Month: June 2020

Everybody is a little bit selfish inside. Though we may not like to admit it, behind every action there is intent for self-gain. For example, someone could give 1000 dollars to a homeless man. That may help the man immensely, but people would look at that someone as a hero. In the story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” by James Thurber, we can see this bit of selfishness inside the main character, Walter Mitty.

When Mr. Mitty and his wife were driving into town to get to his wife’s hair appointment, he imagined himself to be the commander on a navy ship. Though his wife eventually snaps him out of his moment of fantasy, Walter Mitty, imagined himself to be a great commander leading his crew through a hurricane. Despite the crew’s doubts, Mitty continued to act like a heroic commander.

Mr. Mitty’s next moment of fantasy was when he drove past a hospital. Then, Mitty imagines himself to be a world renowned surgeon that was tending to a famous millionaire, Wellington McMillan. Dr. Renshaw, a doctor that Mrs. Mitty recommended Mr. Mitty goes see, is in the middle of a surgery when he flakes and asks Mitty. As Mitty is about to make an incision, a yell from a parking lot attendant snapped him out of his fantasy.

Mr. Mitty’s last moment of fantasy in the book is when he was walking along main street. It reminded him of an incident where Mr. Mitty previously tried to change his tire chains and ended up injured; therefore he would wear a sling on his right arm whenever he went to get the chains fixed again. Mitty also heard a newspaper boy yell out about a trial. This inspired a fantasy about an incredibly skilled sharpshooter on trial. The crack shot was Mitty.

Though Mr. Mitty could have just been a nice old man with an incredible imagination, that is not how the mind works. Humans are constantly thinking about themselves and how actions would affect them. Even when thinking about someone else, we are thinking about how that person affects us or makes us feel. Behind every selfless action is a selfish intent, and that is the simple truth.

The words surprise, anger, disgust, and fear all share one obvious quality: they are words to describe human emotions. Not only that, but these feelings are powerful; they rile us up and make us anxious to act. In today’s world that is dictated by the spread of information through the Internet, these sensations can be evoked easier than ever, through false knowledge, or fake news. As technological advances continue to drive forward, it is more than important that no one is turning lies into fact for society and that reality stays intact through this age of misinformation.

In a perfect world, the truth would appeal to everyone more than lies. However, the human brain is simply not wired to work in that manner. A research study published by Science found that the emotions of surprise, fear, anger, and disgust were more prominent in fake news than in factual reportings. This is to be expected, as usually forged media is aimed at a certain agenda – whether it is to incite people, push a political objective, or manipulate minds. Our minds are prone to more arousal via higher dopamine releases, which is easily created through excitement from the above emotions caused by this type of information. This is the reason why when on a news website, many article headlines are designed to be shocking, eye-catching, or otherwise negative, for the sake of clicks. This urge causes increased sharing among people, and eventually spreads to many places real news cannot.

Human-created synthetic content is not the highest on the list of worries, however. Autonomy has made it all the more easier to facilitate and produce this kind of content. One instance of this would be the “generative adversarial network,” which is basically a program that loops a piece of fabricated media through an algorithm until it cannot distinguish the media from fact. This combined with the programs social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter that tend to advance fake news makes it easy for fake news to be made and delivered to the home page of people’s social applications.

It is not difficult to understand the implications of an increased amount of false information. In the TED talk, one example showed the economy spike downwards after an inaccurate tweet from the hacked Associated Press Twitter account went public, and subsequently, viral. Fake news has also infiltrated its way into our government, compromising this country’s integrity as a democracy.

In this world of information and misinformation, it is getting harder and harder to distinguish fact from fiction, and it will only get more difficult from now on.

Misinformation are similar to rumors. Rumors are said to be dangerous and false information given out from people to others. Misinformation is dangerous because it can cause someone to die and lose the image of another. In this Ted talk, Mr. Aral gave an example that Syrian hackers gave a tweet that Obama was injured by 2 explosions. there were 4,000 re-tweets in less than 5 minutes. This is really crazy and is dangerous and maybe ruined Obama’s image in being a president. The rumor was spread really fast because the title caught attention to many people.

If rumors continue to spread, people will be against each other and argue/debate. The world won’t be peaceful anymore and everyone will be in different groups, divided. Spreading rumors aren’t good at all, they ruin the reputation of others and separate people from each other disagreeing on different things.

Many citizens of US are suffering from this pandemic, due to mental and physical health problems. Parents are stressed due to their children and the lack of jobs, young adults are struggling with mental issues, and sometimes, it seems like the best choice for US is to reopen. However, is reopening more beneficial or harmful to US? In this essay, I will be stating why reopening right now would be harmful to many people.

Although reopening means that parents could have less stress or get their jobs back, they would still worry about getting COVID-19 during their work. For example, if school reopens, teachers will have to teach their students face to face, increasing the risk of the deadly coronavirus for both the students and teachers. The parents that arrive home from work would worry if they have COVID-19, or if their children somehow got the coronavirus. This will still keep the stress levels high for many individuals, and more people are at risk of the coronavirus.

Also, if US reopens, it means that the schools reopen and students would be at risk of spreading COVID-19 to other people. If just one person in that school has the coronavirus disease, it could spread to many people there. Online learning is one of the safest choice right now to prevent the death rate of COVID-19 from increasing a lot. Although the virus has far more dire health implication for older people, the younger generation would still spread the disease even if it is not life threatening.

However, US seems to be reopening anyways. Reopening does let some parents put less pressure on themselves and the risk of mental health issue would be decreased, but it increases the risk of others getting the coronavirus and spreading it…

Fake news has turned the internet into a dangerous place. Lies, deep fakes, hackers, and more, all make the internet a threatening place. Although fake news sounds like a very bad idea, there are ways fake news can help people and the media. There are tons of media related jobs out there, and fake news bolsters salaries and pay rates. People love seeing new and exciting news, so false news reports could sometimes be ideal to people. Surprisinly, fake news be helpful, and could keep millions of people employed.

Once a fake tweet, or post of some sort comes out to the public, the rate the news spreads is unimaginable. An example of how quickly fake news can spread was with The AP Twitter had been hacked by hackers. They released fake news publicly, claiming that current president Barack Obama was injured by explosions. As soon as the hackers tweeted this, the fake news spread like wildfire. Within about a day, the tweet had gotten almost four thousand retweets. This goes to show how quickly false news can spread. Some say that “fake news takes a world-trip before the truth even puts on its boots.” Because the public loves seeing new and exciting things, many would want to know more about it. People will most likely turn to the news or the internet.

News channels, news writers, and journalists solely rely on news. Without a topic to write or discuss about, these organizations are likely to fail. The biggest papers written by journalists can increase their salary by more than thirty thousand. Not only this, but college publications can be greatly affected. Many college publications have already shut down due to the fact that they were heavily in debt. The University of North Carolina’s newspaper staff all got pay cuts because they were going broke. The list of publishers forced to shut down can go on and on. The reason for their debt was most likely the result of not receiving enough public attention. Fake news catches the attention of millions of curious readers and listeners. Fake news gives these organizations an exciting and unheard of topic to write about. News channels, writers, and journalists are not the only ones affected by fake news. In fact, any person or group who work for media related purposes will always be affected by fake news, one way or another. News, whether true or false, is the sole foundation of millions of jobs.

Fake news may seem like a scary thing at first, but it fake news that keeps the media alive. Of course, normal news can be exciting and fun at times, but media consumers are not looking for something normal. People want something more exciting and new. Fake news can give many people new and interesting things to write about, keeping them in jobs. Although it may not seem like it, fake news is the one thing keeping millions employed.

As technology further progresses and evolves, creating and spreading fake news becomes a lot easier. Fake news is able to spread very quickly across social media platforms, and it is very hard to stop the spread of this news. Fake news will also become more and more close to real news, which could lead to nobody really knowing the truth.

The problem with fake news is the sheer impact it can have on society. A single tweet the the White House was bombed and the US president was injured was retweeted thousands of time and caused the US lose 139 billion dollars in a day. Another problem is that as technology progresses, the harder it is to discern real news from fake news. In a few years, people will be able to create fake audio and video clips that are nearly identical to real video and audio clips. If this happens, the effect would be immeasurable, and nobody will be able to tell what is true and what is not.

In order to stop the spread of fake news, governments are demanding that social media platforms be transparent in how data is collected, distributed, and used. The problem is that if that happens, the data will not be secure anymore, which is also very important to people. This is called the transparency paradox, and is why we can’t have companies being transparent. However, it is still possible to keep data secure while having companies be transparent, however hard it might be.

One way that this might happen is that the social media platforms share their data with only the government, which is pretty much the most trustworthy source there is. That way the government can stop fake news from spreading, while not giving the data to everybody, which would keep it secure while preventing fake news from spreading. The problems with this is that this would give more power to the government, which would allow it to have more control about what we know. Another problem is that there is no way to keep the government silent with our data, which means we would again just be giving the government more power.

“When the novel coronavirus roared into the U.S., mental health took a back seat to physical health. The number one priority was making sure hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed and that as many lives as possible could be saved.” (https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-pandemic-mental-health-toll.html) This means that when the coronavirus started in the US, physical health was valued a lot more than mental health. But as Schools closed, remote work became the norm, restaurants shuttered, getting together with friends was no longer possible, news stories containing many coronavirus deaths, and unemployment levels soaring, people should realize that mental health during this pandemic is just as important as physical health. People might be worrying about making sure the most amount of lives can be saved right now, but sooner or later, people should also know that with all the things going on, mental health is just as important as physical health.

In 2020, research shows that people are 8 times as likely to screen positive for serious mental issues than compared to 2018, and “70% met criteria for moderate to serious mental illness, compared with 22% in 2018.” (https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-pandemic-mental-health-toll.html)

Even though currently, physical health might seem more important than ever, you need to know that mental health is very important, too. There has been much more stress, with parents trying to care for their children at home. (because the children can’t be sent to camp) And young adults struggling to find new jobs after restaurants closed.

Having said that, even though at the start of the pandemic, physical health was the most important thing, now, as people are trying to get back to their regular lives, mental health is starting to regain it’s importance.

Sinan Aral and his team discovered an interesting fact about fake news: it travels much faster than real news. For example, an article about Barack Obama possibly being injured was shared many more times than real news about this former president. This is because fake news is always much more surprising than real news, and people feel that they have been given a secret, urging them to send it to someone else. Aral gives several solutions to this. However, they all have their bad effects. 

I believe one of the most important ones is labeling types of media. For example, much of the food we eat is labeled with details, but when it comes to the information we take in, not much is. When information is specified, it can tell us if the source is credible or where the source came from. Knowing this data, people can detect if something is real or false more easily. On the other hand, one big question is: who gets to decide what the labels are? Nevertheless, I believe that we should at least try this technique when trying to solve this issue. 

Another solution to this problem is to use technology to figure out which news is fake, and which is not. Artificial Intelligence has a good reputation, such as Alexa from Amazon or Google Home. Using machine learning could slow down how fast these news are being spread much better than us humans could. Although this solution may seem almost faultless, there is one huge mistake in this. Machines do not know the ethics and philosophy of what is truth and what are lies. 

I think that we, as humans, should try harder to find more solutions to implement in order to prevent fake news, which can create national disruption, such as the false news about President Obama being injured. 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a fun and famous short story written by James Thurber. In this story, a man named Walter Mitty has trouble facing reality so he resorts to daydreaming constantly. Mitty has daydreams about being a hero and an extremely successful man. A major theme portrayed in this story is escapism from the dull everyday reality. This is a main theme, as Walter Mitty relies on his daydreaming to get by with his average life and nagging wife.

I personally do not agree with how Walter Mitty avoids his everyday lifestyle, as of many reasons. First of all, Walter is putting himself out as a brave hero that has a perfect life. This is wrong, since his dream life does not exist. To elaborate, if Walter Mitty was to continue living in his fantasies, he would not be able to face real life hardships. Another reason why Walter should face reality, is that he would overlook hard work, and lose the quality of working to success.

All in all, I can conclude that Walter Mitty should not indulge in his fantasies. This is shown in the story by Walter Mitty dreaming himself up as a successful and heroic man. When Walter would do this, he was creating a fake fantasy where he got what he wanted without hard work or pain. In conclusion, even though one can easily live in a dream world by escaping reality, they will lose the main aspects of life.

In the Ted talk of Misinformation, one person talked about how misinformation affects society and how they are trying to stop it.

One time, there was a tweet about how the White House was bombed and President Barack Obama was injured from the bombing. There were over four thousand retweets on this within less than five minutes. This was tweeted by serial hackers. The stock market was hit, wiping out 139 billion dollars with a single day.

The false news travel much deeper, faster, and farther than what truth news would. They wondered why it would travel much more. They thought it was because the people who tweeted the false news had more followers or followed more people. In fact, it was the total opposite. They had fewer followers, followed fewer people, were less active on the social media, and were on the media for much less time than people who sent the truth out to people. Despite these things, false and fake news had a better chance of being retweeted than the true news.

The human brain is drawn to new, surprising, and scarier news. Bots were not behind the false news, but humans. This is all the good news about the misinformation.

There is a generator network and a discriminator network. The generator is the noise source of the the media. There is a generator example and a real example. The generator example is the false example. The discriminator network shows which tweet is real or fake. The generator example is trying to fool the discriminator into thinking the fake is real.

An example is that a news reporter is making it look like that the White House intern. They removed frames from this video in order to make it seem very real. Stunt men and woman did this all the time in movies to make it realistic.

There are five different paths to try and address the difficult problems. The first one is labeling. In a grocery store, the products have labels to see how many calories and many more things about it. We don’t know where this information was gathered so it could be fake or real so we are consuming information.

What we don’t know is that who decides which tweet is fake and which is real. People can get advertising dollars for this and the serial hackers can be doing this for money, but we don’t know. We don’t know the dangers of this.

Malaysia created a law where if you were to tweet false and fake news, you were to be put in jail for six whole years. We are trying to end this, but it the best way is by humans not doing this.

By the false news rising and with us not knowing which is fake and which is real, this could be the end of reality with not knowing the knowledge of good and bad and fake and real.