Facts and Opinions

I think that we're surrounded by facts too much of the time. Like the picture above, facts seem to have more power than opinions, which the image above shows. Facts are represented by the huge "FACTS" cannon. However, opinions are written in tiny letters on a revolver held by a short person. This man seems weak and even needs a step ladder to be able to come face to face with the cannon. Moreover, the "OPINION" pistol which is fired only fires a white flag, as if to symbolise surrender to the cannon. This cannon seems more dangerous than the pistol since there is a lit fuse on top, showing that it will soon destroy the man holding the "OPINIONS" pistol.

I agree with this image to a certain degree. Facts constitute a huge part of this world, and the personal opinions are usually only valued when they are based on facts. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. had very important thoughts and statements about racism and how it was a decaying factor of the world. While his opinions were valued and respected by many people, it remains true that they were based on facts about racism and discrimination.

My opinion is that we don't have a choice whether to like facts or not. Personal opinions have perpetual existence since imagination within human minds will exist forever. This is the source of opinions. However, facts surround us no matter what simply because any individual thought or opinion can be traced back down enough to concrete details.

What is an A and what is its relationship to Success?

I think as students, we can't help but be drawn to the A. It's sort of similar to how a dog can't resist a treat, since it's such a great thing to have. That doesn't mean that we need it, though, just like how the dog can still live off of just eating nasty canned dog food. So that "nasty canned dog food" for us is an F, or whatever the grade you consider a fail is by your own personal standards. And while you can be successful in so many different ways that grades seem insignificant when comparing all of them, you also have to take into consideration how many of these ways can not be applied to a single person. For example, many people who have made money off of technology such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were only able to do it because they had a genuine interest in technology and were extremely bright. Not all of us have these qualities, and this example can be used in all areas where success was achieved.

So that is why I think that depending on what area you want to succeed in, it will also becoming a limiting factor towards your success. The professions that you are not interested in will be unable to you, and that subtracts from the total number of ways that you can success. I consider the total nombuer to be countless as a whole but very limited when looking at it for an individual simply because you can not be interested in everything. The way this ties into grades is in the discovery of what your interests are, and also the degree to which they actually help. Having good grades allows you to go to better schools and study what you desire to study. If I wanted to become a writer and had good grades in Literature, I may be able to go to a nice school and study this. However, if I have bad grades and don't go to college, I would have to start without the knowledge college would have provided. That doesn't necessarily mean that success is completely impossible, but it does make it much more difficult.

The reason why I think grades is also the discovery of your interests is because you don't know what you want to study and what you are skilled in at first. All students go to primary school without knowing anything about what they want to study. However, by going to high school and choosing your classes for the first time, you can choose these things and decide what kind of profession you would like to go in. If your grades are high for a certain class, you will discover that you are talented at that subject.

All of my observations were only for a being successful in your career. There are so many other ways of being successful, such as being rich and having a happy family. However, I found that those are much more difficult to tie in with grades since they have more moral value, so I only wrote about this single definition of success.

Suggestion for the Haiku Page

We were told in class to think of something that could be added to the Haiku ToK page. My opinion is that it would be nice to have a puzzle on the first page. This would be like the ones we did in class where we would ask a question one at a time. People seemed to be very active in these conversations. Of course, the drawback is that if we do it alone, there is no one that knows the answer to check if you are correct. You can just look at the answer after you give up or can not think of anymore questions in this case.

Optical Illusions

We looked at optical illusions in class for a few periods. One of my favourite ones was this sign. It seems like "Paris in the spring" if you read it quickly. However, when you read it one word at a time, you can see that the sign actually reads, "Paris in the the spring." I think that this was one of the examples where we can see a difference in perception through thought processes. When I saw this in class, I only saw Paris in the spring and could not spot the difference. However, Floruen and some other people immediately spotted that there was a repetition of the word "the." I think that the thought process of these people worked in a multi-faceted way, in that they see something and perceive it in small, individual parts. However, I saw this and thought of it as a whole. This might show that my thought processes work in a large, singular way.