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Prompt 1 - Sharks are good

The ‘interviews’ conducted in this article are entirely fictional. 

“‘After the COVID shutdown, there was less traffic in the water, there was less fishing, fewer restaurants needing food. And now, with the water being warmer, it’s just bringing different patterns of movement.’ There were five reported possible shark bites on Long Island in one week this summer; last Monday, a woman was bitten in the Rockaways, the first confirmed shark bite in New York City since the fifties”   

- The New Yorker

“FIVE THINGS MORE LIKELY TO KILL YOU THAN A SHARK. A vending machine; Two people are crushed to death every year in the United States alone trying to tilt faulty vending machines.”

- The Guardian

         Come October, a tigerlike ardor is needed to manage the back-to-school agitation of students across the country, from those vaping in school bathrooms to those interrogating their guidance counselors about Summer courses. Students of the latter variety are likely to be found in Theory of Knowledge classrooms, where any given highschool’s near-graduates can acquire a university credit, all the while letting off some steam; “The vibe here is very much this: If you say something that seems a little biased, or devoid of critical thought, expect to get pounced on” said one student (who will remain anonymous) enrolled in such a class. 

        On a recent morning, TOK students at Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School watched - through eyes red enough to have been dipped in saline - a twenty-second clip of a diver making contact, head-on, with a Great White Shark. Some believed the diver was lucky not to have died, while others suggested that, statistically speaking, the diver’s risk of dying had been very low. “More people are crushed to death by vending machines, every year, than killed by sharks,” claimed one Soren Long, under the torrent of voices which filled the room. Few could think of a rebuke.

      According to the International Baccalaureate’s official website, Theory of Knowledge “aims to make students aware of the interpretative nature of knowledge, including personal ideological biases.” Such was the goal, claims Mr. Bertrand (Lo-Ellen’s very own TOK teacher), of the shark clip; “I’m not saying sharks are these super cuddly creatures. It’s just that movies like ‘Jaws’ have led us to believe that they are much more aggressive than any real data might suggest. They’re actually an endangered species, but we’re all indifferent. The same can’t be said about koalas.” 

          During lessons - which Mr. Bertrand conducts from an Adirondack chair at the front of his classroom - the children discuss concepts such as the anchoring effect, a bias which causes humans to disproportionately rely on the first piece of information they receive. In recent years, courses focused on questioning the information we receive, as well as the way this information is processed, have gained in popularity; Media literacy is part of Canada’s English curriculum, and a growing number of corporations are sending workers to inclusion workshops, where unconscious biases are addressed. 

            The Lighthouse, a company founded in 2009, has provided bias-training services to over 1,500 Canadian businesses. Last Monday, The Lighthouse’s CEO, Michelle Urchin, had this to say about it; “When we’re sent into a new workplace, most employees have never heard of terms like ‘heuristics’ and ‘attribution bias’. We shed light on these issues, but at the end of the day, it’s up to them to dive deep into their personal oceans, and into how these concepts manifest in their own work environment.” During our interview, Urchin spoke passionately and optimistically, pausing only to take sips from her cup of organic Golden Milk. 

          Few cognitive psychologists - or modern, media-consuming adults, for that matter - share Bertrand’s and Urchin’s hippy ideals. Daniel Kahneman, one of the leading figures in the world of cognitive bias, has expressed skepticism in regards to the thought that one can change their biases. Parents of children taking Theory of Knowledge classes worry for their kids’ sanity; “The other day, I told my daughter that it was her turn to do the dishes. She responded with ‘How do you know?’ I can never tell if she’s being insolent, or genuine. I went through an existentialist phase when I was around her age. My friends and I tried to smoke ayahuasca and the next day I woke up in a peacock cage, at our local zoo… Hopefully she’s being insolent.”  

        After sitting in on a few of Mr. Bertrand's lessons, I decided to sign up for a bias course on Coursera.com; the conclusion, it seemed, was simply that I should go against all of my initial instincts. But one day, Mr. Bertrand showed the class a TED talk by one Gerd Gigerenzer; clad in a blue dress-shirt and lowball glasses, the German psychologist told me to trust my instincts, especially in a world where probabilities were not known. “Maybe sharks are bad,” I caught myself thinking.  

      I later shared this with a group of students in the class. One girl, who usually remained quiet during class discussions, said, “TOK is like when you get in an argument, and you can’t think of a comeback in the moment, but later you think up a great reply and it just makes you more angry. Like Soren’s comment about the sharks; how many million people are within a meter of a vending machine, in a day, compared to the hundred people getting within, say, 50 meters of a shark? If the numbers were more comparable, way more people would die from shark attacks.” 

       After a particularly heated class discussion, one in which a kid stormed out of class, Mr. Bertrand pulled me aside. “A lot of kids think this is a debate class. It’s not. People say that if a shark attacks you, you should punch them in the nose. The same is not true of children. Believe me.” 

Prompt 2 - Analogical reasoning is gold       

 Every morning, Kinder’s dreams would fill with the smell of warm toast, and she would promptly get up, letting herself be greeted by a yolk-yellow sun. Light seemed to ooze, in Kinder’s room. It oozed from outside and into her mind, washing it of a night’s drowsiness.      

         Downstairs, Kinder’s father would be reading the paper, slippered feet on the dining-room table, and Kinder’s mother would be sitting on the counter - legs flailing back and forth, bowl of cereal in hand, while the radio’s sounds reverberated out of what could’ve only been, by the sound of it, the entirety of the room. 

         It was often unclear, to Kinder, whether her dad was listening to the radio or reading the paper; From the moment Kinder came downstairs to the moment she left for school, her father’s eyes would remain glued to the paper. Tiny cracks of focus. And yet, all of his “hmms” and “ahas” were timed in accordance with the pauses of the radio. There was a certain wisdom in those sounds of understanding, Kinder thought, a wisdom which eluded children her age. 

“Someday you’ll understand. When you’re older, I mean,” her mom said. 

         Kinder was still crying by the time they arrived at school. She wiped her nose down the length of her forearm, and braced herself out of the door. Ahead of her, the sound of laughter, high-pitched and birdlike, pierced the sky. Behind her, a car screeched into motion. 

       In class, Kinder could not concentrate. She stared out the window, at the leaves which fluttered from treetops, and thought of fish - of  tiny, swarm-bound fish. 

“Kinder. Square root of 64, please.”

The whole class stared at Kinder, at the little fish stuck in her eyes. 

“What” she responded, still in a daze though aware of the looks aimed her way. 

“If you’re not going to pay attention,” replied Ms. Hannigan, beady-eyed, “Then you may as well make yourself useful.” Ms. Hannigan raised her forefinger as she said this, and finally it settled on a stiff, dusty broom at the front of the class. Such was the context  in which Kinder was made to sweep the school’s floors, for the rest of the afternoon. 

         Tommy and Kinder got off the bus at the same stop. “My brother says she’s a witch. He says that, on really clear nights, she can be seen flying that broomstick past the moon and the stars. Sometimes, if a child is really bad, she brings them along with her, all the way to the end of the universe, and drops them over the edge of it. Their screams and cries turn into thunderstorms.”

          “Your brother’s a dimwit,” responded Kinder, even though she half-believed Tommy; He was the brightest boy in her class, and it was true that his brother, Sam, had a telescope with which he could see things like flying witches. Tommy didn’t mind Kinder calling his brother a dimwit. He still waved seeya as Kinder walked up her driveway, slouching forward under the weight of her backpack. 

           Kinder shut the door behind her, out of breath. She unzipped her backpack, being careful not to let the zipper pull get stuck in her backpack’s cloth. At the bottom of it sat a big, golden book. A buried treasure. 

           There once upon a time was a sea that men could only dream of meeting , for to get to it meant crossing other seas made topsy-turvy by lashing winds and whip-tailed beasts. This sea, which was unaffected by waves, carried sound miles and miles around, such that at any given spot on its surface, a cacophony of birdsong, surface tension and splashes could be heard.  It served as home for many strange creatures; there were the Apatows; in morphology, these were the closest this sea got to human beings, though Apatows were much more stout, and short, and apart from the soles of their feet were made from scales. The Apatows were amphibians, and inhabited the rivers which this sea had shoveled for itself; most of their time was spent in shallow water, resting on their backs and at the bottom of the rivers. There, little fish would eat their dead scales, and the tough skin off their feet. If the Apatows were not resting, they were socializing with one another, through rituals, games and etiquette which had evolved over millions of years. As the Apatows got older, socializing became a way to find a mate, for this was an important part of Apatow livelihood; Apatows who remained mateless for too long were known to crawl out of the water, weep themselves dry and die. An impending fear of becoming a shriveled, Earth-bound Apatow drove much of the young, single Apatows’ behavior. Once any given Apatow found a mate, a ceremony would be held for the couple, and the youngs would play music by tapping on the river’s surface, and the elders would prepare a feast of crustaceans and small fish.  For the next few weeks, the newlyweds would retreat to some hidden corner of the river, and once they came back out, would only speak in rhyming couplets; 

 “We’re off to get ourselves chewed bare,” one Apatow might say, 

“Like fruit you’d just as quickly pare,” their partner would add, before the couple went to lie at the bottom of a river. 

  ��   Over time, however, it was not uncommon for the couples’ rhymes to lose eloquence; one Apatow might try to rhyme the word “bull” with the word “bowl,” which had moments ago been uttered by their partner, leaving one partner red with shame and the other apologetic, angry and disappointed. It was often the case, too, that one partner would become too slow at thinking of rhymes, making the Apatow-couple's life less efficient. In such an instance, the couple would often resort to muteness and isolation. Couples of the sort would develop a sort of dement—

– Kinder slammed the book shut, and ambled her way to the living room, where both of her parents sat, hands in laps. Her dad cleared his throat. Her mother fiddled with the cloth of her shirt. Both looked up at Kinder, as though hanging, stuck, in some space between all of their questions and Kinder’s words of reply. 

Kinder opened her mouth. 

“Obviously, it’ll be difficult for me. But hey, we’ll adjust. I just want you guys to be happy.” 

“Oh, we’re so very proud of you sweetie,” replied her mother.  

“Yes. We were scared you wouldn’t be ready,” said her dad. 

Kinder looked for a hint of shame in her mother’s face, but it was not there. She smiled. 

Prompt 3 - Soren vs. Soren’s dad, who ya got?

       Helen Keller is an American author and activist who at 19 months old contracted a disease which left her blind and deaf. She is best known for works which veer on the autobiographical, such as “The Story of My Life,” a novel which I recently read. While reading this work, which is essentially a retelling of Keller’s life, I couldn’t help but think of Aristotle, and his ideas of how knowledge is produced, or acquired. According to Aristotle, who was an avid knowledge seeker, humans were born with this innate desire to understand the world around them. In other words, Aristotle believed that all humans were avid knowledge seekers. To Aristotle, humans acquired their beliefs through external input; most notably - in Ancient Greece, at least - through sensory information, and that these beliefs became knowledge (or true)  if they were justifiable and devoid of subjectivity. For example, a woman selling apples can only determine that her apples are sweeter than another vendor’s by asking someone to taste both varieties and report back to her. Even so, the woman’s belief may be iffy, since the taster could be biased. In order for the woman’s belief to be justified and true, a full-fledged apple degustation would have to ensue. While the example above deals with taste as the sense being used to acquire knowledge, humans are much more likely to use their vision and their hearing as sources of information. This is in large part what makes Helen Keller’s story so fascinating; As a blind, deaf toddler, Kellen had to find unconventional ways of learning about the world. One of my favorite excerpts from “The Story of My Life” depicts a young Helen and her father; “My earliest distinct memory of my father is making my way through great drifts of newspapers to his side and finding him alone, holding a sheet of paper before his face. I was greatly puzzled to know what he was doing. I imitated this action, even wearing his spectacles, thinking they might help solve the mystery. But I did not find out the secret for several years. Then I learned what those papers were, and that my father edited one of them.” If the average child was perplexed by their father’s newspaper-reading habits, there are two strategies which would champion all others, in any given child’s quest to rid themselves of confusion. The child may take a stab at reading the paper themselves, if they can read; the child may then think to themselves “Oh, dad is reading this because he wants to find out  about the expected results of the next election,” or they may be entertained by the stories themselves, which would serve as an explanation, too. An alternative strategy would be for the child to question the father about his newspaper-reading habits. Neither strategy was available to Helen, such that she had to resort to another method, which was much less effective. I am now almost at the 500-word limit on this blog, so I will speed things up now. Basically, Helen Keller was sent to a school for the blind and deaf, as a young child. There, she met Anne Sullivan, who became her full-time teacher/nanny. Helen Keller has often described a time when Anne poured liquid on Helen Keller’s hand, and proceeded to spell out the word “water” on her wet palm. Helen describes this as a pivotal moment for her, a moment when the world seemed to gain a semblance of clarity, reason and order which it had never had before. While Helen Keller’s story has not convinced me that Aristotle is completely right, it has convinced me that Plato is NOT completely right; if knowledge was fully innate, as he says, Helen Keller would not have felt so disoriented in the world. But of course knowledge is not fully innate, and before Keller acquired strategies (about ways she could use her senses to gain information about the world), she was really struggling. 

Prompt 4 - Foxes and Hedgehogs

Dear journal,

        It’s been a while since I last wrote, and frankly, there is just a lot to fill you in on. We landed in Berlin on Monday, ‘round 3 AM in EST. Although long, the flight had not been wholly unpleasant; there had been a mix-up at the Pearson airport, such that we boarded our plane two hours late. As a sort of remediation, all passengers were offered free drinks. I managed to find four people who did not want theirs. Thus, the plane ride went down smoothly, at least for me. Lydia did not seem so pleased. It was only once we’d landed, and gotten our luggage, and walked to the front of the airport - where a plump, blond woman stood waiting for us with a sign that said our names - that I realized the drinks would not be going down smoothly. We had to call a new taxi, after I puked on our cab driver, whose name turned out to be Ilse. 

          We went to bed and woke up at 4 PM CET. The first day was taken as a sort of acclimation. We walked down Unter den Linden, and ate some bratwurst, but the rest of our day consisted of resting for the week ahead. As you know, dear journal, I was sent to Berlin to study the effects of zoo-life of mammalian species. I was meant to begin my work the day after our arrival, at the Berlin Zoological Garden, and I anticipated a tedious day of taking blood tests, measuring lengths or weights, and observing behavior. There was one animal I was particularly excited to see, and this was the red fox, or rather the V. Vulpes. My colleagues had all told me about this fox, for it was known that his behavior was rather divergent. I was excited to see these anomalies for myself, and see them materialized, with MRI scans. 

        On Wednesday, I put on my work slacks and biked over to the Zoo. A young man named Wilhelm was there to greet me; “Auf wiedersehen,” he said, and I responded in broken German. The young man walked me through the Zoo, introducing me to every animal. When we got to the fox, he said something about how this is where the real scientific development would happen. I asked him what he meant by it. Wilhelm went into this shack, and pulled out two varieties of dead rodent. He unlocked the gate to the fox (whose name, I later found out, was Max) and laid the two rodents down on a rock. Max, who had been pacing back and forth in his cage, stopped. He looked up at Wilhelm, looked down at the two pieces of rodent, and began tilting his head back and forth. For the rest of the visit, it seemed, Max walked between the two pieces of rodent, each time staring at one and stopping, tilting his head back and forth, and even, it seemed to me, shrugging. Over the next few days, I realized that Max was, shall we say, indecisive. Any time a choice would be posed him- where to urinate, where to eat, what to eat, etc. - he would begin to pace back and forth. This could last hours, or days, before Max resorted to action. The brain scans showed that his brain was normal. Perfectly average, for a red fox. 

       There is no doubt that, in wildlife, foxes have a great many decisions to make. They must find a mate, a suitable spot for their burrows and new food sources everyday. They must decide where to explore, they must know how to get back to their burrows. It seems that, in captivation, the ability to be conscious of many factors at once has not left. However, the number of factors has. Thus, the fox creates nuance and uncertainty, for itself, where there is none.