Blogging Around

   The first blog I commented on was Derek's Matrix dialectic blog. He talked about the battle between between truth and utilitarianism, or Neo and the Matrix, referring to the movie. Although he did spoil the ending of the matrix trilogy, he also explained that there are flaws in both truth and utilitarianism, and that in life they must ultimately coexist.

My comment:

I really like this dialectic, because it moves beyond the surface level of the postmodern role of systems in our life, or the use of technology in the 21st century, and back to the roots of a long standing philosophical conflict. As you said, there is something innately and obviously wrong with the scenario where one patient is sacrificed to save five. The problem is that it is nearly impossible to describe what exactly the moral fault is. Or, in the case of the the matrix, what is it that is missing from a perfect representation of our world? Something is certainly out of place, but it's unidentifiable.

Utilitarianism has the reverse problem. It is easy to describe what makes up happiness- e.g. security, food, water, shelter, etc. But I at least have never come across a decision where it is apparent that one choice I make will lead to less overall happiness than another. There are two many variable and an infinite amount of time for them to play out. I may as well be looking at a mass of incomprehensible codes on a screen.

Deontology is easy to spot and apply in real life, but nearly impossible to describe. Utilitarian theory is simple to theory, but complex beyond solution in practice. Thus, as you said, life is a compromise between the two, a balance of logic and perception.

Thanks for writing about one of the most interesting aspects of The Matrix.

My second comment was about Anya's Metacognition of the Mashup. I was in her group so it was interesting to get a different perspective on the project. She talked about how the Mashup not only changed the way she perceived our topic, but also the way in which she proccesed information. She compared the project to an episode of Glee.

My comment:

Anya, I enjoyed reading your blog because it gave me a new perspective on the Mashup project. Although of I course I knew that we had managed to create a new message, I hadn't fully grasped that the concept we had created was not actually a sum of all of the different parts of our Mashup. Instead, like a musical piece, extra meaning is added in with juxtaposition and order.

If the order had been different, the Mashup would have been confusing, but also less insightful. And if a piece had been deleted it would remove much more meaning than contained within the piece itself.

This reminds me of the Matrix reading, where it was stated that in order for a thought to be false there must also be a true thought somewhere in that person's mind. This is what defines the falseness. In the same way, it was the contrast in our material that created the Mashup.

I thought the same was true of our group as well. I also hadn't realized this, but it was the sheer amount of discussing and quasi arguing which lead to the real insights. Nobody ever "won", or force a certain point of view. Instead, the project grew into an elaboration on the connections between our disparate perspectives. The group interaction was necessary to develop the thesis. This idead is contained within the thesis itself. "Independence shouldn't mean isolation."