We're all DOOMED: Let's Dissect an Arguement!

In the article “Why Facebook is bad for you” published on January 18^th 2008 by The Sun, a news broadcasting website, the author projects the idea that Facebook is bad for the everyday person because thoughtless acts by Facebook users could cost them their job. Simply stated, the overall thesis of the article is, the “networking website Facebook seems [to be] a harmless way to swap gossip and pictures with mates, but it could cost you your job and blight your future”.

As many authors already know, in order to convince an audience of one idea being better than another, there must be evidence of some kind presented in the argument. The author of the article, “Why Facebook is bad for you” presents four supporting ideas to back up their argument of Facebook being bad. The first supporting detail the author puts forth is, “Employers don’t want to take risks with employees. One way they can find out who they’re hiring is by checking their Facebook page. Recent research by an American university found 23 percent of employers reviewed candidates’ profiles on social networking sites.” While the percentage of employers reviewing candidates’ profiles on social networking sites could not be verified per se, an article uploaded to the news website, the Huffington Post, on April 20, 2012, states, “A new study says 37 percent of employers use Facebook to pre-screen applicants”, therefore verifying the idea that some employers may us Facebook to pre-screen applicants.

The second supporting detail presented by the author of article is stated as, "There have also been a number of cases of people being fired for criticizing their employer on Facebook. One incident in Britain involved a worker who wrote “I Work At Argos And Can’t Wait To Leave Because It’s S**t” and was promptly sacked." Evidence reinforcing the second supporting detail is found in the form of another Huffington Post article uploaded on May 24, 2011, which states that "The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced today that it has filed a complaint alleging that a Chicago-area car dealership wrongfully fired an employee after he posted commentary critical of the company on his Facebook page. The complaint is the latest in a string of moves by the labor board indicating that it wants to clarify workers' rights when it comes to Facebook and labor law." Furthermore, Coane & Associates, Immigration and Employment Law Attorneys posted a Facebook note on Sunday, January 30, 2011 backing up the idea that employers may legally fire their employees for Facebook posts, by stating, "Many employees think that they are protected by “freedom of speech” found in the First Amendment to the Constitution. This may be true if your employer is a government agency, however, the first amendment does not otherwise apply to non-government employers. If you work for a big corporation or a small company, they CAN fire you if you criticize them on Facebook or elsewhere.”

Next, the third supporting detail found in the article is when the authors states, “Other institutions have also used Facebook. Oxford University last year used the site to help discipline students for chucking flour and eggs around as part of their post-exam celebrations." Sustaining the of third supporting detail, an article uploaded to The Guardian, yet another news website, on July 17th, 2007 comments on the Oxford-Facebook situation, "The joy of putting your favorite photos on Facebook took a sinister turn when an Oxford student was caught breaking university rules after posting a picture of herself covered in foam”.

Finally, the author of the article, “Why Facebook is bad for you” concludes their discussion with the statement, “People should consider what information they are letting out about themselves and to whom. Even if you think you have secured your pages through Facebook, the data may be accessible through other routes like Google.” The warning of personal Facebook information be accessible through search engines such as Google certainly provides food for thought; however if an individual were to type  "Philip Defraco+facebooK" into the Google search engine, they would easily discover the first link to be Philp Defranco's main Facebook profile. One might believe this proves the author’s final supporting detail; however, if I were to input my own name and “+Facebook” into the Google search engine (while logged out of Facebook), I would be unable to find my own Facebook profile or any links leading to my personal Facebook information (possibly due to the fact that I constantly monitor who I allow to view personal information uploaded to Facebook).

Notes:
Evidence supporting the first supporting detail was found by typing, “Employers look at Facebook” into the Google search engine and viewing the fourth link.

Evidence supporting the second supporting detail was found by typing, “Employee fired for criticizing on Facebook” into the Google search engine and viewing the second link, and typing, “Can I be fired for criticizing my employer on Facebook” into the Google search engine and viewing the second link.

Evidence supporting the third supporting detail was found by searching, “Oxford University+Discipline+Egg+Facebook” into the Google search engine and viewing the third link.

Philip Defranco is video blogger and YouTube celebrity.

Reading Quest #2

In the book, How We Decide by Johan Lehrer, “Chapter 7: The Brain Is An Argument” states, “Regardless of which areas are doing the arguing, however, it’s clear that all those mental components stuffed inside the head are constantly fighting for influence and attention” (Lehrer 199).  From this, I question how does the human mind decide which component deserves more attention and which actions/thoughts/etc. should be followed? How does a human know what to do? Which side of an ‘argument’, thought or decision is ‘better’?

If “even the most mundane choices emerge from a vigorous cortical debate” and the decision-making process in general involves “a particular set of emotions and associations, all of which then compete for your conscious attention”, how does the human consciousness not get overwhelmed with this abundance of information (Lehrer 199)? How can, for the majority of people, the decision-making process be viewed as relatively easy and yet all of what has been mentioned is going on in their brains for absolutely every decision they make?

Furthermore, I question if the human brain is so complex and it is said to be the greatest machine mankind knows of, how is it that humans aren’t using their brains to its fullest capacity?

Works Cited

Lehrer, Jonah. "The Brain Is An Argument." How We Decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 196-218. Print.

My Popular Culture Tour

View my popular culture tour on Spicynodes.org.

Glog: Let's Learn About Orion's Nebula

I like stars and other objects of a stellar orientation very much, so I decided instead of my first glog being yet another self-introduction, I would make a glog about Orion's nebula. It's very science orientated, but nebula's are cool.

Well, I tried to embed my glog, but the coding either isn't compatiable or simply wasn't working. Here's a link to my first glog.

Reading Quest #1

In the fourth chapter of “How We Decide” by Jonah Lehrer, leucotomy and the effects of lobotomies in general are discussed. The book states, “Although doctors tried to cut only the connections to the prefrontal cortex, they really didn’t know what they were cutting. However, over the past several decades, neurologists studied this brain area with great precision. They now know exactly what happens when the prefrontal cortex is damaged.”(Lehrer 102). I think this is a very important subject. If neurologists now know exactly what happens if the prefrontal cortex is damaged because they have studied it with precision that would suggest they studied on live humans (because how else would you know what happens?), then this leads me to question: how did/do neurologists and test subjects decided that the study of human neurology is ethical?

I understand that due to various neurological studies, we, as the human species, have gathered useful information and I agree that this knowledge is a asset, but I question the ethics which revolve around taking a stab in the dark (quite literately too, just under the human eye) and causing the “side effects” of: death, sinking into a stupor, uninterested in everything, losing the ability to use language, etc. to other human beings (Lehrer 101-2). For this specific matter, I also question what other side effects may have or do occur – how do neurologists respond, emotionally and psychologically, to knowing that their studies in the past have caused unfortunate damage to many individuals?

Now, I know the easy way to answer my question is to suggest that the good outweighs the bad and with the results, maybe I could agree; however, past neurologists didn’t even know what the exact results of what would happen if they performed lobotomies – they just guessed – so in the past, how does the unknown good outweigh the unknown evil?

I was going to stop here, but after finishing the fourth chapter, I found myself unable to. Now, later on, the fourth chapter discusses self-control and studies of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Lehrer 113-115).

When it came to the section about self-control and children with ADHD, I’m not sure how I feel about this section because I question the methods how psychiatrists and human behaviorists determine whether a child has a neurological disorder or not. To my knowledge, I have discovered that many psychiatrists will still with a child and their parents, write down all of the symptoms and try to match them with a checklist specifying multiple disorders. Now a lot of disorders have similar ‘checklists’ of symptoms, so if a child is experiencing a supposed disorder, but its symptoms match with other disorders as well, then the psychiatrists, child and parent will go through a trail-and-error testing phase with different medicines – if one works, then that’s the medicine they’ll stick to, if one doesn’t work, then they’ll switch to a different medicine. Humans develop over time and not everyone develops at the same time or the same rate. Therefore, I question about the children who slip through the cracks, not the children who don’t receive medical attention, but the children who might receive too much attention because their doctor was going off of a checklist of so-called symptoms and wasn’t able to or didn’t perform any neurological tests to wholeheartedly confirm a diagnosis.

Works Cited

Lehrer, Jonah. "The Uses of Reason." How We Decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 93-132. Print.