Scratch

ProgramCAT wrote:

The very act of your posting on this site is possible because of your free choice.
If we were controlled by any decision-making dictatorial system, the Internet would not even exist. Free choice would not exist, so creativity would not exist, and we would be forever stuck in the same loop of decisions from lack of innovation and new ideas. A system that does not learn is rigid and rather useless in the face of change.

Change happens. Accept it.

And what do you propose in place of a human-based dictator anyway?
[if your dictator-based system idea was implemented]

To rebut your irrelevant and off topic point on schooling systems, you refer to the minority. The small group of people who do fall into your proposed 'categories' are unlikely to act, in actuality, this way when they mature.
If the people of the world did follow your categories, then the world as we see it today would not function. It would be utterly devoid of meaning, creativity, and there would be far more unemployment, hopelessness and death than the amount today.

In any case, you have veered slightly off topic with the discussion on schooling systems.

1) Computers, duh!
2) To rebut your rebuttal, most kids (at least in my school) do fall into the previously proposed categories. I am extremely grateful of the minority that consists of reasonable kids. But I am also extremely worried about the current trajectory of my country (the US) and the rest of the world.
3) As I said before, the writing is satirical, and I do not believe in what it says. In fact I am against it, and even a bit worried.

randomnumber53 wrote:

First of all, what happened to MISC?

There were some forum restructuring, Miscellaneous was closed/archived and replaced with two new forums, see here and here for more info.

Secondly, I had to write a persuasive paragraph for English. Any feed back?

[quote of essay ommitted by moderator for sake of posting space  ]

Did you pick your essay topic on your own, or did your teacher make you do it? Cuz for people who study or work in the realm of science, they're likely to say it's the other way around because almost every science paper out there is largely informative writing!    But that's more of a debate nature and not really giving feedback on the essay, it is your assignment after all. 

Back on topic: Big thing I notice is that it's a really long paragraph, that makes it hard to read and pull out the important stuff already. It's a good idea to from paragraphs at point which are very important to the reader (the main points should either be near the beginning or at the ends of paragraphs, preferably in either the first or last sentence if possible). Given your essay so far, I might make divide the paragraph like this:

Informative writing gives the reader a choice about what to believe. But life is too important, too sudden, too unforgiving for “free will”. Free will is a luxury for which there is no time. The miniscule amount of time in a school day allowed for studying and practicing writing should be devoted solely to persuasive writing. Though both types of writing make use of words, commas, periods, and other punctuation marks to form sentences, only by use of persuasive writing do students develop a sense of logic and reason.

Learning extraordinary persuasive writing skills would help students pursue careers in politics, propaganda, and advertising— by far the three best careers. Another reason to focus class time on persuasive writing is to help students develop stronger arguments. The use of logical fallacies in student writing is a growing problem. A survey of three freshman writing pieces shows that all freshman use hasty generalizations. The fact that most students procrastinate shows that they make irrelevant conclusions. Affirming the consequent makes for bad writing, so student-produced bad writing shows that students affirm the consequent. Students’ use fallacies of false cause show poor teaching.

All these problems could be fixed by teaching more about persuasion techniques and logic. Students who truly love persuasive writing may even decide to write, persuasively, about its merits; thus, causing it to expand with logistic growth similar to that of a deadly disease. Though some writers may argue that it is just as easy to mold a human mind by carefully informing readers so that they believe only what the author wants them to believe, this is unethical and lacks proper support through evidence.

Last edited by cheddargirl (2012-02-04 00:28:17)

ProgramCAT wrote:

Computers are only as good as the programmer who coded them.
And nobody can anticipate every possibility and every action, every input and every unknown variable that changes as the world changes.
The computer is the example of a rigid system. One incapable of change and of no free choice. It is limited to a set range of responses, and is useless on the face of change.
By implementing this computer-controlled dictatorial society, you would be stifling new ideas, innovation and growth of knowledge. You would be, in effect, handing power over to the programmer, and, ultimately, a machine which could not learn from the world.

You would be throwing out our free choice, the very thing which makes human 'better' than machines.

The ability to adapt.

Just ask this: who invented the computer? The machine?

In response to your rebuttal, it may well be that the people at your school fall into those categories. But have you thought of why the world is as it is today? Every adult which you see must once have been a child. They must have once been, if your categorical proposal is to be believed, a socialite, jerk, or person who does care about learning. And yet the world is not flooded with these. In fact, the majority of adults in the world today are reasonable, employed in some way, and care about new ideas and a better life.

In any case, you have veered slightly off topic with the discussion on schooling systems.

If you truly believe your satire is a satire, then I suggest making your position slightly more evident.

1) Machines can adapt. Just like the human brain. The human brain works by deleting unnecessary information in lieu of more efficient processes. This type of artificial intelligence is already being used in many modern chess engines. I'm not saying that this will end up like the Terminator series-- that all depends on exactly what is the initial goal of the program. For humans, the goal is to survive (otherwise natural selection would have taken over, and a race without the goal of survival would die off.) If used well, this type of technology could be used to greatly improve the quality of lie in the human race, thus letting us survive more easily.

Using your logic, if a man made disease were to be let loose, would it not kill people, just because the people engineered it?

As for you point about adults, I do think that my theory still applies. However, I do not think the categories were as skewed to the socialites (which is what I would say is currently the largest category.) One cause for the increase in this population may be increased mediums for communication (eg. at least 3 kids are texting each other in the middle of class.) Another may be that our culture values are changing (look at the change in entertainment if you want proof.) Either way, I agree that the current generation of adults is fine, but I'm fearful that the second derivative may be negative.

As for the satire, I don't really get what you're asking. I was criticizing the points that it makes by providing illogical arguments to support them. For example, when my piece says, "A survey of three freshman writing pieces shows that all freshman use hasty generalizations." that is an a logical fallacy (specifically a hasty generalization) which makes it funny.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy for more information about logical fallacies. I'm not sure if you didn't get the jokes or just didn't read it careful. I'd be happy to explain anything if you need it