Fallacies Summary

This week I am going to summarize about fallacies.  These are arguments that many people use in their essays that are misleading.  These are a very common mistake for writers of argumentitive essays because they think that they can use these different types of fallacies and they think that this is a sufficient argument for their paper when it really is not.  Using fallacies in an essay is wrong because many times the writer is just making a statement about something that has no evidence to back it up or they do not have any grounds to make that statement at all.  There are many different types of fallacies and they all have different names that pertain to the way that they are wrongly used in papers.  The first fallacy that is very common is ad hominem.  This fallacy is when a writer attacks a person of a source instead of attacking their argument or qualifications that make themselves a viable source.  This is commonly used because many people do not know how to discredit a source so instead they come up with some kind of made up stuff that attacks a person personally rather than attack what their background is in the field that they are being used as a source for.  The book talks about how you should look for the argument and not the man.  This is very true because no matter what the person believes in should not matter.  What they write and how knowledgable that they are about the subject should be the keys to evaluate whether or not they are a credible source.  Another common fallacy is ad ignorantiam.  This fallacy is saying something is true just because they have no evidence that is false.  This is common in society today, especially in sports, where if a guy has an amazing season they are accused of using steroids when nobody really has any evidence to back their accusations at all.  The next fallacy is ad misericordiam.  This fallacy is when people try to use pity in order to gain special treatment for themselves.  A great example of this is the no late grade policy in this class.  If the internet is down right at the deadline nobody is going to feel sorry for that person and give them extra time because they should have been prepared to turn the assignment in ahead of the deadline just in case that problem arises.  Ad populum is the next fallacy and it is when the writer tries to make somebody do what they want by saying that everyone is doing it. This should not be used because even if everybody is doing something, that does not make it right at all.  Affirming the consequent is the next one and that is when a person says if something is happening then it is caused by something else.  This is a common mistake because just because two events happen together does not mean they happened because of each other.  Begging the question is when the writer uses their conclusion as a premise.  The book brings up a great example of this by saying that it says in the bible that God exists, and since God wrote the bible this must be true.  There is no basis for this argument at all because the writer assumes that God wrote the bible when really they have no evidence to back this up.  There are plenty of other fallacies that are not as common that I am going to just define so that this will not take all day to read.  Circular argument is very much like conclusion in which you use your conclusion as a premise.  Complex question is asking a question that a person can not really agree or disagree with.  When using denying the antecedent the writer makes a 2 part statement and says since the first part of a statement did not happen then the second part could not have happend either.  Equivocation is when the writer is arguing something and they move to a different meaning of the term during the argument.  False cause is the questionable conclusion for cause and effect. False dilemna is when there is many sides to an argument and it is reduced to just two when this is not necessary at all.  Loaded language is a fallacy that the writer uses to try to manipulate the readers thoughts.  Non sequitur is drawing a conclusion that is not really related to the evidence.  Overgeneralizing is when the writer has almost no examples but tries to generalize a subject anyways.  Overlooking alternatives is when people do not realize that things could have happened for a lot of different reasons instead of the one that they see.  Persuasive definition is making a definition look straightforward but actually making it so the reader interprets it in the writers favor.  Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is assuming causation on the basis of succession in time.  Red herring is introducing an irrelevant subject so that attention is diverted from the main subject.  The last fallacy is straw man and this is an exaggerated opposing view in a paper so the writer has something to easily refute.  It is of great importance that when writing an argumentative essay that the writer avoids all of these and they will have made great steps in writing an A paper.

ePortfolio 3

http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/04/artifact-10.html

http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/04/artifact-9.html

http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/04/artifact-8.html

http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/03/artifact-7.html

Artifact 10

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/movies/the-24-hour-movie-and-digital-technology.html?_r=1&emc=eta1  I chose this title "out there in the dark, all alone."  This article is about how many people do not go to the movies anymore and instead use technology to see any movie that they want to see.  Back in the early days of movies they got such high attendence because after the movie was out of theaters there was no way to watch it anymore because they did not have videos or anything else back then that a person could watch the movie on after it was out of theaters.  Since they could only watch it in theaters, if it was a good movie then they would go back to the theaters many times before the movie was gone so they could soak in as much of the movie as they could.  Now with ways to rent movies after they are out of theaters or even stream them instantly onto your phone, computer, or gaming device, people do not see it as a necessity anymore to go to the movies.  It is even possible now to watch movies online while they are still out in theaters.  There are many websites out there that film the movie while it is in theaters and allow you to watch the movie in your own home while everybody else has to pay at the movie theater to watch it.  While this is illegal, many people do it anyways because it saves money and it is almost impossible to get caught because nobody ever comes to people's homes and checks up on what they have been looking up on the internet.  These are all reasons why people do not go to the movies anymore.  Another one is that the prices of a movie ticket keep skyrocketing as the years go by.  Now for a regular ticket at a lot of the movies the prices are reaching almost 10 dollars a ticket.  That is outrageous and many people do not want to pay it because not only is that expensive, but it also cost about 4 dollars a gallon to get gas so by the time you add all of that up it cost a lot of money to go to the movies.  That is another reason why many people went back in the old days because movies cost less than a dollar to get in so it was pretty easy for most people to be able to afford to get in.  With movies being watched on these internet sites that are illegal or a lot of the sites that has the movies right after they are realeased, many of them are free.  This is very convenient for people and most people will wait that extra few monthersthat they have to wait in order for the movie to leave the theaters and to be released on dvd and everything else.  Netflix is a very popular way to watch movies now becuase people can sign up for it on their PS3 or XBox and they can pick from thousands of movies and they will instantly play on their device.  This is a great luxury because it is only like 7 dollars a month so many people can easily afford that when they can watch multiple movies or shows a day if they really want to.  With technology becoming better and better it may come to a point where the movie theaters will not need to be used anymore because many people will want to watch movies right away when they first come out and many movie making companies will probably start making it so that new release movies will stream instantly to whatever device that they want to watch it on.

Artifact 9

Using the internet to share information with people is something that has been going on since internet first started to become big in the 1990's.  It has always been easy to get online and search for a place where you would want to go to and it would usually have a website with the address and the hours that the company would run.  While it may have taken a few minutes back then to access this it was still a convenient tool to use because many people could stay in their homes and still be able to access whatever information they needed to know about a company so they could pick what time they would be able to go.  Now the interent has advanced even further from this and now it is easy to get interactive with many companies online.  For example this article talked about how this art museum had many ways for its visitiors to keep up with all the things that were currently going on in the musuem so that they would allows be ready when something new happened there and they could go as soon as they heard about it.  They gave an example of them showing how a teepee was being built so they would make many people want to come see the finished product.  I think this is good that people can now be interactive with a place that they love to go to so they always can tell what is new and exciting at that place and they will always know when the right time to go is.  A good thing that the head lady of this art musuem does is put good and very important information onto the websites that she has the company on, but she also makes sure that the information only goes to a certain extent so that people still need to come to the musuem to enjoy the art first hand.  This is a good way that people use new ways of marketing to their advantage.  In this era with so many people using the internet, that is probably the best way to market your store or showroom is by putting many things about it online so that many of the fans of that place can get an in depth look on what is going on there.  Not only is this used by this art musuem but it also is becoming commonplace with many sports teams.  For example the cardinals will put many promotions on their website and use propoganda to an extent so that people will want to come out to the stadium and watch the team play.  On the main website they try to only talk about the good features about what is going on with the team and they usually leave out the bad things that they do not think that the fans will want to hear and if they do hear it then they will maybe not want to come watch the team play.  They also have pretty much every player on twitter so that fans can always follow what type of comments that these players have about the game and the season.  This thing that the cardinals do is also a great way of sharing by the internet because it allows fans to see every little thing that is going on with their favorite sports team.

Artifact 8

Health online is becoming a very convenient thing that many people use these days when they have some kind of injury.  It used to be before the internet became so popular that any little injury had to be seen by the doctor because people did not know what to do to fix it.  But now with websites like web md it is very simple to find out what to do when it is just a click away on the internet.  It is also available on many people's phones so they can check what to do as soon as they get sick or they hurt themselves in some way.  I think that these types of sites are very great because it is good that it so simple to look up health problems online because that saves a lot of time and money.  When you have to go to the doctor that usually takes at least an hour out of the persons day.  This hurts because normally it would have to be during their work hours because the doctor is open during the day.  So not only does it cost money to go to the doctor, but it also costs even more money because they lose at least an hours pay on top of what they already have to give to the doctor.  If i ever have any kind of pretty bad injury I will always try to look on Web MD because that would be a lot simpler and so much cheaper than having to go to the doctor.  Another good thing that is springing up for health online are websites that allow people with very bad diseases to get to meet one another and discuss online what they are going through.  Many people that have cancer or deadly diseases like that can meet other people like them and discuss the rigors of the every day grind that they must face in order to survive.  This is good because it keeps people with cancer motivated because they know that they are not the only people in the world suffering with this tough disease and they know that if other people can fight through it then they should be able to also.  This motivation tool is very important and before the internet these people with deadly diseases did not have this to go to in order to meet other people like them.  That would be bad because they would have to suffer by themselves and they would think that they were the only one going through this horrible disease so it would not be near as easy to fight through it and live longer than they expected to.  The last great thing that the internet now provides to combat deadly diseases is games that allow children to fight their disease.  For example there was a disease that has some sort of alien going through and fighting off cancer cells.  This is a very fun way for the children to learn that the cells like that in their body are bad so they need the chemotherapy to act as the alien and fight off the bad cells in their bodies.  They said that wen kids play these games they have a much better chance of being successful with their therapy because they want to do it because they believe that it is going to work.  I think this is a very good way to teach kids how bad the disease is that they are going through so then they know that it needs to be dealt with right away.

Artifact #7

It is great that teachers are starting to use technology to stop cheating.  Cheating has always been a huge problem when it has come to large colleges because teachers are just not able to go around and make sure that every student is taking the test honestly.  This is why it is outstanding that colleges such as Central Florida have implemented a way for students to take tests with having almost no chance of cheating.  These rooms that have cheat proof computers are perfect because it stops almost any chance that students had of trying to cheat.  Not only is it really hard for them to cheat, but even if it is possible they are so scared to try because of the environment that they are in that most of the time they probably will not try to do it.  It would be really great if many of the other colleges in the nation would use this system so that students do not cheat on tests, but with funds often times hard to come by it will probably be a long time before many of the schools move to this system.  The use of stopping plagairism through technology is becoming more widespread though.  In high school I had to always submit my papers to turnitin.com which was a place that looked to see if the paper you wrote had i phrases or anything in common with any other papers that were posted on the internet.  This is a very good tool to stop plagairism and there are many other websites like it that teachers use on the college level.  Plagairism is probably the most common problem today because many students like to take the easy way out and just copy and paste a paper from the internet.  So websites like this are essential so that this humungous problem is prevented as much as possible.  What is important about technology now becoming a big factor in stopping cheating is that the percent of people that admitted to cheating in college has gone down and probably will continue to go down.  With the great advancements in technology for stopping cheating only continuing to get better, I bet as the years go by and these different ways to prevent it become more affordable for schools the percent of people in college that cheat will probably fall below 10 percent.  This would be a huge step for colleges because it has probably been a really long time since the number of people that cheat was this low.  This would help many of the students learn more in the long run because they would actually do what they are supposed to do when they are in college, which is study.  The more the technology gets better and cheating gets stopped, the more that students will learn during their time in college.  This will only teach them how much hard work that they need to do once they get to the real world and this will make them better business people because they will often times be very advanced compared to the other workers that they are working with because they know the value of hard work.

ePortfolio 2

Artifact 3 blog
http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/02/artifact-3.html

Artifact 4 blog
http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/02/artifact-4.html

Artifact 5 blog
http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/03/artifact-5.html

Artifact 6 blog
http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/03/artifact-6.html

Artifact #6

This video is very interesting because it talks a lot about how things that are done on the internet can start a revolution with certain things.  At the beginning I could not quite figure out what he was talking about because it was very vague on what the video was going to be about.  But then I realized that his website is a big hit with many people because you can post anything that you want on it and it can be completely anonymous and it will be deleted within a certain amount of days.  This is good because on most websites once a person posts something it is on there forever and if they write something that they regret, they may not have a chance to get rid of it.  This is also helpful because if many people talk about one thing and complain about how it is hurting a certain group of people on this TED website then they can help get whatever they want changed.  A very interesting example of this is when they protested against the church of scientology.  It is a very odd church and just a few posts on the internet easily made a large protest against the church.  The church is completely bogus because only rich movie stars can afford to join it and from what I saw they believe in some really out there stuff like aliens.  Scientology is so odd that they even made a full episode of South Park dedicated to ripping it.  Another thing that was very interesting is about how the cat abuser got his due and was caught.  Many people saw a video on youtube about a cat being abused and within days there was thousands of post going against the man that made the video.  This sparked the police to go after who made the video and abused the cat.  They found the man within days and he was arrested.  This was very interesting because it is hard to believe that just a bunch of blog posts could get a man caught for animal cruelty.  The internet is a very powerful tool, that when used correctly can spark many people into a movement against whatever is a bad thing going at that particular time.  People should continue to use the internet more often to get major protests across against important issues.  Back in the 60s and 70s the only way to protest something that people were against was to march in washington d.c. and just hope that you had enough people in the protest to make people on capitol hill notice that the event you were protesting is very important and it needs to be stopped.  Now the internet is so revolutionary that millions of people can sit in the comfort of their own home in front of their keyboard and all type whatever needs to be protested against and usually they will be noticed by somebody and the issue can be brought to the national media's attention.  It is very important that we continue to use the internet as a tool of change and use it less as a tool for just playing around.

Artifact 5

This podcast talks about how porn is a big part of the internet and has been for a long time.  It is crazy to think that porn was the largest hit websites until social networks like facebook and myspace came along.  It is very obvious of the popularity of those two social networks because everybody always talks about them in everyday conversations.  What is surprising about porn being so popular is that you never hear anything about it so when you hear that it was the most hit thing on the internet and that it still is one of the most popular things out there, it makes you wonder just which ones of your friends frequently visit it without you knowing about it or when you strike up a conversation with some random person you might take a second to think, is this guy a big porn watcher?  From what it said on the podcast, porn is becoming such a large industry that they are becoming more advanced than most other websites out there.  Their innovative way to display live streaming images in HD is just leaving everybody else in the dust trying to catch up with them.  They said how companies like CNN have not even gotten to the point yet where their live streaming video is even of a very high picture quality and they will look towards porn websites as a way to get the most advanced method to display their images.  I doubt that porn will ever be outlawed on the internet or they try to make it very restricted to where it is almost impossible to access because from everything that I have seen about it it is a big industry that would take a lot for it not to fail, so it is going to continue to be one of the largest industries out there.  The big wigs on the internet are not just going to be able to shut down something that is so large and popular that they even said in a song that that is all that the internet is for.  I do think that even though porn will always continue to be a pretty big business on the internet, the social media networks are going to continue to leave it in the dust more and more.  Social media networks are not only popular to normal people but they are also popular to those weirdos out there that try to find anybody they can to start stalking or try to do something to.  So while many people like that watch porn on the internet, they will also use the social media networks to fulfill their very odd desires.  That is why the social media networks will coninue to grow even larger than the porn industry, because the social networks atract everybody while the porn sites mainly attract men, and ones that visit them on a regular basis ar often people with problems that are very odd.  These 2 different types of websites will coninue to race head to head for the most popularity for a long time to come.

Artifact 4

The first part of this artifact was very interesting to me because when I first saw the woman I thought that she was definitely real.  Then it was quickly easy to realize that she was a robot because she was mimicking everything that the guy was doing into the camera.  I had no idea that we were so advanced with robots now days that they look exactly like a real person.  That scares me when i think about it because it seems like in a few years that they will become so advanced that we will not even know that they are walking among us and if it is so extreme that we end up flirting with robots thinking that they are real hotties when, in reality, they are not even real humans.  This great advancement in the production of robots could serve as a great weapon for whatever country decides to start replacing their real human troops on the front lines with robot troops.  It would be great because it would save many lives for whatever side of a conflict decides to use them to fight the most devestating wars.  The second video seemed very fishy to me because I think there is a lot more to it then just showing off a pencil sharpener.  It seemed like the only advanced thing about the pencil sharpener was that it could get your pencil to a slightly sharper point than some of the other pencil sharpeners that were made before it did.  That made me think that there had to be something a lot deeper into the video than the sharpener.  I studied the man's hands in the video and they looked very pale and sort of abnormal.  The voice, while sounding very realistic, did sound a little bit like an automated voice.  These two observations have led me to believe that the man in that video that was showing off the pencil sharpener was a robot.  I do not know for a fact that my belief is true but it certainly seemed like that had to be the reason behind watching a short little video about a pencil sharpener.  I tried to look at everything in the video to make sure that I did not miss any other obvious clues of what the video was really about.  The hands and the voice were really the only thing that caught my attention in the two times that I watched it so even though it may not be wrong, that is the only conclusion that I could really come up with.  If this is the case and there is a robot doing this video, then it is hard to believe that we have advanced to robots being on videos with it being almost impossible to even notice it.  Once robots continue to become even more real, more readily available, and a lot cheaper then companys might start buying just one of them to do all of their commercials so that in the long run it will save them money because they will never have to pay human actors to do the job.  I can definitely see many companies taking advantage of this and we could see this become a new trend possibly even within the next decade.

artifact 3

This weeks video talks about how technology could be bad for us because it makes us not want to focus on things that we use to easily be able to focus on.  The speaker of the video uses the example of how when he sits down to read a book he always gets easily distracted by the common things that most people do today like checking their email, facebook, surfing the web, or messing with their cell phone.  It seems like that happens easily with me as well when i try to write a paper or do other homework.  With all of the new technology today most people are so interested in trying to keep up with it and figure out what is going on at the current time that it is hard for them to concentrate on the task at hand.  The speaker in this video, Nicholas Carr, also talks about how just putting the spaces between words is a rather new invention in history compared to the millions of years that the earth has been around.  Before 1000 years ago there was not any spaces between words, so when spaces were invented it became a huge invention and helped people read much easier than they did before because they could figure out when new words started and ended.  Then when the printing press was invented that made it very easy to read because more people were exposed to books because it was very easy to print them.  Now the new big thing is the internet so the great new advancements just keep coming.  He talks about how now that it is so easy to multitask on the web that it is easy for us to make our attention go elsewhere.  He says this might hurt our ability to learn because we do not have as many deep thoughts because now we think about so many things at once and are extracted so easily that we do not think about one thing long enough for much deep thinking.  I think this is common in this day and age because with me many times I will start thinking of something else and totally forget what I was thinking of before that.  He also says how this effects our short term and long term memories because there is so many things to think about that we never think about stuff long enough to store it in our long term memory.  His opinions sound very right on this matter because it is very important that people have better memories and internet will continue to hurt this because the technology will keep making it easier and easier to multitask.  The brain is large but it continues to have very much information that it has to be able to comprehend so if we keep feeding it more information by concentrating on a bunch of different subjects on the internet then we will continue to have problems with focusing on one certain task or goal.  This book sounds very interesting because it is a very imortant debate in society today about how much internet hurts or helps every persons brain power. 

ePortfolio

http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/02/artifact-2-blog.html

http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/02/artifact-1-blog.html

http://andymac22.blogspot.com/2011/02/cmc-units-3-and-4.html

Artifact 2 blog

Our lives in this day and age are very much about being connected with our mobile devices or our computers as much as possible.  It seems like every person in the world today has to have their phone with them at all times because they are afraid that they might miss something important.  When a message pops up on your phone it is thought of as essential to stop whatever you are doing at that time and respond to it.  William Powers is correct that it would help a lot of us out now days if we would just put our technology away for a while and just get in touch with the real world.  With us always having our technology on hand and ready to use that is probably half of what we think about everyday of our lives.  If its not us thinking to check what new message or update we could be recieving on our phone then we are thinking about our email or what new gossip is going on on facebook right now.  Since we constantly worry about this technology everyday we miss out on a lot of aspects of life that people use to enjoy before all of this technology was commonplace.  Back then people use to enjoy others company or they would take in the scenery around them when they were outside instead of like now days when they will be looking down at their phone the whole time when they go somewhere.  He talks about in the video about how in the days of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James that they also had times that they were disconnected.  But that was not about being technology, that was about being disconnected from deep thinking.  He also talked about the Romans and the Greeks and William Shakespeare.  They were reading and thinking about new ideas the whole time and they thought that the new books that came out was completely new and they could not keep up with it just like it is hard for us to keep up with technology today.  So it seems to me like no matter what age we are in that there is always something new that is just really hard for us to grasp.  Everybody likes doing it because it is something new but people throughout every age always wonder if peope are getting to caught up with the new technology and not taking in the simple things in life.  I think that no matter how little or how much technology that we have that we will still always think that we need to be disconnected from it for a while because no matter how much new technology that we have we will want to use it to try to fit in with the rest of society.  It is almost impossible to avoid using the new technology that is out but it is possible to take a break from it for a while to take in life.  That is what William Powers is trying to convey in his book and I agree because I think it is important to spend time with family and take in the things around you that you miss out on when you are constantly tapped into your different pieces of technology.  He talks about how his family would just turn off their computers for a couple days a week and I think that is a good idea that really makes you realize how much we depend on technology as a crutch even though it is not needed at all. 

Artifact 1 blog

While I am not surprised that the use of the internet as the primary source is growing rapidly, I am very surprised that the use of television is not higher than it is. With televisions high technological advancements over the past decade with the introduction of high definition and now 3D, it is astounding that more people do not use television as their source. For myself personally I do fulfill most of my news watching duties on television and I believe that I will probably always use it most of the time instead of the internet.  With the way that the internet is rapidly advancing I may not have a choice.  At this pace the local news will be broadcast over the internet before we know it and it will be almost impossible to avoid having to watch the internet for all our news needs.  The statistic that says that 65 percent of people from the age of 18 to 29 use internet as their source of news is kind of surprising because this age group is the group of people that were born in the booming technological age so I am surprised that it is not more than 65 percent.  While 65 percent is a large portion of the people I still would think that it would be a lot more people because a lot of the young people in this age group are very good at using new technology so I would think it would be more like in the 80 percentile rather than the 65 percentile.  Probably the most surprising stat that I saw is that 14 percent of people that are the age of 65 or older get their news from the internet.  A lot of the senior citizens that I know ae not very good when it comes to computers and they barely even know how to turn one on let alone use one every day for their news.  When you realize that the internet was not around for more than half of most of these people's lives it is very surprising that they would just grap a new concept all of a sudden when they were never used to it before.  The senior citizens that I know are very stubborn and are very set in their ways from the old days and do not even want to attempt trying something that seems impossible for them to grasp.  So that 14 percent number really shocks me and I am really surprised that it is not at least under 10 percent because of the serious technological advancements that the people of the older generation refuse to learn to grasp.  Twitter is discussed in this article about how it is one of the newest ways to feed news.  I have not even attempted nor do I want to attempt to try twitter so I can understand why many of these senior citizens do not want to try new ways of watching their news.  They have been use to just popping on their television or grabbing their newspaper off their porch their whole lives and those two things are still very accessible so there really is no reason why they should change their ways.

CMC units 3 and 4

As time goes on the newest means of communication is always just a luxury that the wealthiest people in society flaunt around to show that they are rich.  But usually as the new communication method stays on the market for a longer period of time, it becomes the centrally used piece of communication by everybody in the world because it is easily available and affordable for every average person.  Another item that is discussed in depth in unit 3 and in Tyler's blog is invisible technology.  It seems as time goes by that the latest and greatest phone or the newest way to chat on the computer becomes common place for everybody and they are so used to using it that they dont even really realize that it is there.  It feels like invisible technology has been around a long time and will always continue to be around because most people do not realize it, but after just a few years of using something for communication it is easily taken for granted and they do not appreciate how much easier it is to communicate now than it was before.
  With CMC it is much like face to face communication in that what a person interprets as the tone that the other person is talking in is very important.  When two people are talking face to face it is very easy to understand what kind of mood they are in or how they are expressing the words that they say because you are used to their gestures and actions.  Talking through computers is very new and many people do not understand certain quirks that there are in communication yet.  It is much harder to express a persons emotions or add emphasis to a phrase you are saying online than it is face to face.  Online it is very easy to percieve something that the other person is saying the wrong way and get mad about it so sometimes it is better to talk face to face.  This is a lot about what is discussed in unit 4 and the difference between CMC and talking in person is a very important topic that can be discussed in even further detail than what is depicted in the book.