I realize that this is a bit of a weird question to allow me to rephrase it, “How does perceptive change one's understanding of the artwork?” MC Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. His artwork is famous for its optical illusions and his bizarre use of reflections. While his art is very popular, you may have seen it before but you didn’t realize it was MC Escher’s work, his life remains very vague. Many questions have arisen of what inspired him to create such dream- like works of art.

            A BBC Arts articles delves deeper into the mystery that is MC Escher. This article, titled “'Chaos is present everywhere': The mysterious world of MC Escher” by William Crook (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1TXskHdW0Hrtng1bYgzRBRf/chaos-is-present-everywhere-the-mysterious-world-of-mc-escher) explains that the reason Escher wasn’t very famous was because he didn’t want to be. He kept to himself and wasn’t interested in fame and celebrity status. He enjoyed a conventional, bourgeois lifestyle. In fact, “When Mick Jagger wrote to him, asking if the Rolling Stones could use one of his pictures as an album cover, Escher turned him down. He’d never heard of the Stones. He’d never heard of Jagger. He objected to Jagger addressing him by his first name.” While Escher had a normal life with his wife and kids, he was shyer with his art. He developed his own style, free from any school or movement; he had more in common with medieval artists than with surrealist contemporaries.

            Again, MC Escher is famous for his optical illusionistic art that incorporates math, with the help of his friend Sir Roger Penrose. Sir Roger Penrose was a young student at Cambridge University when he was attending an academic conference in Amsterdam, at the same time Penrose saw Escher’s show, and loved it. The two became pen pals and Escher was inspired by Penrose’s math so much that he incorporated it into his artwork. There is no real concrete evidence as to how and why he came up with these ideas, but all we know is that MC Escher wanted to challenge our perspective. He wanted us to change the way we looked at things and the way we understood art. He wanted us to question and look at art upside down to see if we found another perspective. Everybody experiences art differently, some may look at it straight and collect the first thought that comes to their mind, while others may spend their time looking at the piece from every angle to see which one best fits them. MC Escher was one of the great artists that question our perceptions of reality.

Music is so diverse, it comes in many different genres; pop, hip-hop, rap, country, gospel, jazz, blues, etc.  There are songs in different languages, different styles (instrumental or lyrical) etc. There are billions of songs in the world, and the number keeps rising. We all have those staple songs that we go to when we want to feel a certain way, whether it’s sad or happy etc. Everybody has their own unique taste in music; the songs they like may not be as appealing to other people. Why is this? Why is it that music makes us feel certain emotions? What is it in music that elicits certain emotions in us? A song may make you feel happy, or sad, it may bring you comfort, it may make you cry.

            BBC started a series where they answered questions asked by their fans. Philip Le Riche asked “Why does music have a hotline to our emotions? What is the evolutionary advantage of this?” And David Robson, BBC Future feature writer answered in a page titled “Why music has a hotline to our emotions” (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150918-why-music-has-a-hotline-to-our-emotions). Robson explains that there is no concrete and scientific evidence as to why music is a hotline to our emotions because nobody as a good idea about how music affects us. There have been many theories however, surrounding our attraction to music. One theory is that music makes us more appealing, it makes us stand out from the crowd and more attractive. Another theory is that music makes us feel emotions because when we listen to music, it makes us feel like we are the only ones there, it makes us feel unique and it caters to our needs. A third theory is quite the opposite, where music makes us feel connect to other people, if we listen to music as a group, we would all feel connect to one another because of our bond with that one song. It argues that music creates “social glue” for a community. The final theory is that music is a part of culture; the page brings up the BaBinga people from Central Africa, they have elaborate dances for almost every activity. This shows that music is both cultural and allows a community to create bonds with each other because everyone would participate in the elaborate dances in the BaBinga tribe.

Before photographs and the ability to capture exactly a moment, artists would capture these moments through their art. They would paint things that they could see with their naked eye; landscapes, people, flowers, etc. However, once telescopes and microscopes were invented, people had a better understanding of how the world looks. So, do scientific advancements influence what art is created; do they influence what is painted and how it is painted?

            To clarify with a situation, did the invention and further advancements of the telescope affect how the sky was painted in art during those time periods? Were there more stars painted because we now know that they are out there? With a microscope, were details of faces and bodies more realistic because the people finally understood what was going on in the tiny cells in our bodies? Changes in scientific tools helped people better understand the world and helped them realize what happens and why it happens. In an article by BigThink titled “Scientific Revolutions in Optics Made Vermeer a Revolutionary Painter” (http://bigthink.com/Picture-This/vermeers-revolution-in-seeing?hash=ce934b50-b1ed-4292-8616-2ea2c373cd39), historian-philosopher Laura J. Snyder explored how the camera obscura helped Johannes Vermeer create paintings using a new perspective in her book Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Revolution in Seeing. She explained that the camera obscura, which was “a device known that concentrates colors to a chromatic intensity by narrowing the range of brightness, thus allowing the viewer to see colors even in shadows, while transforming a three-dimensional image into two dimensions, thus allowing the viewer to better perceive perspective.” Due to this camera, Vermeer was able to paint paintings that showed the different colors of shadows. Snyder explains this as “What Vermeer was painting was the way the eye actually sees, not the way the mind thinks it sees”. She means that “the mind thinks shadows are black and that lines shouldn’t somehow meet off in the distance, but as modern art had conditioned us to see and perspective has taught us, haystacks with purplish shadows and vanishing points do exist.”

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”. Basically, we the people have the freedom of speech and press. However, when does free speech cross into hate speech?

            We had an activity in class where we evaluated three arguments, one of which was about the ethics of speech. The argument stated ‘The government should be empowered to punish people who express racist, sexist, or xenophobic sentiments publicly. Today's society has no place for those kinds of public expressions.” When asked what we thought about this, if we agreed with it or not, there were a variety of answers. Some people said that the right for someone to express their opinion has to be supported, even if their opinion is bigoted and ignorant.  While others disagreed, including myself to some extent. Our class discussion only scratched the surface of a much bigger and deeper ethical debate.

            In a BCC news article, titled ‘A Point of View: Why we should defend the right to be offensive’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34613855) argues that free speech can uncomfortable, but it needs to be defended even when it gives offence to others. The article brings up the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006, an act made by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The act states that it is an offence to stir up hatred towards religious and racial groups. However, the term ‘stir up hatred’ is very transparent. Something someone considers hatred might not be considered hate by another. Who gets the final say in what is hate and what is not? Is it the judge? If so, that is the opinion of one person, thus being extremely biased and subjective. What about if it’s a majority vote? If so, then the population would need to be very diverse and well represented in order to objectively vote on the matter. What about if the person ‘stirring up hatred’ didn’t realize that they were? Are they still technically charged with a crime, even if they didn’t not intend to hate?

            In any law or act of this sort, there needs to be a clear cut set of rules and actions that are defined as hate. There needs to be no loophole or contradiction between any of these definitions of hate because then the argument becomes invalid because of said contradictions. Overall, I personally become very confused when I try to pick sides to ethical arguments, such as this one, because I feel like there are different situations that should require different punishments (in this case for example). I think this is common with ethical arguments because many people have trouble figuring out what side they choose, because everyone has personal biases. Whether because of culture, personal knowledge, opinions ect.

On May 9th visitors at the Yellowstone National Park brought a newborn bison calf to a park facility because they were concerned for the calf’s welfare. When park rangers tried to reunite the calf with its family, they could not get it back with the herd after several tries. "The bison calf was later euthanized because it was abandoned and causing a dangerous situation by continually approaching people and cars along the roadway," the park said in a statement. The reason that the park could not release the calf into the wild or care for it themselves is because the calf couldn’t be shipped out of the park for months because of a quarantine required to prevent the possible spread of brucellosis (a bacterial disease typically affecting cattle and buffalo and causing undulant fever in humans) and also, the park doesn’t have the resources to care for a calf that long. The visitors cited for touching park wildlife and fined $110.

There is much controversy around the topic of euthanizing or ‘putting down’ an animal, especially if it is healthy. Those who believe that it is in the best interest of an animal to be put down would be following a consequentialistic or utilitarianistic ethical standpoint because they would think that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the amount of pleasure or happiness it creates compared to the amount of harm and pain inflicted. They are looking at the outcome, rather than the action, whatever action results in the best outcome for everyone. However, one problem that can arise with this is ‘best outcome for whom?’ For example, if a dog was healthy but a family just could not care for it anymore and they wanted to euthanize it, would that be acceptable in a consequentialistic sense? Putting down an animal that is healthy is not the best outcome for the animal, but it is for the family. I guess then in this case, majority rules in a way, it is better to please 100 people than 10. Conversely, the opposite theory would be Deontology, where one needs to do the morally correct action, regardless of the consequences. These people would look more at what they are doing in okay rather than if the outcome if acceptable. In this case, a person would not euthanize the animal, even if it affects the family badly because the act of euthanizing a healthy animal is considered immoral.

Journalistic objectivity is a principle of journalistic professionalism. It requires journalists to be objective, accurate and investigative in the way they presents information and relays facts to the public; rather than subjective and biased. But the question is should journalists have the ability to take sides in their piece? After all, they are doing all this research to compose an article, somewhere along the way; they must have formed an opinion on the matter or have chosen a side. This is where ethics and morality comes in; would journalists be fooling the public in some way if they published articles that favored the side that the journalists themselves support?

There are many arguments for journalistic objectivity, one of them being that journalists represent the company they write for. For example, if Fox News publishes an article that is pro- Donald Trump, many people are going to see it as if Fox News supports Donald Trump (they probably do but that’s beside the point), rather than just the journalist supporting Donald Trump themselves. What journalists write and what gets published is reflected on the company as a whole, not just the person writing the article. This leads to problems because if a journalist writes a piece that conflicts with the company’s existing values and morals, and gets published, it can cause controversy around the company because people will say that they are being a hypocrite by showing themselves one thing but publishing an article or something that directly clashes with their already publicized perspective. Rather than getting mad at the journalist, society will get mad at the company for approving this is be published and represented as the thoughts of the company as a whole.

But, should journalists have the freedom to put their own two cents into a piece so that it has sustenance, and is not just pages of straight facts. In my opinion, I believe that journalists should have the right to be subjective in their work and write about what they want to write, but they should do it through a private platform such as a blog, not on a public, social level such as a magazine; especially if it conflicts with the view set by the company they work for. A different side to this argument is seen in an article written by Giles Fraser for The Guardian. His article argues that if journalists don’t show their emotions in work, they are not giving the public the whole picture. It argues that writing, especially journalism is about emotion and portraying that emotion through words, so that the reader can also feel the same emotion. I think untimely it’s up to the reader if they want to read subjective work or work that is objective.

            I watched a movie several years ago called “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” which is a 2004 American romantic science-fiction comedy-drama movie. The summary of this movie is as follows: After a painful breakup, Clementine undergoes a procedure to erase memories of her former boyfriend Joel from her mind. When Joel discovers that Clementine is going to extremes to forget their relationship, he undergoes the same procedure and slowly begins to forget the woman that he loved. This movie explores the implications of trying to erase memories, even ones that seem bad in the moment. In the movie, while Joel is getting his memories erased, he relives them and realizes that he doesn’t want to completely forget Clementine; he wants some memories to remember her by. I came across a very interesting article when I was looking for more information on this movie (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-06/02/restoring-memories). It is about in 2014, when scientists reported that they’d successfully manipulated mice’s memories, or at least the emotions associated with those memories. We form the informational part of our memories—the facts and events—in the hippocampus of our brain. The emotions connected to them—how we feel about those facts and events—are stored in the amygdale. Scientists messed with these mice’s amygdale and basically reversed how they “felt” about prior lab experiences, changing an unpleasant event into a pleasant one, and vice versa. Then, the scientists were quick to point out that while this could be useful in erasing a person’s negative emotions about something in their past (PTSD, for example), it would be a bad idea to actually make them forget that these events had happened because they would be losing important memories.

            The main reason people would want to erase any bad memories is because they don’t want to remember any tough time in their lives. However, it is these tough times that help us grow, we experience these hardships and learn from them. If we were to completely erase it, we would be creating holes in our growth. For example, on an extreme level, let’s say that you wanted to erase all your memories of high school because they were the worst four years of your life; okay so you do, wouldn’t you then also lose all your knowledge that you gained from school those years? You would forget geometry, algebra, biology etc. Wouldn’t this then be a regression? Also, let’s say you need to later remember something that happened during high school, you wouldn’t be able to. Memories are the building blocks to our knowledge; you need to be very careful when trying to move even one, because everything could be disturbed. 

            

It will always upset me that I don’t have memories before the age of 4, and probably because I was living in India until I was four and my mom always told me so many stories of me during that time, but I just can’t remember. Even if I do, I don’t know if it’s my actual memory or a fabrication I made up from one of my mother’s stories. So I always wondered, why can’t we remember our lives as infants or toddlers? Is it because we are so young that we cannot comprehend that we need to remember these things? Is it because we are too focused on remembering other things like talking and walking that we don’t remember other things? While I was doing research trying to find an answer, or something that would help me understand better, I found this very helpful article; (http://www.vox.com/2014/5/8/5695500/why-cant-you-remember-being-a-baby-science-explains).

            To summarize, the article says that the reason we cannot remember our lives as babies is because we constantly make new cells throughout our life, this is a process called neurogenesis. In babies however, the rate of neurogenesis is much higher; this produces new neurons at a much higher rate. And this process is active particularly in the hippocampus, also known as the memory center. While most of the time neurogenesis leads to better learning and memory, extremely high rates of neurogenesis (as seen in babies) can increase forgetfulness. So basically, these new neurons are coming in by the boat load and pushing out old neurons that hold our baby memories. One person points out that this could be a good thing because if we have too many memories, we can lessen our ability to learn more things and gain new knowledge. Scientists did an experiment on young mice which showed that heightened rates of neurogenesis led to forgetfulness. They also did this with young guinea pigs and degu and found the data to be consistent with the mice. Of course there is no way of knowing what exactly happens in human brains because these experiments were done on rodents, but considering the similarity of mammal brains; this is a very good basis to build on top on. I guess when we are young, we need to learn so many new things that we need so many new neurons and we don’t have enough space in our tiny brains that we need to compromise somewhere. Memory is so fragile and losely constructed, you constantly add and take out memories, all this change can lead to mis consolidation of memories. We may even lose memories that were not 'put back' in our memory.

           

Have you ever wanted to feel no emotions? You wouldn’t feel hurt, upset, sadness or anger. But you also wouldn’t feel happiness, joy, love or excitement. People with Alexithymia feel exactly that- nothing. They are not able to describe or identify emotions in themselves. I got interested in this because I saw this article: (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150818-what-is-it-like-to-have-never-felt-an-emotion). In the article they introduced “alexes”, or people with Alexithymia. This made me curious and I came up with the question “What are the advantages and disadvantages of not feeling emotions?” I wanted to know how these people felt, I wanted to know if they wanted to be able to feel feelings or if they didn’t want to feel emotions and were happy the way they were. Now, I cannot say for certain what it feel like to not feel. But I can try my best to weigh the advantages and disadvantages.

            To start with the advantages, you wouldn’t feel any emotion that would depress your mood. You wouldn’t feel shame, guilt, anger, sadness etc. You could go on living your life without feeling bad about what you are doing, you wouldn’t feel guilt so you could rob a bank and not feel bad. Basically, you would not be able to sympathize with others. This could be good in the sense that you would be immune to any hate, like bullying. But this could also be bad because our ability to feel emotions and feel for others is what makes us human; it gives us the ability to be compassionate.

            Now, the disadvantages of not feeling emotions. What about the happy things? What about the things that make you feel so much joy when you think about them? If we lost the ability to feel emotions (or never had them to begin with) we wouldn’t be able to feel joy, happiness, love, excitement, surprise etc. all the things that make us smile. Arguably, if laughing were an emotion, you wouldn’t be able to laugh. If you couldn’t feel, does that mean you couldn’t fall in love? Does that mean love is considered and emotion? If you couldn’t feel, that means you wouldn’t enjoy anything, because if you did, then that means that thing made you happy; but if you couldn’t identify that feeling of happiness, then that could mean that you never had or felt it.

            Emotions are very transparent, the lines are blurred when it comes to what is considered an emotion and what is not. Like I said before you could consider laughter as an emotion but someone else might not. This confuses the category if what it’s like to not feel emotions. It’s very tricky to describe and categorize emotions because everybody has their own opinion on what is an emotion and what is not. But what I think we can all agree on is that emotions help us understand ourselves and others better because a person’s emotions can act as a guide to try to identify how someone is feeling on the inside.

           

 I realize that this question is very broad but I didn’t know the correct way to phrase this idea. Basically, I want to discuss how the ‘placebo effect’ affects our knowledge through sense perception. I watched a Ted- Ed video titled ‘The power of the placebo effect - Emma Bryce’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z03FQGlGgo0).  This short video talked about the placebo effect, its history, how it is used etc. I found this video very interesting and I was curious on how this effect actually works and how it affects our knowledge and in turn our actions and emotions. To start, the ‘placebo effect’ also called the ‘placebo response’ is a medical phenomenon in which a placebo (which is a fake treatment; an inactive substance such as sugar, distilled water, or saline solution) can sometimes improve a patient's condition simply because the person has the expectation that it will be helpful. Scientists and medical doctors still haven’t found out exactly why this works but they have conducted many experiments that prove that the ‘placebo effect’ is actually real. Many people who were on the placebo [in an experiment] actually started to feel better even though they got no real treatment. There have been theories that this effect is physiological and connects to our body, if we think we are getting better, then we really are getting better. However, as the video mentions, there can be downsides to this because the patient might not actually be getting better, but since they think they are getting better- they might refuse further treatment that has been proven to work and end up getting sicker than before. So, I want to explore how sense perception affects our knowledge and actions when it comes to the ‘placebo effect’.

            Sense perception is our ability to understand the world around us through the use of our five senses; smell, sight, taste, touch and hearing. While we may not use these senses specifically when it comes to how we think our body is acting, we would still use sight as a main way to somewhat diagnose how healthy we are. For example, if I got a cut on my leg, I would see how bad it looks or maybe touch around it to see how much it hurts. In the same way, if I had a condition where I was in a trial and I know that I have a 50/50 percent chance of getting the actual drug or the placebo; when I got the treatment, and if I got the placebo, I would think I got the actual treatment. Because of this, I might stop noticing symptoms that are related to my condition because I think it’s the treatment working. Basically, placebos mess with your head and trick you into thinking that you are getting better even if you are not; this affects your sense perception because you might begin to ignore possible indications that your condition worsened. Although placebos were never meant to work in that way, they unintentionally lead people to believe that their health is improving, again, this can cause problems because they are believing wrong things about themselves which can be dangerous especially with a life- threatening condition.

I thought about this question because I was flipping through TV channels and one channel was showing the 1997 film, Titanic. So I started watching it; it had just started; it was on the scene where old Rose started telling her story of her time on the Titanic and everyone was gathered around listening intently. The Titanic is “James Cameron's epic, action-packed romance set against the ill-fated maiden voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic; the pride and joy of the White Star Line and, at the time, the largest moving object ever built. She was the most luxurious liner of her era - the "ship of dreams" - which ultimately carried over 1,500 people to their death in the ice cold waters of the North Atlantic in the early hours of April 15, 1912.” Watching the scene, I started wondering how Rose remembered all this stuff about the Titanic- I realize that for plot progression sake she needed to know enough to build an entire movie on but in reality, she was very old and it would have been impossible for her to remember in such great detail what happened to her when she was 17. Because of her old age and other possible factors, her memory must have been blurred or altered. If this was the case, then why would all the researchers take her words for truth; especially if they didn't have any other information to cross check with? Finally i came to the conclusion question- ‘How reliable memory when used to recount historical events?’ especially in the case of elderly eyewitnesses. Similarly, for example, if a person- they don't necessarily have to be old- recounts a historical event incorrectly, and if the researches don't have any other research of facts to compare to- they will probably take the eyewitness’ information for fact. This can lead to serious problems because if he eyewitness said something wrong, history will, in essence, be wrong. If a small part of history is recorded incorrectly, then it will just keep building and building and our historical foundation will be based on false information. A bit of a slippery slope, I realize, but it is very possible.

I found an example of this in an article written by the guardian about Boa Sr. she was the last person fluent in the Bo language in Andaman, this loss broke a link with a 65,000 year old culture. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/04/ancient-language-extinct-speaker-dies). It says in the article that Boa was not able to communicate with anyone in Bo most likely because there was no one left that spoke that same language. Because of this distance from her language for years, she must have lost the knowledge of how to say some words, grammar etc. This could be a problem for history because if researches were to come to her in her later years and ask her translate her language, she might not be able to do so effectively or even correctly. This is problematic because there is also no way for those researches to cross check Boa’s information with another person who speaks Bo because there isn't anyone left. This could change history because wrong information could be written down as fact.

Do you ever smell something and suddenly you feel like you are back in an old memory. Maybe you smelled some cookies and it reminded you of when you went to a bakery with your friends after school one day. Or maybe you smelled burnt rubber and it reminded you of the time you saw a car crash in a movie. Why is it that by smelling something for even a second can bring you back to a place and time that you thought you forgot about? Now, this doesn’t happen all the time, it happens when you least expect it, and most of the time- in my experience- the memory that you remember is quite bizarre and random. You could be walking down to street and all of a sudden you smell something that reminds you of when you made a paper clock in 1st grade. I was thinking about this because we were talking about memory in TOK class and because I recently bought a new lotion, and when I smelled it for the first time, I realized that it smelled like an apple field. The only time I have ever been near an apple field was when my family and I drove past one on a road trip. I found it a little odd that memory would come up because the lotion wasn’t even apple scented, it is ‘Pomegranate Argon & Grapeseed’ scented. I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but sometimes I miss that scent and I want to smell it again, especially if you don’t know where it came from.

I found this article the other day through StumbleUpon, which is a website where you add your interests and it will take you to websites based on those interests. It’s a really fun thing to do when you are bored or when you want to find something new. The article I found (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/older-people-dont-lose-cognitive-power-they-just-know-too-much-say-scientists-9074205.html ) was about elderly people and how they don’t lose their ability to recall knowledge, they just take longer to recall knowledge because they have so much of it. The article explains it like a computer; a brand new computer will run fast because it doesn’t have so many files and data to slow it down; whereas an old computer will take longer to load a file because it has so much data and has been pulling up files for a long time, thus wearing itself out.

            Our brain is extremely complex when it comes to our memory. Memory is very selective on what it stores; there are three basic steps to the storage and remembering of our memories. Encoding; this is the labeling of memories for storage. Consolidation; this is the storing of our memories. Lastly, there is retrieval; this is the remembering of memories. Because memory storing is a highly selective process, we only remember the very important things and we lose the memory of other not so important things. Let us say, for example, we create 100,000 memories a year. Multiply that by 80 years and we have 8,000,000 memories stored. I like to compare this to the movie Inside Out (if you have not seen it already, I highly recommend you do). Inside Out is a children’s movie about memories and emotions. Each memory that the protagonist has is stored into a ‘memory orb’ which are stored in her brain: shown here:

Last summer, my family and I took a family vacation to Florida. We drove from West Palm Beach to Orlando. While on this ride (we were driving on miles of open highway) I saw many pro-life billboards, and I mean dozens. There were so many, I didn’t think that Florida was such a pro- life state. I didn’t really think back on it until I saw somewhere that Florida legalized capital punishment. Florida was the first state to reintroduce the death penalty after the United States Supreme Court struck down all statutes in the 1972 Furman v. Georgia case. This struck me as a bit odd because how could such a pro-life state have the death penalty. So I did some searching and I came across this debate on debate.org that argued if you could be both pro-life and pro-capital punishment (http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-it-reasonable-for-someone-to-oppose-abortion-and-simultaneously-support-capital-punishment ). The votes were split pretty evenly, 53% saying yes, you can oppose abortion and simultaneously support capital punishment; while 47% opposed. Now, I don’t want to get into the age old abortion debate but I do want to bring up some of the points that people had on debate.org. These are straight from the website and I am just paraphrasing some things. I am not adding my personal opinion into these answers.

            For the ones who voted yes, most of the reasons argued that there is a difference between being guilty and innocent (they used the word ‘innocent’ and ‘innocence’ a lot). They said that “Abortion takes the life of someone innocent; someone who has done nothing wrong except exist” and “opposing abortion is opposing the death of an innocent life, while supporting capital punishment is punishing someone who maliciously took a human life”. Basically the argument for supporting capital punishment but opposing abortion is that abortion takes the life of an innocent being, one that has committed no crime and has not voluntarily inflicted pain onto others. For those who voted no, their reasoning was that ‘No, it is not [reasonable] because killing is killing.’ The main argument for calling it unreasonable to support the death penalty but simultaneously oppose abortion is because killing is killing no matter what. In both the death penalty and abortion, there is a life taken. One person said that there is no point in having the death penalty because it is expensive, and we could just keep the criminals in jail for life.

            From a moral standpoint, not matter if you agree or disagree, there will always be points that are valid that void yours. If you agree (to support the death penalty but simultaneously oppose abortion) then some people may say that you are a hypocrite and that both acts are still killing a being. If you oppose, then some may say that abortion kills an innocent being while capital punishment doesn’t and that it kills someone who has already done harm in this world. I feel like this is an extremely touchy subject, and that religion can come into play, which is why I didn’t want to add my personal opinion. But rather that I just wanted to explore and explain both sides of the argument and let people decide for themselves which side they would rather be on.

Movies like Back to the Future, The Butterfly Effect and Project Almanac deal with the implications of changing something in the past and how it affects present day. For example, in Back to the Future Part II, Biff steals the time machine and uses it to travel back to 1955 and give an almanac to his younger self to get rich betting, then returns to 2015. When Marty, Doc, and Jennifer return to 1985, they see that the 1985 to which they return has changed dramatically. Because of Biff changing the past by giving himself an almanac that he would have otherwise never had, he changes the entire course of history for himself and those around him. This creates a parallel universe, and in the movie, the only way to fix it is to go back to the point when the history was altered (when young Biff got the almanac) and change it back so that it never happened. 

            There are also many other temporal paradoxes that come with time travel, for example, the Grandfather Paradox. The Grandfather Paradox is a hypothetical situation of what would happen if you traveled back in time, before your grandfather had any children, and killed your grandfather. This creates a paradox because if your grandfather was killed before he had kids, your parent would never be born and in turn you would never have been born. If you were never born, then you could never go back in time and kill your grandfather, which means that he never died. If he never died, then that means that you could have been born. This mind bending paradox is infamous for its complexity. Another variant of this paradox is the Hitler paradox which is a frequent trope in science fiction. In this paradox, the protagonist travels back in time to murder Adolf Hitler before he can instigate World War II. If Hitler was murdered, then there would be no reason for the travel, along with any knowledge that the reason ever existed, thus removing any point in travelling in time in the first place. The consequences of Hitler's existence are so monumental that for anyone born after the war is likely that their birth was influenced in some way by its effects, and thus the grandfather paradox would directly apply in some way. One ethical issue with the Hitler Paradox is that a variant of it deals with killing baby Hitler. This brings up problems because baby Hitler was innocent at that point, so by killing him, you are killing an innocent person. This also applies to any other serial killers, if the only possible way to stop a serial killer was to kill him while he was younger; would it be right (or even mandatory) to kill him while he is still innocent?

            Where do you draw the line? Who decides what should be changed? What if someone tried to change the timeline who was a religious or political extremist? Should we change the timeline to swing elections in a particular direction? If everyone was allowed to freely travel through time, they would change history constantly. What one changes in the past, affects the past lives of many others. There is really no way to know how time travel would affect history because we don’t know if anyone has ever changed history. This is a really difficult question to answer because we would only be speaking in hypothetical situations and that would not get us any closer in finding the answer. I guess the closest we would ever get to the answer is that by going back in time and changing history, we would create many paradoxes in present day and those paradoxes would in turn create more paradoxes.

I was on one of my social media accounts the other day and I came across this video that someone shared of Katie Hopkins on This Morning saying that she judges’ children’s personalities and habits based on their name. She goes on to say that a child’s name shows how they are as a person; because she was talking about which kids she lets her children play with, she said that she won’t let her children play with another child named Tyler (for example) because if a child is named Tyler- then they must be a bad child, who has bad habits and doesn’t follow directions. The hosts of This Morning were appalled, for good reason, and they were pointing out that a name means nothing on a person’s behavior and that they didn’t choose their own name, their parents did. They had a poll at the end of the video and 9% of people say that they agreed with Katie Hopkins. It just goes to show that there are all types of people in this world. It’s a quite interesting video to watch to get inside knowledge on how some people think, even if you may think that it’s wrong. Watch video below:

           Names are so unique; everyone has the name that they have for a reason. Maybe their parents liked that name, maybe it was passed down through family generations, or maybe the person changed their name because they liked another one better. However, in most cases, we don’t choose our names; they were chosen and settled before we could even talk. So how does it make sense to judge anyone based solely on their name? If we saw that a man named ‘Mark’ robbed a bank, we don’t automatically assume that every ‘Mark’ is a bank robber. We cannot group people with specific character traits just because they have the same name. For example, Katie Hopkins said that she doesn’t like kids names Tyler because they are probably bad children who don’t listen to their parents. Maybe Katie Hopkins knew someone named Tyler who didn’t follow directions so she branded that name with not misbehavior. This isn’t fair because not every Tyler acts the same.
            To judge someone based solely on their name is cruel, they most likely did not pick their name or have any say in the matter. A name is no more than a simple word used to identify someone. Especially in children who don’t have any deeper meaning of this whole name discrimination situation going on. In school admission offices and job admission offices, throwing away a file just because the person has a “black sounding” name is racist and it denies the person of an opportunity that they might have been best for, if they had another name. It’s a person’s actions that define them, not their name.