Self Assessment II

The discussion forums were very helpful because all the clusters I chose were very interesting to me. They were also somewhat interrelated, so I can see some of the ideas from those discussions going into my final project word for word. Even the clusters that weren't very related such as the one's about memes, race, and culture I still found a way to incorporate somehow.

The library exercises were less helpful since I don't think I had the right search terms and ended up not finding helpful sources. I was mostly on the hunt for facts and studies, but this wasn't very inspiring and I dug myself into a hole a little bit.

The research slide deck was really helpful for organizing my ideas and seeing how other people reacted to them.

The expanded prospectus and annotated bibliography wasn't super helpful since I already had an idea about what I wanted to research next, and I already had a lot of sources that I had annotated in bullet point form.

I think I'm getting stronger as a writer because it's a lot easier to sit down and start writing about what is significant about what I'm reading. The writing muscle is definitely something that can be trained, and I can realize when I'm confusing myself and need a breath of fresh air by approaching the topic from a new angle.

Once I come up with a basic argument for an idea, I feel like I kind of give up on it or get bored with it and don't put in as much effort going forward to question what is wrong with my thinking. Also, I find myself less willing to do more research once the bulk of it is done because I don't want to do more work and follow additional leads. I'm following the sunken cost fallacy (which I'm researching haha) a little bit because I invest myself in a certain train of thought and don't want to undermine that work and create more work for myself by investigating counter arguments.

Arc 1

Humans are complex creatures. How can we act with integrity and morals to do good in the world. What underlying philosophies will help? What innate psychological characteristics hold us back?

Ok.. given that we know the 3 commandments, what do these look like in practice. How do we orient our lives towards social good.

Diversity helps us see different opinions. How do different opinions help educate us (this still doesn’t make complete sense). Who takes responsibility for building tech for social good? Is it companies, engineers, consumers? How do we hold these people responsible.

What does it mean to allow oneself to be regulated by governments/industry standards/ consumers. How do we balance our own internal corruption with the corruption of other people.