POST YOUR TESTS HERE

Test Forum:11632
1. I always find myself having the most difficult time talking about how I feel, especially when it comes to the death of my grandfather. I’m going to use my experience in handling the situation as a template to fit into the Star Trek metaphor. My grandfather had live with me and my parents at the time of his death and he was suffering from Alzheimer’s and he had severe heart problems. It was a Wednesday after school and my parents were at work, and I just gotten home but the atmosphere felt weird. I usually expect my grandpa to be sitting in the arm chair in the living room, but instead I found him lying on the kitchen floor. He was suffering from a heart attack and it was beyond the most terrifying experiences I had in my life. My first reaction was to lift his head up and try to sit him in the “W” position. This I would fit into the metaphoric description of “Spock”, the individual of logic and reason. All within this single moment I was experiencing a rush of panic, fear, and tragic witnessing the man I love with all my soul in helpless pain, this would be “Kirk” metaphor. All in this split second I catered to my grandpa called the emergency room and couldn’t help but die inside. My overall motor reaction in handling the situation would be “Scotty” metaphor. He was hospitalized that evening but passed away later in the hospital. I used this incident to express myself through the “Star Trek metaphor”.
2. I have never really had a moment where I’ve experienced an unusual coincidence. The one I can think of is having my little brother born on my birthday around the same hour as me, and having similar facial traits as me. A lot of people express how significant that means, but I don’t see how it’s a big deal its more so like damn there goes my birthday. Just kidding, but anyways just like Russell, I feel skeptical to about this “significant birthday”. He may assume because of how odd it is to have the same birthday within a small house loud people find more”coincidences” within the rarity. Coincidences happen all the time and we tend to focus on ones that stand out. Other then that I have never really had a “coincidental” moment.

Code: 11632

1. Star Trek

Welcome to my post where I will be re-typing it for the third time because I didn’t get the bright idea to save it in a word document until right now. Should have acted like Spock for the last twenty minutes.

My Spock story: It was a tense time with my now ex-girlfriend (we’re friends now, it’s cool). We got into one of our many fights. She decided to leave and drive back to her house two hours away. She was angry and was rummaging through her trunk. She then slammed the trunk down, but the sound it made spelled (sounded) trouble. That’s right, her keys were now jammed inside her trunk. Now to add to the tension we had to work together and pop open a trunk so she could prematurely leave our vacation. After aggressive and failed attempts to open it back up she decided she was going to have to call AAA and pay $200 to open her trunk. Rather than giving into emotion or instinct and throwing my hands up in the air I decided to meditate and clear my thoughts. I blocked out my emotions and the words thrown in my direction, “there you go, giving up again, on me, on everything”. After a minute of thought, running some syllogisms through my head, I finally came to the conclusion. The procedure alludes me. All I remember is, syllogisms actually came in handy that day when I opened the trunk up. My ex was so happy that I saved her money that we made up. She stayed the night too, guys. Logic, contrary to popular belief, can actually improve your relationships.

Kirk: When I was a young teenager I often got into fights with my mother. Verbal fights. I also had a huge anger problem. Anger is an emotion, and I decided to channel that into punching a hole in my computer screen. It was a good thing nobody needs computers for school work, otherwise that would have been a really stupid move.

Scotty: The best athletes don’t have to think to act. Acting like Scotty really helped me in soccer when I instinctively stole the ball from a forward who handled the ball too far away from himself. I dribbled up the line and made a b-line for the penalty area and with my left foot I shot the ball fast along the ground into the left corner of the net to tie up the game. It was only until after the celebration that I realized I had dribbled through five or six people to get there from my penalty area. We won the game too.

2. Lord Russell and the League of Skeptics

When I was younger I was left alone in a dark alley in a poor neighborhood. I grew up in poor neighborhoods so I didn’t know that I should fear them. What I did fear were monsters and demons that hid in the dark. Naturally I began to pray for God to save me. My Dad who was in his work office picking up some work files in the building across from the car was taking a particularly long time to get back. So I prayed harder. My dad came out rushing to get back into the car, and after I told him what happened he said that he had felt something tell him to come see me right away. He made sense of this by saying that God told him to come. Russell would probably explain this by saying my father probably zoned out in his office because he was very tired and then when he awoke from his daze, after a subtle push from his unconscious, realized that I had been alone in the car for longer than he told me that I would have to be. I used to pray to do well on my tests even though I didn’t study. This worked about sixty percent of the time. A skeptic would explain this by not appealing to supernatural forces but the confidence given and suppression of fear, that can block the memory, by comfort in supernatural forces so as to allow more information to flow out even if it wasn’t stored the night before.

3. Skeptical of Skepticism
The rest of what follows is something I’d just like to say against what I suspect this class will be putting forth. Professor Lane is constantly asking for rips, lacerations, and shreds of his beliefs. I can’t say I’m going to do something that vicious. I don’t think I’d be able to say all of this in class, and I communicate my thoughts better in writing, so I’ll give a critique here.

First, what is considered being skeptical is always related to, or cast against, a cultural background of folk or cultural beliefs. Today’s skepticism, naturalism, materialism or whatever normally operates on two principles from which it tends generate and reinforce others. The first is “models with greater predictive power are better than other models without” and Occam’s razor “do not multiple entities beyond necessity in your explanations” (don’t make things more complicated than they need to be if you can get the job done the same way). Put together this selects for simple and efficient predictions over any other sort. In the first principle we see a vague term: “better”. “Better” is also related and supported by a cultural background. In the second principle we see another vague phrase “beyond necessity”.

Is it necessary that the goal of a theory should be to predict the future? Is ‘making sense’ of the world only possible through telling us what we should expect to see next time? Do we know enough about reality to say that something is necessary for an explanation, while another is not? Imagine a society in which they explain the rain fall through a Rain Goddess. This belief fosters a sense of community. They do not always get rain to fall; they can never appease the Goddess in the right way it seems. Is folk religion based on explaining and predicting nature alone? Let’s grant that they are unscientific. Still, there is good that the society gains from believing in the Rain Goddess, something that secularists can never understand today since they share a different framework entirely. Skeptics do not go around hiking up the mountain to speak with the rain goddess. They do not know what it is like for their battalion to bond over the misfortunes and traps that lie in their way towards the fulfillment of the Great Quest. They do not come back with war stories to tell their children and inspire them to be great heroes of courage. They do not foster the belief of self-sacrifice for the community. There is a whole sense of life that is killed with every intrusion of the skeptic’s weapon: Science.
Science is supposed to be objective and free from cultural influence. After all it is the method that describes, mostly accurately, the objective world. Keep dropping those keys and gravity will keep showing itself to you as Professor Lane joked. Couldn’t we then apply modern Science’s principles to older civilizations and get the same result? Imagine Mary the Scientist travels back in time to the Rain Goddess tribe in which she explains to them the myriad of causes and imperceptible entities involved in producing the rain fall. Wouldn’t they scoff, “You tell us all about these infinite amount of worker spirits called Atoms who we cannot see and do not know, while we have only one Rain Goddess who accounts for it all. Your atoms are unnecessary for our vision of the world.” Would they be scientific? We wouldn’t say so. Mary the Scientist could say, “But if you believe in the Atoms you can know when the rain will fall and will no longer need to worship the Rain Goddess, that’s why the Atom religion is better to follow!” Is it right for the Scientist to take their goddess away from them? “Otherwise your tribe will die from a drought!” Mary could plead. And couldn’t they reply, “We would rather die with our religion and our culture than follow yours.” They make sense of the world in ways Science cannot. They gain meaning and community from sharing a narrative; they also gain a moral background. They make judgments of character and determine the virtuous and unvirtuous based on this background. To remove this from them is to destroy their entire way of life, and therefore their people. The term for this is called Cultural Genocide.

No doubt we will also learn to trust theories which are in principle “falsifiable”, which is a nice way of saying: Only believe those things that you could prove wrong from within your current framework. Notice it is not so clear cut when we start thinking of how other peoples may prove or disprove the same hypothesis according to their framework. Any appeal to efficiency or predictive power would be committing the fallacy called begging the question. We may also learn about, when forming our beliefs, that we should weigh common beliefs against beliefs that are ‘radical’ in this sense: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” If it sounds familiar it is because Professor Lane already quoted this in class. What is called ‘extraordinary’? Wouldn’t the tribal people find it extraordinary that the Atom spirits are the reality behind reality? What is called Extraordinary is a matter of culture, and this is okay. But let’s not pretend that it is an objective fact that something is considered extraordinary over all times, places, and peoples. From a logical point of view, why should we expect more evidence from something strange rather than the familiar? Suppose there was a radically, radically, weird theory that explained all of reality with pin-point accuracy, but there was also another explanation with more observational evidence that made some minor improvements here and there but did not fundamentally change the scientific discourse, which is ‘working relatively fine for our purposes’ (note purpose/utility is dependent on cultural values). “Extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence” might just have us pick the false but more obvious explanation. Observation does not exist in a vacuum. What I mean by that is your eyes are evolutionarily designed to notice what is necessary for you and to block out unnecessary information. It even creates illusions and fills in gaps just so you can navigate according to YOUR purposes. Science, Skepticism and maybe Critical Thinking are no different. We should even be skeptical of being skeptical. Amen.

FILM EXAM QUESTIONS 1 # 11632
(1) Drawing from the Star Trek metaphor, and using your own life as a template, describe three or more incidents from your life where you reacted as "Spock", "Kirk", and "Scotty." Feel free to tell it in story form.

Spock:
I'm a visual merchandise manager at a retail store and part of my job to help support my General manager and assistant manager, other than merchandise the store, is observe the sales associates on the floor,( making sure they are giving great customer service, opening fitting rooms for customers, greeting, etc.). While observing them I'm writing down notes and listing all the things they are doing right, but also jotting down things they can improve on. At the end of their shifts I let them know I was watching them on the floor and I would give the a few tips on what can help them on the sales floor, fitting room, and/or registers and also acknowledge what they are accomplishing as well.

Kirk:
The birth of my sister's second child was the most traumatic experience in my life. My sister had to go to the doctors sooner than her due date because there were early signs of preeclampsia and her doctor wanted to prevent that from happening. To try to make this long story short, it was decided that my sister would have to have an epidural to prevent pain. Without it, the pain from labor may raise her blood pressure and stress which could cause her to seizure making it dangerous for her and her baby. So after they gave her the epidural the nurses were prepping for labor, but they wanted to check on the baby's heartbeat. For some reason the nurse was having a hard time finding it, and mind you they have been checking the heartbeat every hour with ease, but this time the heartbeat sounded faint, like far way. They had 3 more different nurses come in to try to find the heartbeat, moving the tethiscope around my sister's big belly, yet having a difficult time find a strong loud beat we were so use to hearing. The nurses wanted to shift my sister's body to see if that would help, so when doing so the nurses lift up the covers and lo and behold my niece was already out!! We got all hysterical! Me, my mom, my girlfriend, except my sister who didn't feel anything and was practically numb because of the epidural. The nurses yanked my niece from underneath the covers and started the proper procedures. I was so emotional!! I wanted to make sure my sister and my niece were ok, I mean, I've never seen anything like this!! Seeing your 4lb baby niece dangling from her umbilical cord coming from underneath the bed sheets like that. I was a hot mess!

Scotty:
This one incident, back in high school days, it was a boring Friday night and me and my friends were trying to figure out what to do. Out of all things one of my girlfriends suggested we go to her boyfriends house and hang out with his friends. We all agreed because there was nothing better to do and it was a great way to finally meet this new guy she was dating. On our way there we all were complaining about how extremely boring and dull this night was turning out. We finally get to his house and we meet the boyfriend and his friends that were hanging out in front. Less than a hour of socializing and still bored out of our minds, we suddenly see this black car creeping down the street in front of the boyfriend's house. I thought how odd this was. Then the car turns around and starts speeding towards the house. One of the car's window rolls down and you see what looks like fire crackers coming out from it. I yell, "Duck!" And we all hit the ground. I don't know why I thought to duck down to the floor. I am no way affiliated to any gangsters or the gang life style I just really thought this car was strange just creeping down the street like that. It turns out my friend's boyfriend was a gangster, obviously, and after that night I did not want to be in contact with that particular friend because she put all of us in a very dangerous situation. Anyway, I guess I watched too many gangster movies in my life time to know that to do in a real- life drive-by shooting. Talk about a "boring night"! Ha!

(2) Drawing from the film, Surfing Matrix, and using our own life as a template, describe two or more incidents from your own life where you experienced an unusual coincidence. How would Bertrand Russell or a skeptic explain it rationally?

In the beginning of my retail career I would tell some elaborate story about how I was this big shot visual merchandiser at a specific location( big volume store with a lot of tourist) who, at times, get to travel to other stores to help with store openings or what not, although I was just a regular part-time sales associate. I would tell this story to people I would randomly meet at a bar or club because I knew I would never see them again. A few years later it turns out I am a very known visual merchandise manager and I work at the exact store location I would use to randomly and falsely say to strangers.

Another incident was when I told my best friend that I would marry the next girl who can make homemade sushi and is Latina, because to me, who can make sushi rolls for me from scratch that was Mexican other than Asians, right? HA! I thought there was no girl in existence that can do that. It turns out 3 years later I met the girl of my dreams. Not only can she make sushi from scratch, but she is Latina, my perfect type!! We have been together for 4 years and we plan on marrying in a year.

According to Bertrand Russell would say about my elaborate story as a big shot merchant or what a skeptic would think is subconsciously this was a goal or position that would give me some sort of pride. The irony of my elaborate story and the type of work I do, would look different now considering the fact that I was self fulfilling a prophetic moment in my past life.

As far as my relationship with my girlfriend for the past 4 years, Bertrand Russell would say that it I met her by chance. We both worked at the same store location before ever starting a relationship, so we both were at the right place at the right time.

Miguel Orozco
Film test
Code: 11632.

1. Drawing from the Star Trek metaphor, and using your own life as a template, describe three or more incidents from your life where you reacted as "Spock", "Kirk", and "Scotty." Feel free to tell it in story form.

On an ordinary Saturday night, my girlfriend and I were preparing to go out for dinner. We shut off the TV, turn off all the lights, and begin to head out. As I was about to lock the door, I reach for my pocket but fail to hear that typical jingle from my keys. I go back inside without turning on any lights to look in the usual locations. As I start my search in what seemed to be pitch darkness, my girlfriend gets the idea to attempt to startle me, the “fearless” boyfriend. As I take a turn around a corner she jumps out from the shadows with a scream. Looking back at this moment, I feel that I had gone through the three level of thoughts/reactions sequentially all within a couple seconds. Instinctively, I raised up my arms and guarded against the unknown threat. Without any thought my body was quickly driven to react. I would attribute this reaction to be like those of Scotty which I would describe as more instinctual. Next, I rapidly restrained my movements and temporarily froze in the guarded state. This was because I began to realize and worry that it might be my girlfriend trying to scare me and that I may accidently harm her through any further sudden movements. I believe this reaction to be like those of Kirks, which are those of emotion, because my primary concern in that moment was the safety of my attacker. Lastly, once I was finally certain and aware that my attacker was my girlfriend I began to wonder, “Is there a way I can hide the fact that I was startled”. That way perhaps I could keep her thinking it is difficult to elicit a frightened state from me. If I remained guarded she would definitely know. What could I say calmly to mask my nervousness? My solution was to move forward and grasp her in a tight hug and say “got ya”. This is more of a logical response, like those of Spock, for the reason that I started to weigh the outcomes and consequences of different actions.

2. Drawing from the film, Surfing Matrix, and using our own life as a template, describe two or more incidents from your own life where you experienced an unusual coincidence. How would Bertrand Russell or a skeptic explain it rationally?

What are the odds? In my first year at the University of California, San Diego I had four housemates. One of these housemates had gone to same community college that I had, Mt SAC. Also we were both in the men’s swim team, declared the same major, and had the same end goal of getting into a medical school, however never had we once met before living together at UCSD. The reason for not meeting someone that joined the same sport and took the same courses was that I was a year older and took an extra year to transfer out of Mt SAC. I joined the swim team in the year of 2008. He joined in the year of 2009 after I had finished a year with the team. Also, I was ahead in the required courses towards a degree in biology because of my year head start. Then, I took an extra year to transfer out because I was patiently waiting for my permanent residency status to be approved so that I could be awarded financial aid. Then the odds are that because we had similar backgrounds, we also likely had similar interest which proved to be true and shown by the fact that we continue as friends to this day.

Another unusual coincidence is that I met a color deficient firefighter. The significance of this is that I myself am color deficient and before graduating high school, I wished to become a firefighter. Almost every day I was haunted by the thought at I might not be able to accomplish that goal due to my disability. The fire department was and is still a highly competitive field and one of the physical exams done before employment is an Ishihara colorblind test. At the time, I decided to pursue a different path and instead try to earn an MD. Thus, I went to Mt Sac, transferred into UCSD, and earned a bachelor’s of science in human biology. Within the same month of graduating, I met a firefighter and just out curiosity asked if color deficient people are still disqualified from the job. He admitted to being moderately red-green color deficient, and I was amazed. My once lost goal could still be a possibility. In the population, a small percentage of people are color deficient. Thus to meet a color deficient fire fighter is also just as rare if not more. A year after, I met a second red-green color blind firefighter. The odds are very low and could even be considered a divine message from above, but the meetings could simply be attributed to probability. I have had plenty of conversations with numerous fire fighters because I was in the fire department’s explorer program in my teenage years. If it was possible to be color deficient and a fire fighter, which it is, sooner or later I would have to meet one.

Jesus Belmonte
Philosophy 8
Tuesday 330-640
Code 11632


Drawing from the Star Trek metaphor, and using your own life as a template, describe three or more incidents from you life where you reacted as “Spock,” “Kirk,” and “Scotty.” Feel free to tell it in story form.

An example of a Spock moment for me was this weekend. Since its a long holiday weekend and most of us have Monday off from school and work, my friends decided to plan an annual Lake Arrowhead trip where we all get together and party and forget about all responsibilities. The plan was to leave Friday by noon and come home Monday night however, since I started school this past week it left me no choice but to miss this annual trip because I had to take advantage of this long weekend to complete homework that was assigned. At this moment I felt like Spock because I took the logical option by missing a big annual trip with friends to do the right thing which was to complete my homework.

An example of a “Kirk” moment for me was when I went out with my girl friend and group of friends to an event in Costa Mesa. As my friends and I were leaving walking back to our car there was some guy walking with his girl friend and he looked like he had been drinking. As we were walking this random guy started yelling things to us and “taunting” us which we brushed off due to the condition he was in and since we didn't want to get in any trouble or cause problems. However, this guy wouldn't stop yelling things, so I became angry and let my emotions get the best of me and I fed into his taunt and lashed out towards him. Even though I didn't get in physical contact with this stranger it could have been avoided if I would have thought logically and kept ignoring him.

An example of a “Scotty” moment was when I had went camping with my family out in stoddard wells. I was riding my ATV out of my camping area and rode further than I should have since I didn't know the area that well. Eventually as I kept riding further out I became lost and decided to turn around. As I was riding back I got lost and couldn't remember the road I needed to take to get back to camp, I noticed the sun was going down and I didn't have much gas left nor any food left in my backpack. I knew I was parked towards the West where the sun was going down so I proceeded to keep following that route and eventually came to a road that led me back to my camp. At this moment since I followed my survival / lessons taught I was able to find my camp safely and before it was dark.




2. Drawing from the film, Surfing Matrix, and using our own life as a template, describe two or more incidents from your own life where you experienced an unusual coincidence. How would Bertrand Russell or a skeptic explain it rationally?


An unusual coincidence I experienced recently was when I was talking with my family about an old friend that I used to hang out with all the time during high school they had asked me what that friend had been up to, I told them that I didn't know because we didn't talk anymore since we both went separate ways in our career. Uncoincidentally I received a text a few days later from this friend asking me how I was doing.

Another unusual coincidence I experienced was when I had a dream that I had played a $5 scratcher and won $1000, a week later I was at the gas station pumping gas and as I was paying the cashier I saw a few scratchers that looked “cool” to play. So I bought 3 scratchers three $1 ones and one $5 one, as I went back into my car and I began to scratch them and immediately lost on the $1 one. I began to scratch the last one and had scratched the winning number which was # 10 and under that number 10 it showed automatic win of $1000.