The heart of my reflections

The first thing that I want to say is that I wasn’t prepared for this type of class but I’m so happy that I decided to attend it.

As I said in my first blog, I was a little bit anxious about taking this first course after 3 years away from school and I didn’t know what to expect coming to this class. Well, I sure was surprised when I realized how interactive but moreover, how thoughtful the environment and the course was. Where I live and study, teachers do not ask to their students how the course makes them feel, what do they learn or even how they could use what they have learned in their daily lives. This approach allow me to feel comfortable much faster and to not be afraid to express what I’m feeling. Moreover, the small groups that we had to form to talk to the course that we just had, allow us to connect and exchange with other students in a lighter way and I don’t know if without the formation of these groups I would have had the courage or at least the curiosity to exchange and talk with my fellow students. I have relearned how to express myself in public in the most healthy and educational way possible and I would sincerely like to thank the teacher for that. 

This course made me think, made me realize, and help me to understand many concepts that were abstracts for me. To begin, let’s just start with the concept of system. Before this course, when I was thinking about the system I was only thinking about the system from a social perspective. The image that came to my mind and that allowed me to apprehend this term was simply a group of individuals living together in a society and who could influence each other with their actions, believes and thoughts. I didn’t have in mind that the term system was way larger than that. A system is not only formed by humans, it can be a basket of fruits, a group of animals, a constellation, etc. As the teacher said, my classmates and I were also forming a system when we were discussing and interacting. It made me realize that I must be a part of something that I’m not even aware of and that therefore I have an influence on things unconsciously. This class comforts me in my belief that I don’t need to be famous, to be rich, or to be considered important to have an influence and therefore change things that matter to me. Even the small things that I can do at my level will surely have an impact even if I may not see it right away. 

For example, when we discussed about Anthropocene, creativity, and sustainability I saw a glimpse of the negative impact that we have on the planet Earth. Us humans are destroying the habitat where we are living as days go by. We are using in 7 months more than the planet can create during a full year. We are polluting our seas, oceans, rivers, we are decimating our green areas that are providing the oxygen that is indispensable for our survival. We are literally killing each other with the way we are consuming and the solutions proposed by the ones who are governing us are not working because they are focusing on specifics areas of the problem whereas this wicked problem must be apprehend on its whole. When we are facing this problem, we could easily think that, at our level, nothing can be done and trying to make a change about it will be useless. But as said earlier, there is no small actions. Even if stopping the water while brushing our teeth to save some can be considered as ridiculous compared to the amount of water used for cattle breeding for example, it could influence the persons surrounding us on this issue and make them make a move about it on their own lives. We need to see ourselves as a whole and not only on an individual perspective. 

I also learn how to apprehend concepts on different perspectives thanks to the course but also thanks to group peering exercises at the end of each class. I tend to have a pragmatic thinking and seeing what others may think help me to free myself a bit of my way of thinking. The course helps me to demonize Artificial Intelligence by showing me its positive impact on sciences and moreover, how it is already present all around me. My classmates help me to adopt a different perspective on elements (videos, documents) seen in class and it allows me to see and notice details that I would not have noticed on my own. It reinforces my idea that working in groups or teams is a characteristic that I really want to find in my future job because it is a continuous source of knowledge. To be in contact with different ways of thinking, with people coming from different cultures, and not having had the same school education as me would allow me to discover, to learn, and to open myself. Being constantly in search of answers, working in groups seems to me to be essential and this course has confirm it. 

I’ve learned a lot in this course, not only about specific concepts but also about myself. Thank you again for your way of teaching and I would also like to thanks my classmates for knowledge they were able to bring me.

Maybe we’ll se again, who knows? 

Mindwalk is a movie that resonates a lot with concepts that we’ve seen in class. It talks about reductionism, emergence, systems theory and its view on interconnection. 

For Sonia, the world has been seen for fat too long on a reductionist or mechanistic perspective. To understand the whole, we, human, analyze each components. To apprehend a complex phenomena, we reduced it to its basic parts. But while doing so, we centered our point of view on only one side of the phenomena and we forgot that this point of view, is not the only valid one. 

She took for example this question “what is a tree?”: on a reductionist perspective a tree is roots, leaves, sad, a trunk, etc. But we forget to the tree is not only a sum of its components, a tree is also a whole system on itself. The tree interact with the earth, it can constitute a home for certain species, it is related and its life depend fungus and vice-versa. By adopting a reductionistic perspective, we put aside the interdependence of the element with its system. 

Several sentences of the movie resonates with my belief and my point of view of the actual system that represents our society: 

« our system doesn’t encourage prevention, it encourages intervention »

This sentence seems still so accurate nowadays. For example, in France, a law proposal has been created to fight against school bullying. School bullying may be punished up to 10 years in prison if the victim commits suicide. I think that this law will not have been created if our system would have been better in prevention. How could you sentence jail time to a kid? I think it will only have an economic impact on parents that would have to pay for damages caused by their children but the main problem would still be present. Prevention such as more courses about what harassment is really causing to children, its impact on their health and behavior, what to do if this is happening to you would be way more efficient. If children knew what to do if they experienced it and if adults around knew how to behave if a child report it to them, this kind of law would tend to became useless. We should put on focus on why children bully other children and not on how to punish them. I understand that prevention can sometimes not be enough, and that justice is requested. But if our system wasn’t failing on prevention, we wouldn’t need this kind of law intervention in the education field. 

« the people don’t trust you politicians anymore. At your last election, only 50 % of them even bother to vote »

During the last presidential elections, at the second round, the abstention rate had never been so high for almost 50 years. People or no longer voting for someone, they’re are voting against, and unfortunately, I think that the same will happen this year. 

They put a distraction in the spotlight, a more than extremist candidate at the center of all the media to afraid the voters about what might happen if this kind of candidate was elected. The opposing side is totally divided (several candidates of the same party are willing to be a candidate). Therefore the actual president seems to be the less risky choice. Everything is well orchestrated for the actual president to be reelected, not because of his programs or ideas, but because other candidates don’t seem to be suitable for the job. Ideas or programs are not relevant anymore, we vote for the one who will bother us the less.

« pure science hardly exists today, the scientist isn’t sitting in his lab anymore choosing to work on what fascinates him most. Science is expensive » → 

As I want to work in research, one of my biggest fear is not knowing how my work would be used for. Indeed, the work that I would or could provide to the world might not be used in a way that match with my personal belief or values. 

I first choose an economic path after I graduate from high school and when I wanted to reorient myself in the field of psychology, the only thing that was offering to me was economic psychology that is defined as the study of economic human behavior, especially on decision process. I didn’t want my work to be a way to encourage more consumption, to be helpful for big companies to make even more money, so I decided to drop this path.

But as Sonia said, science is expensive, it needs funding and these fundings could come from private societies that are only there for their own interest. So this question is still present in my mind : How my work could be used for ? 

I’m hoping that this question will always be in my mind to keep me on right track, to not get caught up in the financial (and greedy?) aspect. I don’t want to “give [my] knowledge away without thinking about the values, without thinking about who is responsible »

In this course, we had to wrote about our city, about what it means to us and how it represents us. It was quite different from others courses because the focus was immediately put on us. We didn’t have a course about a specific topic and we didn’t have to talk in small groups because in this course, we had to possibility to interact with each and every one of us.

After writing about our city we had to pick 3 different cities (other than ours) and write a comment about it. When I wrote about my city, I realized that I was feeling a little bit homesick. Even though it’s not even 3 months since I left my city, I’m starting to miss my family, my friends and the cultural atmosphere that makes it so unique. But even though I miss my city and am happy to return to it for Christmas holidays, I’m already looking forward to come back in Athens to finish my semester abroad on a high note ! When we had to put comments on other cities, I could see so many different environments, landscapes, and the text wrote by my classmates made me want to discover cities that I would never have thought of before. Some places seemed so quiet and peaceful that it made me realize that small cities or villages are as much worth a visit as big cities. In general I tend to prioritize big cities because they have more things to do but now I would definitely add detours in my next trips to see other aspects of a country, especially the surrounding nature that the city may lack.

When the teacher showed us the map and all the different cities that were present on this class, it made me realize how much Erasmus was a unique experience. It gathers in one classroom so many diversity, so many different cultures, so many different point of views. It is such a rewarding experience that I already feel sad at the thought of having to leave by the end of semester. If I could I would stay much longer but don’t worry, I’ll be back sooner than you think!

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is defined as a set of theories and techniques implemented in order to create machines able to simulate human intelligence. AI is already well present around us. As soon as you’re using your telephone or your computer for going to a website or social media we’re using AI. It makes our life more efficient everyday because it powers many programs and services that we’re using on a daily basis (emails, recommendations on music app, GPS, etc.). 

Years after years, AI is getting more and more intelligent and efficient and therefore it is impossible to not think about how AI will surpass human intelligence. Eventually, it would be able to create another version of it-self even more intelligent. It said that it will probably happen in the middle of our century and that will lead to an exponential growth. 

In my opinion, AI is something revolutionary because it has led to a lot of significative advancements in different domains such as medicine, for example. It allows to improve quality of care through remote patient follow-up, computer-assisted surgery, etc. I think research in this kind of domains is very important because it’s helping improving doctors efficiency. AI can gather, stock and transmit a gigantic amount of information than no human can and it’s this capacity to collect data and to put them to effective use that should remain the focus of research in this era. 

AI begins to become a little bit dangerous (or maybe more frightening) when it drifts from this point and spreads out in other field such as realistic emotional transmission in humanoid robotic. I understand that humanoid robotic can be very useful for functional purposes such as interaction with tools and human environments or for experimental purposes, but when robots begins to act and react as real humans this is when it gets disturbing. For example, Sophia, this robot in this video (start video at 2min20s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg_tJvCA8zw) is able to learn by getting used to the behavior of human beings. This robot has been designed to be a suitable companion for elderly at nursing home or to help crowds at large events or parks. It is marketed as a “social robot” that can mimic social behavior and induce feelings of love in humans. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(robot))

What’s scaring me is that, for now, AI seems to be used positively (to improve human life in general). We know that human kind is not always the kindest and I have no desire to know what it could happen if AI fell in the wrong hands. It is often said that science fiction precedes reality, well I hope that we’d never fall in this kind of reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU. 

This course is quite different from other courses that we had so far because this one was more theoretical. 

At the beginning of the course, we discussed about what complexity means to us and if it was a good or a bad notion. It was interesting to see how a word can have different meanings from one person to another. But in general, students linked complexity with difficulty, with something that looks hard to understand. It wasn’t seen as good or bad, it was more seen as something in the middle. Bad if it’s associated with a difficulty that seems impossible to overcome and good when the difficulty seems to be overcome.

“Complexity characterizes the behavior of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, meaning there is no reasonable higher instruction to define the various possible interactions.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity) It means that we can only predict possible interactions in a macro-level and not in a micro-level. For example, in the video “The double pendulum (computer simulation)”, it was impossible to predict where the pendulum will exactly be from one second to the next but we could predict that it will be on the lowest part of the screen. 

In terms of wicked problems, complexity is more than present because wicked problems is characterized by the difficulty of finding a solution to a problem that is multidimensional. A complex system is full of unforeseen events and wicked problems are hard to manage because even if a solution seems to be found, we can not know for sure that the problem will be resolved or worse, if the solution applied will not cause even more problems. All the initial conditions in a wicked problem must be taken into account. But in our society, wicked problems are often seen as simple problem that can be resolved with simplistic solutions. The case of the use of DDT in agriculture fields is a perfect example. Ad hoc measures in a complex problems only cure the symptoms and not what causing them. It leaves uncorrected the deeper causes of the trouble and permit those causes to grow stronger. Even if something seems to be good at first, it does not mean that it will still be in the long run. Solutions for wicked problem such as terrorism should not only focus on the symptoms (mainly represented by the attacks and deaths) but also on what are the reasons why it keep happening (geopolitical conflicts, ect.). To find a solution, we need to stop thinking individually and start to think more and more as a system. Every aspect of a complex problem is as important as another one. 

During the beginning of the course, one student talked about the complexity in human beings and it appealed to me because it was an aspect of the complexity that I also wanted to talk about but I couldn’t. Unfortunately, this aspect was not developed in the course because, as I said higher in this post, the course was more articulated around theories. The complexity within us is what make us different, unique. As this student wrote on menti.com “sometimes this complexity is difficult to understand” and I think that if we were more interesting about what make us different from a human being to another it will allow us to take more into account the whole and not only the different parts of the problem. As this student wrote, our complexity comes from “experiences, feelings and personality” and when we’re judging someone’s actions all of theses aspects must and should be used to understand them. This should also be applied in wicked problems. All the dimensions (social, cultural, etc.) are important in order to find an effective solution in the long run.

This week, a new concept called Anthropocene was introduced to me. Anthropocene is defined as an epoch where humans have an important impact on the environment. Currently, this epoch is still not limited in a specific time. Various start dates have been proposed (beginning of agricultural revolution, the end of WWII, 29 August 2016) but to this date, a date remains to be decided definitively. 

The Earth exists since 4.5 billion years and we, the current human race, only exist since 100 000 years. This made me realize that even if our time on earth is so insignificant compared to its date of creation, we were able, in a short time, to make so much negative impacts. Our impact is so enormous that we had to create a term to encapsulate it. 

All the problems we have to dealt with right now (fires, extinction, deforestation, climate change, etc.) is directly cause by our way we exist in this world. It’s the human development, the human ingenuity, innovation and creativity that lead us to these horrific environmental situations that the population is facing all around the world. But the paradox is that we need to be more inventive and creative to be able to find solutions to the problems that we created. 

In the video entitled “How Are You Intelligent?”, the speaker Ken Robinson asked two questions to the audience: How are you intelligent? and How are you creative? it is said on this video that adults tend to evaluate themselves as not creative whereas children think the opposite. Why is there that difference of evaluation between adults and children? Education seems to be the cause of it. 

The education system put us in mind that creativity is a trait of personality that one has or not. But for the speaker, this idea is false. For him, we are all born with a lot of creative capacities and we have the capacity to make ourselves more creative. If we want to live longer and better in earth, we need to develop more this creativity within us and education is the tool that will prevent our civilization to fall in a catastrophe directly created by the way we’re living currently. 

We need to stop evaluating ourselves through academic standards and start thinking out of a the box. Intelligence or creativity is not only related to arts or scholar criteria. It’s also about how we accommodate to struggles that we can encounter through life and with our planet in general.

This third course begun with the concept or reductionism, a concept that is, for me, important to apprehend well for being able to fully understand the concept of emergence, one of the main topic of this course. 

On one hand, reductionism consists on reducing complexes phenomena to their simplest or smallest components. It’s a tendency to consider these simplest or smallest components more important than the observed phenomena. If we refer this to a system, it means that the system itself is less important than its parts. On the other hand, in the concept of emergence, the whole or system is perceived equally as the sum of its parts. They’re different not because one is more valuable than the others but because the whole has different properties than the sum of its parts. 

I’ve managed to really understand the concept of emergence with the example of “the emergence of life” of S. Kauffman. We, as human beings, are formed by “a set of molecules”. Each molecule has a chemical property but put together, they’re “able to reproduce [themselves] and to evolve”. These molecules organized themselves in a certain way, without being forced or imposed by any external agent, and this self-organization allowed the appearance of a whole with its own properties. There is a multitude of stages to arrive until the formation of a human being and to get there, the interaction or synergy between the different parts is crucial. There is no whole (here, human beings) without a viable self-organization of its different parts. 

During the course, we had to discuss in small groups about the different videos and concepts seen earlier. One of the videos I’ve talked more about was the one entitled “John Bonner’s slime mold movies”. While another student and I were focusing on the purpose of their self-organization and moreover their self-sacrifice, 2 others students of my group were just amazed by the phenomenon. They were not really thinking of the purpose or the goal of their self-organization, they were more interested on the beauty of self-sacrifice than on its goal. It was interested, for me, to have their point of view because it allowed me to see the video from a different perspective. My focus should not always be on the purpose but also on the ways to achieve it. I tend to want to know the how and why of things and speaking with my classmates allowed me to free myself a little from this way of seeing things. Sometimes things are just the way it is. 

How a small change (or cause) can leads to some unknown or unpredictable huge effect that can be hard to link to it?

To conceptualize this idea, the video “How wolves can change river?” gave me the perfect example. 

This video explains how the reintroduction of wolves in the Yellowstone National Park has generated a remarkable trophic cascade which can be defined as “an ecological process which starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom”. After the reintroduction of wolves, valleys and gorges regenerated, the population of many different species started to increase (birds, beavers, rabbits, etc.) and wolves even got an impact on the behavior of the rivers. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSBL7Gk_9QU)

At first, when I saw the title of the video I was quite skeptical. How could it be possible? How a thing quite insignificant as wolves compared to a river could have an impact on it? 

Even if this concept has been previously seen during class with Arp 273, and its larger spiral galaxy, UGC 1810, which rose-like shape is influenced by a way smaller galaxy, UGC 1813; this concept was still abstract for me. Being able to put images and more commons word on this concept, enables me to really understand it and at the end of the video, I was totally amazed by it. It made me really realize that even the most tiny things could have an impact on something way bigger and greater. 

When we had to talk about the video with other classmates, they pointed out to me everything that was going on in this video was not all positive. When they decided to reintroduce wolves in the Yellowstone National Park, even if the outcome was quite impressive and positive, they also had a negative impact (wolves killed dears and coyotes). But even though it looks bad at first, their impact, only few years later, on the Yellowstone ecosystem and its physical geography was way more important and positive. 

After hearing what all the groups had to say about the video, the professor talked about the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect is the “tendency of a complex, dynamic system to be sensitive to initial conditions, so that over time a small cause may have large, unpredictable effects”. (https://philosophy-question.com/library/lecture/read/304765-what-is-a-butterfly-effect-in-psychology)

This is exactly what was going on at the Yellowstone National Park, the initial condition was the reintroduction of the wolves that, over time, lead to a large and unpredictable effect: the change of the river’s behavior and Yellowstone’s physical geography. 

If we want to apply this concept on a day-to-day life, we have to keep in mind that even if something may not be considered as something beneficial at first, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be after all. We also need to remember that even the smallest things that we do can have an impact on something that might be way beyond us. 

This video and the group activity made me really understand what a system is and how it is different from a collection of different parts: “every system has some purpose that defines it as a discrete entity and that provides a kind of integrity that holds it together. The purpose, however, is a property of the system as a whole and not of any of the parts” (Kim, 1999) 

After not being in a classroom for more than 3 years, I have to admit that it was quite pleasant to be able to go back there.

At first, I didn’t know what it will make me feel to be back in class after such a long time and to be honest, I was a little bit anxious about it. A lot of questions popped in my head before this first class. It was not only the first class after the beginning of this pandemic. For me, it was above all, my first class with other students standing no longer behind their computers hundreds of kilometers away but only a few centimeters.

Thanks to the professor and also thanks to the good ambient atmosphere in the class, my anxiety went down throughout the course. The professor seemed so genuinely happy to be able to go back in class in front of his students that, I think, his happiness has rubbed off on us and created this good room atmosphere that allowed me to feel more at ease.

Even if the course seemed a little bit too philosophical for me at the beginning, the way that it was conducted by the professor made me feel confident enough to feel like participating during the course.

Currently, I’m still a little bit anxious. Not about being back in class anymore but about the posts that we have to share and the comments that I’ll receive. I also still don’t really understand everything we’re going to do and learn during this class but I’m looking forward to the activities that we will be doing with my classmates and I can’t wait to find out more about the course.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait to get this information… This is the first time I’ve ever regretted a holiday ! (too much? haha)