sunnysanatorium

[sunnysanatorium]

What are the Biggest Ethical Issues Facing Young People in the World Today?

It is 2024, and that means we are living in a time where everyone is encouraged to speak up about their political views. From pushing TikTokers to give their thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict, to boycotting certain brands left and right, it is hard to exist in the internet space without hearing about current world issues. Tackling this climate (literally!) can be difficult for young people on the internet, as there are so many big issues that they may not fully understand, but are still being forced to speak about.

Climate Change:

Young people are known to be very active about climate change and what we can do to help the planet. However, is it really possible for anyone to be completely environmentally conscious in today’s day and age? This feeling of not being able to make a difference in the bigger picture leads to a feeling of helplessness. Everyone takes turns making each other feel guilty, when no one is capable of making real change except for corporations and Jeff Bezos (he specifically is the problem, I hate that guy). Add this to our cognitive dissonance, where we justify away our own climate-cursing deeds, but still shame others, and nothing continues to get done to actually help the environment. But should this guilt really be held by young people anyway?

Social Justice:

Another dilemma young people face is that of the everpresent social justice movement. Throughout history, we have seen many fights for social justice, such as the feminist movement and the movement for LGBTQ+ rights. What do both of these have in common (aside from being, like, super sick)? They were both pushed primarily by young people, as the old, traditional generation was all like “no no, we have to stick to what is natural and traditional”. This is still the case, as these movements continue to be advanced every day by young people, who are often judged and ridiculed by the boomers. Because of this, young people have to bear the brunt of these social issues, which is a lot of pressure. They must go against the many older people laughing at them and making fun of them in order to bring about change for those to come.

Mental Health Stigma:

Young people have also made a significant leap in the fight against mental health stigma, another thing that older people kind of look down upon. The more we talk about subjects like this, the more socially acceptable they will be. This will push people to speak up, and more people will be able to get the help they need. It is important to talk about mental health issues, but once again (as is a common theme with most of the subjects young people are passionate about), we are often ridiculed by older people saying to just “not be sad” or that mental health is simply not real.

Gen Z tends to be more focused on bigger change than older generations, and this trailblazing has led to conflicts between generations and families. It is a lot of pressure for young people to have these large social challenges on their shoulders.

[sunnysanatorium]

Inductive vs Deductive Reasoning (IRL)

Inductive and Deductive reasoning. Real? Fake? Let's find out. First of all, what are they? Inductive reasoning is “a method of drawing conclusions by going from the specific to the general”, while deductive reasoning is the opposite: “uses available information, knowledge, or facts to construe a valid conclusion”. Or, inductive is bottom-up, deductive is top-down, get it? Great. Well, I kind of still don’t so let's look at some Real World examples. 

In the morning of each day, we see the sunrise, therefore, the sun rises every day. This is a fair use of inductive reasoning, hopefully, you can see how we are using our own observations to make a generalization about the world, in this case, it is correct. Another example that is perhaps a little more helpful is how inductive reasoning is used in financial circumstances. In investment and stock brokerage, investors use inductive reasoning when analyzing market trends. They use the performance of specific stocks and industries to predict greater economic trends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

For deductive reasoning, it is also helpful to look at some real world examples to fully understand how it can be used (or misused) in real life. Deductive reasoning is often used in legal circumstances, for example, in legal proceedings such as court cases, prosecutors start with a code of rules and conduct (the law) and then use them in a specific circumstance or case. Engineers are also frequent users of deductive reasoning, they often start off with scientific principles (like physics), and legal principles (zoning regulations), and have to use these principles to solve a specific complex problem, working down from their knowledge to an actual solution. 

Both inductive and deductive reasoning can be valuable assets to many, and neither should automatically be dismissed. However, both can have their flaws, too. Often, they are both best implemented when used together! Take a detective for example, inductive reasoning may be used by them to gather evidence and notice patterns, and deductive reasoning is used at the same time to actually draw conclusions and solve the case.

Over all they both have their place, use them appropriately.

[sunnysanatorium]

How Do We Know Art Is Good?

How do we know art is Good? Can this be done objectively, well I think art can be evaluated and appreciated objectively, without overly celebrating subjective qualities. How can we figure this out? Well lucky for us we have some fairly unbiased critique methods available. One of these methods is analysing art based on criteria like the Principles and Elements of art. In our IB art classes, we learn about the Elements and principles of art as principles which “guide all art forms”, we use these guidelines because they help us to analyse a piece and check off specific items that make the piece “Good”. This allows us to be reasonably objective while giving actual verifiable evidence why a piece is appreciated or well-liked. For example, take Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night. You may look at it and not understand why it is so celebrated worldwide, but when you scrutinize it through the lens of the Elements and Principles of art, you can appreciate how Van Gogh used Principles like Movement and Balance to draw the eye around the painting, or Elements like Colour and Texture to create a pleasing experience for the viewer. It is the result of Van Gogh meeting these verifiable criteria that makes Starry Night so Good, which also makes the criteria very useful for analysis. These criteria force critics to back up their claims about works and make it possible for their opinions to be checked over by others, too. By using these Elements and Principles, we can use an objective checklist to analyse art, instead of just relying on our own subjective opinions or feelings. Therefore, subjectivity may not be overly celebrated in the arts, as objective safeguards are still valued and in place, suggesting that the art world does, at least to some extent, care about the objective value of art. Therefore, there are at least guidelines available to figure out if art is Good.

[sunnysanatorium]

Free Will - We Got It?

What the hell is free will, and do we got it? Free will is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion”. However, this definition doesn’t exactly really clear anything up, in fact, it just opens up more questions. What is fate? What is necessity? How can these things be constrained? Is it possible to act at your own “discretion” if we don’t even know when or how our actions are being “constrained”? I certainly can’t answer these questions, so I suggest we look to what others have theorized and written before us. 

The “conventional” view of free will is that “we live in a deterministic universe and free will is an illusion”, this is perhaps a bit of a generalized (and a little pessimistic) way of looking at the dilemma of free will. 

Another theory was by a guy named Robert M. Sapolsky, a Stanford neurologist, suggesting that there is no such thing as moral responsibility. I personally disagree with this because I think it is cringe, Mr. Sapolsky is just running from moral accountability, and using a “lack of free will” as his excuse. Cringe.

Then, there is the compatibilist camp, those who disagree with Sapolsky’s theory (wait, literally me?), who believe we have casual determinism, the ability to make choices AND moral responsibility. This camp seems to appeal most to what feels right to many people, not too cold and heartless, but still somewhat rooted in logic, adhering to a degree of determinism. At the same time though, there is a bit of an implicit paradox in the compatibilist camp. For example, how is it possible for your life to be predetermined, yet you still have choice? Doesn’t it being determined mean automatically you technically don’t really have any choice? Many say that though it is predetermined, you still have to make the choices, even if technically they have already been made, but you still feel the moral responsibility of making them. Bit of a headtrip, but I think it is the most human approach to the free will question, and arguably the most helpful because at the end of the day, you still have to live life day to day and exist in a society in which the assumption of free will is necessary. 

You can also look at free will through the lens of quantum mechanics, you could talk about the fact that photons are both waves and particles at the same time, the ramifications of the observer effect, Schrodinger’s cat, etc etc. Frankly, though, it doesn’t really mean anything to me whether or not something can be two things at once. Perhaps, and I am willing to admit that maybe I just can’t comprehend the importance of these questions like some brilliant minds can, and by all means that's great if they want to explore that, but for the average person I don’t really see any worth in these questions other than as a passing curiosity. They don’t affect me, and I will never figure them out, so maybe some mysteries of the universe are just better off left alone. 

There are lots of different ways to approach the question of free will, and no one easy absolutely correct answer. So? Whatever makes most sense to you, don’t ask me.

[sunnysanatorium]

How should we solve an ethical dilemma when our philosophy of what we believe we should do, conflicts with how we feel?

What do we do when what we should do doesn’t align with what we feel? For example, we are given the option between saving our loved one (mother, father, sister, bestie, bf/gf, etc) from falling from a ledge or saving 10 strangers from the same fate. Logically, we should really save the 10 strangers, 10 lives should take precedence over one, right? But, at least for most of us, when faced with this dilemma, we feel the urge to save our loved one instead. Why? Why does our emotional connection with a person make them inherently more valuable? There is nothing tangible happening here, it's just our feelings that make us willing to sacrifice 10 lives. As it turns out, our emotions are often the culprit when we struggle to make objective decisions. So the question is, how do we make good decisions despite this inner conflict? 

There a few different ways to counter this, one approach is to recognize how our emotions affect our decision making, so we can then separate ourselves from them, and be more objective when the situation calls for it. 

Another way to avoid letting your emotions affect your decision making is to uphold a moral code, or have firm ethic principles. For example, medieval knights followed a code of conduct known as Chivalry, which dictated they must always be Honourable, Honest, and Loyal among other things. This code of conduct made them able to follow a rulebook of how to act, instead of constantly having to try to figure out what to do independently. These expectations allowed them to spend less time deliberating and more acting. 

Yet another way to counter your emotional approach is to consider the consequences of your actions. To return to the loved one example, upon first thought you may be hit with grief at the thought of losing someone so close to you, and so inherently value their life over the 10 strangers. However, if you pause to think of the consequences, you may realize the fact that those 10 strangers each have people who love them just as much as you love your loved one, and would miss them just as bad. Then you may be forced to face that while you would feel the grief of losing your loved one, if you don’t let them go that grief will be felt by others tenfold. 

Additionally, you could also try to look at the situation from another’s perspective. In our initial example, while you as an observer may immediately feel emotions for your loved one. However, if you took a moment and placed yourself in the shoes of the loved one hanging off of this theoretical cliff, you probably actually wouldn’t want to be saved. I, at least, would feel really guilty and probably even mad at my loved one if they chose to sacrifice 9 others over my life. Them making that descicion takes away my own autonomy, and is really a selfish choice. 

Overall, while emotions do have a place in some decision making, there are times when it is not helpful, and in those situations, there are many things you can do to attempt to limit the control of emotion over your decisions.

[sunnysanatorium]

Foxes vs. Hedgehogs and the History of Personality Quizzes

Personality quizzes are BS. I know it's fun to take personality quizzes on Buzzfeed and Playbuzz about what kind of bread you are, or what Harry  Potter character you’re most likely to date, but overall, they’re kinda BS. See, personality as a whole is a very difficult field and a very hard thing to quantify/ predict accurately. As it turns out, “social psychologists” have been trying to figure out a more quantifiable and scientific way to determine and organize personality since the late 1800s. This finally came about in 1949 and became the most widely recognized and accepted “personality types”: something called the Big Five. The Big Five is a theory created by D. W. Fiske in 1949 and comes from a study of his which suggests there are 5 main personality traits a person can fit into, being somewhere between high and low in any specific one. These traits were: Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism. These traits were in theory originally supposed to help in the workplace with employer and employee relationships and to help improve workplace efficiency by using an understanding of the employee’s personalities. For example, it helped with team building because the tests allowed employers to pick out people with diverse personalities and put them together on a team so they balanced one another out. However, it's disputed how accurate the Big Five test really is, part of the reason why is because your personality score will change a lot over the course of your life. It's affected by your age, gender, and geographical location, making the tests less reliable. And you must keep in mind, this is the most widely recognized and respected personality test, and it is still disputed and has some pretty big flaws. So all those other quizzes? They really have no credibility when it comes to your personality at all. Most of them can be easily rigged to get the answer you want, or are just completely unfounded. For example, the Foxes vs Hedgehog theory is an idea in psychology that all people fall into one of two kinds of thinkers. The Foxes are said to be slightly scattered in their thinking, more like a jack of all trades, capable of seeing more points of view, perhaps making decisions more difficult for them. Hedgehogs on the other hand are seen as more single-minded, more likely to stick to one opinion or code of conduct/ morals. There are multiple quizzes available online to find out which of these you are, however, there is little academic backing to them, and really, they are just bs. Overall, there are some times when very specific personality tests are somewhat accurate and helpful in certain situations, however, most of the time personality quizzes and tests are just mindless worthless slop.

[sunnysanatorium]

Manipulation and Change (hats) in Killers of the Flower Moon

Killers of the Flower Moon is a classic tragedy of which Ernest Burkhart finds himself in the center of. From the very beginning, Ernest shows himself for his true flaws, which are subsequently used by various characters in the movie to have him do their bidding. Over the course of the movie, Ernest also changed in correlation and as a result of his choices, this was often shown through symbolism of his hats. These two themes work together to paint a comprehensive picture of both Ernest’s manipulation and his willing participation in the nightmare of his life.

Right from the get go in Killers of The Flower Moon, we see Ernest’s boundaries being crossed. When he first arrived at his Uncle William Hale’s house he sat down and was subjected to a series of questions from him, an interrogation. Hale right away asks Ernest to refer to him as “Uncle”, or preferably “King”. This is immediately making Ernest aware, even subconsciously, that he is inferior in this relationship. Then King coaxes Ernest’s vulnerabilities out of him. He finds out about Ernest’s gut issues, his trauma from the war. He asks Ernest personal questions about his time overseas, about his preferences in women and whether or not he got any “diseases” while in Europe. These questions make Ernest clearly uncomfortable, but instead of pushing back, he defers to King’s authority and answers them. His Uncle was acting as if these questions were normal, so they must be, right? This tells King that Ernest will be someone he will be able to use. This conversation was essentially a vetting process, and when Ernest tells King “I do love that money, sir”, King knows Ernest will be loyal, and now knows exactly what kind of “inspiration” he needs to keep him interested. This leads to his shift over the course of the movie.

In the beginning of the movie, when Ernest first steps off the train he’s wearing a military hat. This represents the life he has just left living overseas in the Second World War. Soon after he steps off the train, he is involuntarily involved in a small skirmish at the train station, in which he loses his hat, just as his identity of a soldier falls away in the face of this new life, so does his hat. 

Then, after meeting with King, Ernest dons a cap for his role as a cabbie, showing physically how he is forced to start over in this new society and is among the lower class as a poor working man. 

During this period, Ernest meets Molly, who eventually gifts him something as their relationship grows: a new hat. This hat was not only a symbol of his bond with her, but also of his full entrance into this new life. She gave him a white Stetsons Cattleman's Crease, which allowed him to take up more space, both literally and figuratively. The Cattleman gave him a larger and more imposing silhouette than his cap: modest and compact, or even his military hat: slim and forgettable. In a less literal way, it also allowed him to take up more room because wearing this hat was a direct symbol of his connection with Molly, a wealthy Osage, and thus, his status. He was now an important wealthy man who owned land and a big house, he had oil money now, he was important. He was no longer just some working man. However, as Ernest continues to make greedy choices in the story, if you watch closely you can see his hat gradually darkening from its bright white to a charcoal grey, almost as if his sins are sapping its brightness as he falls deeper and deeper into violence and chaos.

Near the end of the story, when Ernest is finally arrested for his crimes, he loses his hat, and is never to don another in the movie. This symbolized how his power had been stripped from him, leaving him exposed. He was now reduced to what he truly was, a small, guilty, miserable man who could never again be respected in society now that they had seen him for what he truly was.

Ernest Burkhart is both a victim and a victimizer in Killers of The Flower Moon. On one hand, he is taken advantage of and exploited by a man he respects and trusts, but on the other hand he always contained the capacity to do wrong and rarely resisted greedy or despicable actions when they were offered to him. His manipulation was illustrated through his dialogue with King, and its effect on his character throughout the story was illustrated through wardrobe design and symbolism.

[sunnysanatorium]

Cognitive Bias - Yay or Nay?

Cognitive biases helped us survive as a species. They allowed us to make generalizations and assumptions that allowed us to thrive, they allowed us mental shortcuts that often meant the difference between being eaten by a pride of lions or not. However, now in the modern world are these biases outdated? Do they still provide us with benefits?

Evolutionarily, cognitive biases were extremely useful. They allowed us to make quick, snap decisions, instead of pondering every possibility of a situation. They make us wary of the unknown, which saves us from eating unfamiliar animals and funky-smelling foods, and keeps us from wandering into the jungle at night. Ingroup bias, for example, made us tend to care for the people in our communities, families, and tribes, and be wary of strangers. They played a large role in why we made it as far as we have, they were our natural defenses, in place of claws and furs, we had our brains and their biases. 

Nowadays however, in most advanced societies prowling leopards, hostile rival clans, and foraging aren’t exactly relevant anymore. So, in this new society, do our biases hold us back? In some ways, absolutely. The same biases that made us wary of the unknown now can make us prejudiced against those who are different from us, even when they don't pose a threat to us. Stereotyping, too, encourages us to assign characteristics based on our own generalizations, personal experience and history, and obviously stereotypes. This type of bias can be linked to events like segregation, residential schools, and countless tragedies and genocides. Clearly these are not helpful in the current era. Or the negativity bias, which used to be helpful in keeping us attuned to threats, now makes us unhappy and overly self-critical, always weighing the cons heavier than the pros. 

Additionally, however, I don’t believe that our biases are completely irrelevant now. They still can give us those “hunches” that turn out to be correct or even helpful. And outside of the west, in places with active conflict, or even war, these biases are almost just as useful to those involved in them as they were all those years ago. Another example of cognitive bias being helpful in our current modern world are biases like the illusion of validity help us find stories and patterns in relatively sparse or small amounts of data. This is part of why we humans are so creative, and both create and find stories in almost everything around us. Therefore, not all biases are still harmful to us now in our current lives.

Overall, our biases were essential to humans for a long time in our development, they kept us safe. They allowed us to make quick, efficient decisions that were generally correct and able to help us survive in the harsh primeval landscape. Now, however, that our world, at least in the west, is a much more modern place and the majority of our cognitive biases are not relevant to us in the way that they used to be, and can often even be detrimental to us today.

[sunnysanatorium]

The Ship of Theseus - aka What is Identity? 

Who am I? I think this is a question everyone has asked themselves at least once in their life, if you’re like me you’ve probably wondered it more. However, is there a concrete answer to this question? Maybe. Generally, there are three main philosophical approaches to this question, each believed in their own right; the physical, psychological, and skeptical approach. All of which have compelling points and important questions that coincide with them. Let's start with the easy one. The physical approach is the idea that identity is found in your physical form, your age, your gender, ethnicity etc. This theory suggests that your identity is innate and unchangeable, and will stay the same over the course of your life, as you live in the same body your entire life. You have no part in it: your inner identity is just chemical reactions in the brain and your instinctive survival instincts. However, this raises some interesting questions, like the fact that our bodies are fully replaced, cell for cell, every seven years or so. This ties into the Ship of Theseus problem, at what point does the identity of something change when replaced physically? Or does it at all? If so, you would have to accept that the current “you” is not the same “you” as when you were born, regardless of memories, experiences, or choices. The psychological approach believes the opposite idea. It dictates humans are their experiences and memories, and identity can be changed by an individual's choices. Plato and Descartes were proponents of this idea and believed that humans are their souls, and souls are our emotional conscious beings. It is quite challenging to acquire any kind of “proof” for any of these concepts, but an idea that is commonly used to prove the psychological approach is John Locke’s idea that “Personal identity persists over time because you retain memories of yourself at different points, and each of those memories is connected to one before it.”. This is a bit tricky to wrap your head around, but in essence, Locke is suggesting that the human ability to form memories proves that you must have been present at different points in your past leading up to today, therefore the choices and experiences you formed are yours and formed your identity at every step of the way. Compelling, yes, but this also sparks some crucial questions about identity; for example what about the times when you weren’t conscious and unable to form memories? Are you not “you” then? What about when you were a baby, are you not “you” yet? What about when you’re inebriated? Are you literally “not there”? Should you still be responsible for your actions? Or more disturbingly, what about those with Alzheimer's or dementia? Do they not have identities? Do people without identities have rights? Or what about false memories? It's been proven that you can implant false memories in people, can something that never happened be a part of your identity? As you can see, this approach has many grey areas and unanswered/ unanswerable questions.

This begs the question, does it matter really anyway? The skeptical approach would answer with a resounding “No!”. According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, we have “no core of existence”, we are nothing, and in the end, there are no correct answers when it comes to identity and “The idea of the self doesn’t persist over time. There is no you that is the same person from birth to death” (David Hume). If this is true, however, does that mean we aren’t responsible for our past actions? Other skeptics suggest that we aren’t asking the right questions at all, or that the source of our consciousness is more vital than our identity itself. Still others suggest that it really, truly does not matter at all - this is known as Reductionism. This is based on the idea that knowing exactly what our identity is is irrelevant because we can never know anyway, it does not significantly affect our lives and is not worth worrying about. Society is built on the agreed idea that each individual will stay the same person for the rest of their lives, and have responsibilities regardless. Instead, we should focus on the important things we can control, such as our perceptions, choices, and how we define ourselves. There is only relative identity, and absolute identity does not exist. So. Who am I? I don’t really know, and there is no one way to ever be certain. After looking at the physical, psychological and skeptical approach it's hard not to be even more lost or uncertain than before. However, maybe in lieu of just choosing one of these approaches to believe, we have to understand that identity is not an absolute, and so instead of defining it by any one approach, a collaboration of all three provides a more thorough explanation of identity.