think that in other countries, the people may get less good education and will end up with low results. Language can also limit peoples scores on the test so I don’t think the results are always accurate. I think you shouldn’t rely on them as much as people do. But I also think people that score amazingly high are smart but it is hard to define intelligence. I personally think that measuring someone’s intelligence can better be done with an emotional intelligence test. In the lecture we talked a lot about emotions. Whether they are contagious or can they cause obstacles in your thinking or can they be a source of knowing. I think emotions can be contagious for instance if you are in a really bad mood you influence the mood of other people because you are being cranky. When you have an argument your emotions can stop you from using your reason and it is harder to think with reason. Your emotions can also make you close minded to other peoples opinions. I thought about whether you can stop your emotions in your way of knowing but I don’t think you can do that. We watched a video of Obama and how he played with the crowd. Politicians really know how to touch people’s hearts and say what people want to hear. Obama did an excellent job because he focused on everyone and included everyone in his speech.
Today’s lesson was about credibility. I find this an interesting subject because it is useful to know when things are credible or not. we were shown a few claims on the presentation, and we were asked if we believed they were true or not. I thought some of them were true but it turned out most of them were false. This made me think about the modes of thought, system 1 and system 2. I believed the statements were true because I was using system one which is about thinking fast and instinctive. If you use system 2, you think more logical and deliberative. When considering the credibility of a claim, you should ask if the claim conflicts with your personal observations or experiences. And if the claim conflicts with your background information. However your background information could be invalid or you rely on too little sources of information. You should also consider the source of where the claim is coming from. It is basically that we shouldn’t have too much confidence in our human judgement and do not believe everything that is on the news or internet. When considering the credibility of a claim you shouldn’t rely just on one source of information. Of course of you find multiple claims form reliable sources the claim is more credible.
Today we talked about relevance fallacies, relevance fallacies are about false arguments. These are used by a lot of people very often. I already learned about them in the dutch class in high school. These arguments are not credible. With tge knowledge you can use it as an innovator by recognizing these fallacies and by not using them yourself. If you have to explain something you have to make sure not to use these so it makes you think about how you can explain something better and with using good arguments. Although I already knew some of these fallacies, I couldn’t recognize them very well while the presentations were shown. It made me wonder if I use them myself and if I ever encountered them in real life. My mom used to use them on me sometimes, so that is why it can be useful to learn about them. Today I learned more about this subject and I found it very interesting.
Today we talked about language. We discussed rhetoric that is the art of persuasion. When you use rhetoric, you add no new value to your argument and it doesn’t weaken your argument. We saw a video of Obama and he used beautiful words and said what people wanted to hear. Even though it had no relation to his argument. He used it so the people could relate to him and that’s how he used rhetoric to persuade the people. You must be very clever to do that in a good way I think. It works so why won’t he use it.
I already knew what a euphemism was, that is when you use a neutral or positive expression for something that is negative. Like when someone dies, you can say he went to a “better place”. But I haven’t heard about dysphemism which is the opposite. We also discussed other forms of rhetoric which I already knew about. It was useful to learn more about rhetoric, because you can recognise it so you will not be fooled. And you can use it yourself with some practise to become a great speaker and to persuade people.