What separates humans from animals in regards to their habits?

Mine biology teacher once told me that animals can only think about one particular thing. And that thing is reproduce as many of spring as we can. And all other things they do help the reproduction process. You need energy to reproduce so they eat and sleep. Well this sounds quite similar to the lifestyle of an average teenager. The adults nowadays complain about the sexual habits of teenagers nowadays. They believe that children shouldn’t have sex, while animals from the moment they can reproduce will reproduce. And if teenagers have sex, they should use contraceptives. I agree with this, but when you think about it, it sounds quite weird. You don’t use you chance to for fill your biggest mission. Extending the life time of the human race.

Feeling sorry is also a typical human habit. I have never seen or heard of an animal that showed compassion. In the wild there is one law; the strongest will survive. For example when a group of zebras contains one very ill zebra. And when that very ill zebra is only weakening the group, than the healthy zebra’s will decide to abandon the unhealthy zebra. However we humans believe that the principal of survival of the fittest is unethical. We are building all kind of facilities that compensate the disabilities of unfit persons. For example we build houses for people with a metal or physical handicap. However these people do not contribute to society.

Vegetarianism is also a typical human habit. I have never heard of an carnivore or a herbivore animal that decided not to eat meat, because of ethical reasons. It would be quite funny to see a lion not eating zebra’s or gnus, but eating plants and grass. However I have never seen one and I think that not a single person in the world has seen a vegetarian lion. Of course this sounds strange a lion not eating meat, but we homo sapiens do the same. You can of course say that our bio industry is not very friendly towards animals. However I don’t think that lions threat zebra’s with a lot of respect.

Not listing to your hormones, feeling sorry and vegetarianism are all based on thing. Ethical concerns. Instead of following our instincts, we ask every time is this a right thing to do.

jelly beans experiment

the jellybean experiment we did in class was not scientific. The reason for this is that the experiment was controllable. We had to many variables. This makes it impossible to conclude that the blindfold was the crucial in tasting better. Because in our class the blindfolded people were male and they both smoke. The testpersons that could see were both female and didn't smoke. However we did use the five key steps. We had an observation, hypothesis, experiment. However the last 2 steps of the five were impossible, because of the variables. When we would do this experiment again and take out the gender and smoking variable and maybe age, then it is scientific.

perfect theory?

Some people might think that in the future we will be able to produce a scientific theory that contains the answer of every single question. Consequently there would be no paradigm shift anymore. However I don't agree with them. The main reason for me to disagree is the current economical crisis. After the fall of the Soviet Union and therefore the fall of the communistic idea, we all started to live in the capitalistic paradigm. The theory behind the capitalistic system was perfect. And every student started to learn the basic capitalistic principals at school. In the last decade an Asian economist made an equation. This equation gave banks the ability to calculate how they could earn the highest amount of money. This equation worked until the beginning of the current crisis. The problem of the equation was very simple; it did not work in a time with decreasing house prices. That economist did not realised this mistake was very understandable. Because house prices simply didn’t decline after the Second World War. Now we say that the capitalistic system is dead, and that the state should have more control over our economy. This is really a paradigm shift in the economical world.

What I am trying to explain is that we might be able to make a theory which can solve every question. However there will be a moment were something will change. This change will change the world or universe. Consequently the theory does not work any more and it has to change.

in my science class i always learned that, we have to check everything. This was a key element in every experiment. They same element occurs in the science done by famous scientist. One things he invented something and then a second scientist by doing an experiment proves that the first scientist was wrong. Consequently if you ask a scientist: "why does a pencil fall". Then he will replay by saying: " well, according the experiments we have done and checked. We could conclude that everytime there was a certain force pulling the pencil down. This force we called gravity". This explanation is crucial. Because when you ask the same question to a psuedo scientist, he would reply by saying: "well, it falls because it already falls for more then 500 years.

secondly another characteristics wich distinguishes psuedosciences from hard science is that scientist encourges you to disprove their theories. However a psuedo scientist would ask you why you would disprove a someting that is already working for more than 500 years.

in the field of mathematics, mathematicians have a better short term memory. However this is due the fact that mathematicians are often interested in Maths. Therefore they put effort in remembering mathematical information. However when you tell them something about footbal, then i am sure that i rember more. I nice television program which showed this was Beauty and the nerd. the beauties and nerds were divided in groups which constited out of 1 nerd and 1 beauty. Beauties were nice people without a brain, and Nerds were mathematicians with a low eq. Every show two teams were selected to participate in a knock out test. Beauties had to answer question in the field of exact sciences. And nerds had to answer question in the field of fashion, hollywood and making contact with other people. You would expect that Nerds would score better in test, because they have a higher IQ. However it were often the girls which scored relativley higher. Because mostly both groups did not study, you can say that it were the interest which determined the short term memory and not the brains.

A second problem is what is smart. I believe that Paris Hilton is smarter than the average IB student. Her IQ might be lower, however her business instinct is brilliant. Because she earns money with avery single action. Consequently i believe that a person with a high IQ, but works as a secretary is not very smart. Because she is not able to use her potential.

Is mathematics discovered or invented?

I think that it depends on how broad you see the topic mathematics. I see every single calculation as mathematics. And the answer in my eyes are also mathematics. Therfore i could say that most discoveries in physics are also discoveries in mathematics. For example when you take the physics and mathematical topic mechanics. This topic allows us to calculate the speed of a certain object. Consequently it allowed us to calcute the speed of jupiter and the earth. We discovered through these calculation that jupiter is moving faster than the earth. The same method works to compare the speed of a car and a train. Therefore we can conclude that we discovered a formula to calculate the speed of different objects. Because there has always been an correlation between speed, time and distance. However we invented the units we use in this formula. We invented the units metres and seconds.

gut decisions

My last intuitive decision was when I decided to bet with my tok teacher, about who inspirited Willem van Oranje. He said that it was Erasmus, while I said that Spinoza inspirited Willem. I lost the bet and therefore I had to give my teacher a bag of Dutch liquorices. If I would have thought about my decision a bit longer I probably would not have made the decision. Because most of the time Mr Poeser is right. And he was the only person that really could have lost, because I am just a student. These were things I should have taken into consideration. However one of my characteristics is to act intuitive, when the consequences are not that big. I also do not regret my decision, because it created a lot of jokes.

Emotion as a way of knowing

All of us experience emotions, however are they limitation for our knowledge. Personally I think there are two types of emotions. You have controlled emotions and uncontrolled emotions. The controlled emotions definitely enriches you way of knowing, while the other type of emotion is most of the time a threat to it. For example if we take the basic emotion of anger. You can experience this emotion in a controlled way or in an uncontrolled way. For example when your teacher told you you had a one for the last test. One option is to freak out. Blame everyone except yourself, and during your rage you can even throw in some windows. When you behave according this option your emotions are definitely uncontrolled, and your level of knowledge is definitely not increasing. However controlling your anger and change this emotion into a positive one. You might increase you level of knowledge. When your teacher told you that you had a one, you can thinking what is the reason for this low mark. Did I study the wrong things, or was my study method not good enough, or were it the nerves? When you do this the chances that you will have another failure will decrease. Of course you can say that when you had no emotion, you would come rationally to the reason for you bad mark. However if you had no emotion, you also would not have the extra motivation to get a high mark the next time. I think that everyone prefers good marks instead of low marks. Thus when you have low marks, most people will get the motivation, which is an emotion, to improve them.