EOTO #2 Reax

 Introduction

This week's EOTO was about a variety of topics. Each group had a different topic and each group member chose examples from that topic. Most of these topics were very interesting to me and I learned a lot of stuff that I did not know about before

Reaction

One of the most interesting presentations to me was Charles' presentation on cord cutting. Because before this, I had never even heard of cord cutting, and it's a really cool idea. Personally I do not use cable, which I guess makes me a cord cutter in a certain sense, although I have not actually cut the cable cord in my home. This was just a really cool topic because I did not realize this was a movement that a lot of people were doing.

Another presentation that stood out to me was the presentation on social credit, by, I wanna say Lola but I did not quite get the name. The Chinese government is one that I am aware is bad, but also one I do not think about much. But every time I do any digging on it, or hear anything about it, I am appalled, and this was certainly one of those times.

A great graphic used in the presentation

I knew about the social credit system before this, but I did not realize how truly bad it was. I did not realize they maintained it through constant surveillance and scrutinization, or that was raises and lowers your score is so arbitrary. I knew that criticizing the government could lower your score, but I did not realize not visiting your parents could as well.

To me this is such a disgusting system that really goes against my personal beliefs. I mean even if we ignore the fact that they have constant surveillance on their citizens, (because let's be honest they have that here in the United States as well) deciding someone's score based on personal values such as visiting your parents is terrible to me. I think people should visit their parents, but if someone decides not to that's their decision.

I think my favorite group was group 4, though, who's topic was theories. I find theories like these so interesting, so I'm a little jealous I did not get to present on one of these. But in any case I found all of these presentations fascinating.

Of them my favorite was Ella's, on the illusory truth effect. It's a really interesting psychological pattern in humans where information that is repeated can start to feel true. Ella really stressed that psychological studies showed that familiarity can overpower rationality. Sometimes humans like to believe that we are above it all and not like the other animals, but we have to remember that sometimes we are just as prone to, if not more prone to, deception and suggestion.

I think being aware of biases like these is super important. Sometimes I'll have thoughts or opinions that feel off and I try to decipher if those thoughts are truly coming from a place of rationality, or if I'm being affected by some bias. So I really think it's important to be aware of common human biases so you can know to avoid them.

Another interesting presentation from this group was Miri's on The Theory of Agenda Setting. Which basically says that our view of the world is biased by what the large media sources choose to show us. This is something that I have not really thought about but makes a lot of sense. What scares me about it, though, is that even being aware of it does little to stop it.

Unlike the illusory truth affect, being aware of agenda setting cannot cause you to receive news that is not being show, because the news that's not being show, is, well, not being shown. It sounds really stupid but it is true and it is scary. I guess the best thing to do is to look into more independent journalism. I think about biases a lot, and this is one I want to start considering a lot more.

Final Thoughts

I talked about a lot of presentations, and even then there's more I did not even get in to. The presentations on news deserts and media consolidation were also very interesting. Once again the class really killed it with these presentations and legitimately had me thinking about them after I left the room. So really good job to everyone.

Images used:

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https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/china-social-credit-score-prev.jpg

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