After reading the story, “What Should You Worry About?”, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, really inspired me to think more about the worries and the non-worries. Specifically, worries about; global warming, animal attacks, hackers, murders, rapist, theft, and “unsolvable problems”. Levitt and Dubner clarify the story from giving good points, Which made me think, should I be worried about dangerous animals, when I go out to remote areas? Shall I be concerned about global warming getting to it’s ultimate points, being a victim of robbery or identity-theft or even being murdered by a friend, is a worry?
What can I say, the world is full of uncertainty and I believe individuals shouldn’t be worried too much. Worry and being afraid won’t get as far in the future, but looking through history and the changes that have been made, personally can say, that human ingenuity is bound to be even larger. As, Levitt and Dubner say, “Yes, it is an incredibly large and challenging problem. But as history has shown us again and again, human ingenuity
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For example, the writers say, “For instance, whom are you more afraid of: strangers or people you know? While ‘strangers’ is the obvious answer, it’s probably wrong. Three out of four murder victims knew their assailants; about seven of 10 rape victims knew theirs. While the public is justifiably horrified when a stranger snatches a child off the street, the data show that such kidnappings are extremely rare. As for the crime of identity theft, most of us fear nameless, faceless perpetrators—say, a far-off ring of teenage hackers. We try to thwart them by endlessly changing our PINs (and forgetting them). But it turns out that nearly half of identity-theft victims are ripped off by someone they know. And fully 90% of thefts happen offline, not on the Internet.”(467). I agree with the essayist’s because it is very true that victims actually do know there
Based upon Fromm’s analysis many of the warnings presented in 1984 exist in today’s society. Currently society exists with “doublethink”, meaning as the days past society is one step closer to a dark era. Many people have already adapted this way of thinking, but if we want to
"Culture of Fear" is a book that describes that it is our perceptions that dangers have increased, and so much the actual level of risk. Glassner explains in all of his chapters how people and organizations use our fears as a way to increase their profit. Glassner also states about the prices we pay for our panics and all the time and energy we spend worrying. Americans are afraid because of the media's broadband expose of crime, violence, drugs and diseases.
Take for example the prominent futurist Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil was among the first to anticipate the rise of the internet in the nineties, while most prominent scientists refused to believe that the sparsely connected ancient computers would ever have any true effect on the World. Nowadays we take the internet and its vast source of knowledge for granted, as if it had always existed. Although his prediction for the growth of the internet is impressive, he has made many other predictions, an astounding 70% of so have proved to be true. His latest, and most controversial, is the prediction that “We will successfully reverse-engineer the human brain by the mid-2020s. By the end of that decade, computers will be capable of human-level intelligence. Kurzweil puts the date of the Singularity — never say he's not conservative — at 2045. In that year, he estimates, given the vast increases in computing power and the vast reductions in the cost of same, the quantity of artificial intelligence created will be about a billion times the sum of all the human intelligence that exists today.” (Grossman). Kurzweil came to this prediction based off of exponential graphs he extrapolated out, and to this point in time they’ve been highly accurate. If he’s correct I believe that in the next coming years the scientific discoveries
The story I chose for this analysis is “Why, you reckon?” by Langston Hughes. IN this analysis I will be focusing on how the great depression in Harlem had effect on the story, how racism played a part, and how or if the characters were justifyied in their actions. During this time period the intense racial divide combined with the economic harships that plagued the U.S. during the 1923’s makes for an interesting story that makes you think if the charaters were really justified.
"Evil". When most of us hear this word, we think of negatively influencing people such as Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. Without a doubt, these people are evil, although, it is a bit extreme to the way I’m here to portray it. Evil is a powerful force that can result in many destructive consequences within societies and around the world. Some people have the ability to perform such cruel and unacceptable things without experiencing a slight feeling of shame and compassion, yet, the majority of people continue to say, “All people are inherently good”. Sure, in our eyes, most people physically behave well and are generally good hearted, but we have all started with an evil state of mind. It is the morals and laws cultured into society that restrict us from doing evil, and lead us into doing good. Although we have many reputable people that have made a positive impact in our world, there is undeniable evidence that humans are naturally evil beings .
Taking a look into one of the three articles “Some Consequences of Having too Little,” written and studied by Anuj K. Shah, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Eldar Shafir, people often faced with too little tend to borrow excessively and focus on the present rather than the future (Shah, Mullainathan and Shafir 682). In order to test this hypothesis, the writers have conducted 5 experiments to show how scarcity affects behavioral, environmental and psychological conditions that re-inforce poverty (Shah, Mullainathan and Shafir 682). These studies also prove that having less requires more attention on tasks at hand while neglecting other tasks that seem not so pressing (Shah, Mullainathan and Shafir 682). For example, I know a lady named Marci. Marci depends on her food stamps each month to feed
This article allows access to proof of the fears, dangers and misconception to be used in my article. It also states the percentages of user who have met...
Culture Centers in Higher Education: Perspectives on Identity, Theory, and Practice is a powerful and enlightening book by Lori D. Patton. Patton is a higher education scholar who focuses on issues of race theories, African American experiences on college campuses, student development theories, campus environments, inclusion, and multicultural resources centers at higher education institutions. She has a variety of publications and was one of the first doctoral students to complete a dissertation that focused exclusively on Black culture centers entitled, “From Protest to Progress: An Examination of the Relevance, Relationships and Roles of Black Culture Centers.” In Campus Culture Centers in Higher Education Patton collaborates with many higher education scholars and faculty members to discuss various types of racial and ethnic culture centers in higher education, their overall effectiveness, relevance, and implications for improvement in relation to student retention and success. Diversity, inclusion and social justice have become prevalent issues on all college campuses, and this piece of literature gives a basic introduction for individuals unfamiliar with cultural resource centers. This book successfully highlights contributions of culture centers and suggestions for how centers can be reevaluated and structured more efficiently. For many faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals unfamiliar with the missions and goals of culture centers, Patton’s text provides a concrete introduction and outline for the functionality of these resources and also offers recommendations and improvements for administrators managing multicultural centers.
Sophocles wrote the classic tragedy Antigone in 496-406 BC this play dramatizes the conflict between self-morality versus human law by representing each conflict by two characters; Antigone and Creon. In this play Antigone decides to bury her brother Polyneices regardless of the king Creon’s decree. After Antigone is caught Creon decides that the punishment of death will be enforced. This sets of a chain reaction of conflicts between Antigone and Creon, both filled with pride and will. The chorus states that the gods vigorously punish the proud, yet punishment brings wisdom. ( )
Fear is a survival response. Fear makes us run, it makes up leap, it can make us act superhuman. But we need somewhere to run to. Without that, the fear is only paralyzing. So the real trick, the only hope, really, is to allow the terror of an unlivable future to be balanced and soothed by the prospects of building something much better than many of us have previously dared hope. (Klein,
The hottest recorded temperature was in 2005 which matched the temperature in 1998. Twice in the last decade we've had the hottest temperature on average ever recorded throughout history. Coincidence. I think not. The snows of the Kilimanjaro have basically vanished and in a couple decades Glacier National park is going to need a new name because by 2030 there will be no glaciers left in the whole park. The great Greenland icecaps are melting at an alarming pace, and sliding into the sea. Your right, who cares it's not like its happening near us. But by 2100 all our coastal states will look like Venice including ours. You won?t be alive but your children and grandchildren will. The sea level is expected to rise up to 23 inches in the next decade. There has been a 100 percent increase in intensity and duration of hurricanes and tropical storms since 1970 according to a 2005 MIT study. How much more evidence do we need before someone does something about this? For anyone who cares at all about the future, the gradual transformation of our earth is turning into a human-furnace that makes terrorism look like a game of monopoly. Think I'm kidding? By 2050, 15-37% of all plant and animal species could be extinct. Meaning it will be harder for plants to produce photosynthesis. No big right? Wrong. Without photosynthesis, oxygen can?t be made. Most of us in this room will be in our late 60?s by then with children and grandchildren. What does that mean for them? The air will be harder to breath and the temperature of earth will have increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. By 2050 up to 38% of water will be unable to hold underwater species because of rising temperature.
Edmund Bourne Ph.D., one of the authors of Natural Relief for Anxiety said, "There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things that are beyond the power of our will". Sometimes people worry about things that are beyond our reach or beyond our control, these are the things that Edmund Bourne is talking about. He is saying that if we worry about things that we cannot control, then we can never be happy. People will argue that too much worrying will lead to social anxiety or panic disorders. Worrying may seem like a bad thing, but it becomes bad once it reaches a limit. Once people reach excessive worrying then that is when problems can occur to one's health. People will say worrying is bad, because it causes stress, makes us feel more tired, may speed the aging process. All these factors make it seem as if worrying is more of a negative impact than a positive impact. Worrying has a lot of positive impacts on people. Everything will have its pros and its cons. Some people view the cons of worrying much more important than the positive aspects. Worry helps us make decisions much better, and faster. It helps us perform better when doing important tasks. In schools when students worry about their grades, it makes them focus better and study more. All of these factors help people become better people in the long
Who is to say that we will not posses the ability to create safety measures when it comes to artificial intelligence or the cyber space. In an excerpt from a book by David Haugen and Susan Musser called Technology And Society Kurzweil discusses an event called the “Singularity” in which technology overtakes humans and become one with man. (Haugen, Musser 168) The emergence of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology will usher in a new age where theoretically humans can live forever. Kurzweil says that nanotechnology can be integrated with the human body. It would make us smarter, it could also fix disabilities and fight diseases from the inside out. Personally, this sounds like a great future. It sounds like a future where people with alzheimer 's, don 't have alzheimer 's anymore. Or people that can 't walk, can walk. In a future society with nanotech and AI we could live longer with our loved ones. Isn 't that an important part of the human interaction? Certain arguments say that the technology will create artificial intelligence and autonomous robots that are stronger, smarter and, faster than we are. However if that is the case, we need not worry because if we were to ever get to such a point we ourselves would be augmented with technology. Although naturally I don 't agree with humans walking around implanted
I don't know what the future holds but I know who holds the future. Days go by and how time flies, seasons always changing. When we contemplate the future we envision mind-warping technology and global warming destroying the Earth. Change is inevitable but it's up to our supremacy what we and our planet Earth change into. Will we help or hinder our future survival? One sentence from America's Declaration of Independence has some relevance to this matter. 'But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security'. In other words if something is wrong, those that have the ability to take action, have the responsibility to take action.
What will the world look like fifty years from now? Many people might imagine living in a future where flying cars and teleportation are possibilities, but for environmentalists the future does not look as bright or exciting. Environmentalists fear that without radical change and global action towards sustainability the earth will soon become completely inhospitable. People see it in the news all the time about how the ice caps are melting, Earth’s forests are disappearing, and natural disasters are more recurrent and severe than ever all due to human activity. It also does not take a whole lot of looking around to notice the price of everything going up or the steady climb of the world population nowadays. Globally, humans are faced with the problem of providing for an ever increasing population with a finite amount of resources. One solution environmentalists have proposed is sustainability. As resources become more limited and the world population grows, the aspects of sustainability- the principles, major components, topics of concern, and human responsibility towards sustainability become increasingly relevant in global society.