Month: June 2020

Everyone probably has some behavior issues that they want to change. In the Ted Talk, it states three things you can do to change your behavior;These are progress monitoring, immediate reward, and competition.

Progress monitoring means that you monitor your progress of the behavior you want to change, whether doing it more or less. This is important because it helps you know how you are doing and lets you ease into a new behavioral routine. If you don’t know your progress, you might be confused about whether you are improving or not. This lack of knowledge can lead to you giving up on changing your behavior all together.

Immediate reward means that after you have succeeded, you get a reward. This is important because everyone likes getting rewards. The prospect of getting a reward can even motivate you to change your behavior as quickly as possible. If changing this will improve you, and you get a reward, then why not?

The final thing is competition. In a competition, everyone wants to win. If you make yourself a friendly competition with some friends who are changing the same behavior as you, then naturally you will want to “beat” them. This is important because if you compare you to other people, it will help you push yourself to be better.

In short, if you do all these three things, you can efficiently change your behavior. For example, if you want to eat less candy, progress monitoring can show you how much less candy, or sugar free candy, you eat each day, so you can bring it down to a short number. Immediate reward can let you say, treat yourself to a milkshake once you’ve reached your goal. Finally, competition between you and your friends to see who eats less candy can make it feel less like a chore, and more like a fun game.

I hope we can all use these tips to help us change our behaviors for the better.

There are reasons why people don’t listen to others and there are reasons why people do. It is all from the brain because of the positive effect and the negative effect on the brain.

Many people do not listen to others even when there are consequences and punishments in the future. They do not listen because people tell them that if one does something bad, then that one person will get punishment. Even when they say something like that, they still don’t listen.

Other people say that one will get rewards if they stop one thing or do something. Once that person says that, then that one will want to do it because of the positive thought that gets sent through the brain.

Do you know why the brain rejects negative thoughts? It is because the human brain rejects the negative thought and keep doing terrible things. When one says that there is a 60% chance that one will get a disease and there is a 40% chance that one will not. The human brain does not want 60% for bad things and wants 40% because they do not want any negative thought.

When one hears a positive thought about something, then one would like to do it because one does not want any negativity through one’s mind. Whenever one says that one will punish another unless if they start or stop something, then they probably will not listen because of the negativity (unless if it is physically making others suffer).

When one says to do something to get a reward, then they will do it. If one says to do something or else they will be punished, they will not. Age matters in the brain of a human because when time comes, you will have doubt that the positive thought will come true because of the probability and seeing the proof or denial.

Positive thoughts are one of the better ways of getting someone to do something and when they get into the habit, they will start doing what they are told because of the reward.

Mapping a mice’s brain isn’t much right? Just find a mouse, kill it, and map out the brain! But it’s much harder than it sounds: “‘In the old days, people would define different regions of the brain by eye. As we get more and more data, that manual curation doesn’t scale anymore,’ Lydia Ng, an Allen Institute researcher and senior author of the Cell paper, said.” Allen Institute is a Seattle nonprofit dedicated to neuroscience. Mice are incredibly small, and they do carry diseases. Why can it be such a big discovery, though – I mean, what makes it significant? Well, the brain of a mouse is very similar to the brain of a human: “Their brains have fairly similar structures to humans, they can be trained, they breed easily, and researchers have already developed robust understandings of how their brains work.”

The article outlining the development of new robots to combat the coronavirus was very interesting to me. They showed some interesting facts on the robots’ development, and I was not only informed, but also entertained.

The article starts off about how that the need for robots will help disinfect and can check on patients has grown since the outbreak. They go over that people are hard at work on creating new robots that can accomplish such tasks. This all started with Stevie, a robot created to entertain and combat loneliness. People began wondering if a robot like Stevie could help with stopping the spread of the virus. They added a UV-C device to it that will help disinfect patients. They call this new robot Violet. Other companies have also taken the initiative and have started to design their own, like a Danish company who has created a robot that will disinfect door handles.

After reading this, I felt happy that more and more people are coming in to help stop the virus, and that we are benefiting public heath and engineering.

Kimber Lybbert gave a talk on Tedx titled “Dear Grown-ups… Sincerely, Gen Z”, in which she talks about what it’s like to be a part of this generation in relation to the adults in our lives with stories both from her own perspective as an adult and from her students’ perspectives as members of Gen Z.

Kimber Lybbert spent a good portion of her talk speaking about how adults should believe in children their abilities rather than thinking that they just can’t, because they’re children. I have experienced this, and I very much agree, but I think that part of the time dedicated to that particular topic should have gone to how adults sometimes invalidate our mental/emotional states and our identities simply because we are young. One thing she mentions is that in recent years children have shown amazing increase in capacity and capability, while also showing a heart-stopping decrease in self-esteem- which, in my opinion, can often come from invalidation. When you are told that because you are young, you don’t know well enough, you’re just following the trend because it’s “cool” and everyone else is “stupid”, your confidence in yourself, your opinions, and your identity will decrease- and the invalidation doesn’t even have to come from an adult you’re close to.

For example: the student who gave the student address at our socially distanced graduation made a brief mention of highlights of the year, one of which was when this student came out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Of course, all the students and their families were listening to the speech- and later on, an adult made exactly the remark I mentioned earlier: that we, thirteen and fourteen year olds, are too young to know what we want, who we are and are simply following a “trend” because it’s “cool” and everyone else is “stupid”. But, as Ms Lybbert said as an example of how adults shouldn’t blame Gen Z for all our problems- “Alex didn’t ask for gender confusion”. And then keep in mind that there is plenty of homophobia and xenophobia still abound around the world. To that adult, and all of similar thoughts, I say: it’s cool that we are feared, hated, shunned, invalidated by even our own families because of our gender and sexual identities, is it? It’s the popular thing these days, the trend, to be part of a minority that is still so discriminated against, that is sometimes so unaccepted, is it?

In addition, identity isn’t something we take so lightly. You adults teach us to be respectful; would we disrespect so many people like that?

Another thing to think about is that what I talked about in the paragraphs above is the example that some adults are setting for the children around them, and sometimes teach worse lessons than that. Adults tell us, be empathetic, put yourself in someone else’s shoes, but do they ever do that for us? They seem to forget what it’s like to be a teenager, and forget that their childhoods, how they were raised, how they thought and lived and felt are very, very different from ours, how we do.

This started out as some thoughts on Kimber Lybbert’s Tedx Talk, and evolved into something else entirely (and is also very, very incomplete), but I do think that what I said is still something quite important and something we should all be thinking about.

COVID is a major problem around the world with people thinking about a cure for it. COVID-19 is not just any virus, it’s one that is unlike any other because when you are diagnosed, you don’t show any symptoms. a virus like this could be deadly because you might pass it around when you are in public. There was no cure until a robot, name Violet, came by.

Conor McGinn is a robotic engineer that made a robot, called Stevie, to bring entertainment to people. This robot can help with elderly because they usually have their spouses away or their family relatives busy, so having this robot can bring happiness to them.

Mr. McGinn and his team decided to make Stevie into a robot that would cure COVID. Mr. McGinn and his staff decided to pay a visit to a doctor that studies microbiology. They wondered whether it was possible to use ultra-violet light to kill pathogens without harming staff in the residential areas.

Mr. McGinn and his staff realized it was possible for making the robot! So, they made Violet. Violet, has been designed to be fit in compacted spaces, like bathrooms. It also has a shield on its back to be avoided while its working. Violet has been a great invention and has saved many lives from being infected.

Curtis Zhang

6/10/20

A Modest Proposal

The short story “A Modest Proposal” by Dr. Jonathan Swift is a story where the author proposes to help end hunger in Ireland by proposing that they should sell their children to earn money since the reason that there is a food shortage is because there are too many people in Ireland. Then he proposes that once the children are sold, the children should be cooked and eaten, at which point he goes on to calculate how many women will have kids and how much the child will weigh if they nurse it for a year. This story, though disgusting, actually has a few themes that are actually not in favor of eating children, but are showing something completely different.

The first theme that the story is showing is that benefitting the majority of society is not always the best option. In the story, it is for the benefit of the majority of society that the author proposes his idea of cannibalism of infants, and that is not a good idea. He is telling us that benefitting the majority of society is not always the best idea since cannibalism of infants, though improving the lives of many citizens, is not the best path you could take, instead you could just boost the economy of Ireland so that you can have more food for the population. 

The second theme that is in the story is telling you that you need to try to understand the people you are affecting if you are in a position of power. The author says that his youngest child is 9, way outside of the range where you can be affected,  that his wife was old and could not bear any more children, and that he is in the higher class of society. This is contradictory because this proposal is affecting the poor people who have children who are younger than 1 year old, which is not affecting him at all. He is proposing this only because he will not be affected by this proposal, which is not a good idea since he will not know what the poor people of the country will face if this proposal is passed. In the story, the person proposing the proposal does not really care about the babies getting killed and eaten or the parents of the babies, which is only because of the complete lack of sympathy and empathy that he has, since he is not going to be affected and cannot relate to the poor people. If he had empathy and could relate to the poorer people, then he would almost certainly not have proposed this proposal.

This short story is showing how having empathy and being able to relate to the people you are affecting with your actions are important, along with the fact that the benefit of the majority is not always the correct decision. Without empathy, you would probably make a proposal like this one.

Dr. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” mockingly describes a plan to help Ireland’s increasing amount children born from poor parents. He claims that he will make them “beneficial to the public” and relieve their suffering. However, his proposal takes a dark turn. Dr. Swift starts to write about repurposing the newborn of beggars to become food for people who are more well off. Apparently, babies of the impoverished are not much use alive, rather they provide more value to society when eaten. This proposal is much deeper than eating babies, though.

The idea that we should prioritize the collective people’s needs over an individual’s humanity is absurd. The objective of a society is to accomplish things that no single person can, and to protect the rights of the people participating in it. Taking one’s life as a newborn, no matter how many others it supposedly benefits, should be completely out of any organization’s power.

Additionally, personal liberty also has to be valued too. Although one could argue that the baby would be more useful as supper than a hopeless beggar, it is not up to society to decide whether someone’s life is worth taking for their profit. No matter how many people are in favor, the choice belongs to the individual. Nobody can dictate if someone gets to live, even if their future seems hopeless.

In conclusion, society was not made to control people. because the collective good does not get to determine the choices of an individual.

Being a gen Z myself, this ted talk was relatable to me in my life personally, and there are so many things generations before do not understand. We are considered spoiled because of all the new technologies we are given and the better life we have and are constantly rebuked for every tiny mistake.
These tiny mistakes and yelling may not relate to everyone, but it does for my friends and I. Growing up, my parents have always expected the best, which was doing amazing at a sports game, getting perfect grades, and doing better than the rest. When I got a grade, my mom would constantly ask what other people got, and tell me to do better when my score was lower than someone else’s. This also happened to many of my friends, where their parents would constantly compare them with me, and my parents would constantly compare me with them. If I fail at something or make a mistake, I would feel embarrassed immediately and apologize. In this generation, we are often looked down upon. As the ted talk mentioned, how do grown-ups expect us to act like an adult, when they are the ones that are not treating us like one and expect us to be one. We are spoiled and not as hard working because we have not been through traumas like they have such as war, but even without war, that does not mean everyone is living the life.
As a gen Z, we might not have been through war, but we are fighting our own war in our own way that many just don’t get. In some cases, when I fail and my parents bring me down or get disappointed and blame it on me or even try helping me, it is hard to tell them to let me figure this out on my own. During these cases they help me when I really need it in their perspective, but when I personally need their help, they say I am old enough and capable of doing it myself. We are able to be independent and can do things ourselves, but parents treat many of us like children. However, when we struggle and crave for help, we are then treated like grown-ups who should know what to do. Gen Z is constantly treated as one stereotype, which is being lazy, spoiled brats who skip classes and do rebellious acts. Yes, there may be teenagers out there like that, but this stereotype does not define all of us, and parents treat us as if we are this stereotype. Parents should try to understand that we don’t want to always be in conflict with them, but be with them on the same side. However, this won’t happen if all they do is hurt and treat us like this.

I honestly feel like “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift was really interesting and funny, because the whole idea was absurd. Just thinking of selling children is basically like slavery, forcing them to do something when they can’t protect themselves. The idea for trying to relieve the poor and pleasure the rich is a good one, but there are a lot of other ways that can help the poor. Using 20,000 kids for breeding, and then selling the other 100,000 children for meat? I didn’t know people were that desperate that they thought of cannibalism. Even though there are a lot of poor people in the United States, there are still some ways to solve the problem. There are a lot of organizations set up to help the poor, and a lot of shelters for the homeless. I also wonder why Catholics are the enemy, because how would the idea lessen the number of a Catholics. Also, the children wouldn’t have been useless. They could grow to become a person that could revolutionize their country, since 120,000 children is a lot, so at least a few of them would be able to help improvise ways to bring Ireland out of its slump. And not everyone would benefit from this, since eating children would probably decrease the survival rate, because cannibalizing would make you sick. I would compare this idea to slavery, as people were forced to do work for their masters, and then were sold in the market, and separated from this families. These children would be in the same boat as they would also be used for something they couldn’t do anything about, and probably wouldn’t even understand what was happening. This is what I think about “A Modest Proposal”.