Testing Have technologies that made our lives easier necessarily made our lives better?

[complexPHILOSOPHY]

Sorry to be blunt but I thought it was quite bad. I think the main problem with that type of writing is that there is too much jargon. For instance, what on Earth is a hyper economy?

A hyper economy is one that is increasing exponentially, at an extremely large rate. Another example of the term hyper, relates to hyperpowers. The U.S. can be considered a world military hyperpower because it invests an extremely large or exaggerated amount of resources into it. The term hyper economy is quite common as well as hyperpower.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpower

You are familiar with the term abstraction and the ability to use words in different ways, correct?

I have never heard of such a thing. Independent paradigm? Not everyone is a philosopher of science, you know.

Granted, the term paradigm was first introduced by Kuhn with his philosophy of science, it is now a colloquialism. It is used quite often and defined either by a model, set of rules, set of principals, set of observations, etc. An independent paradigm is one that does not rely on other people's beliefs or opinions, constructed subjectively.

I think your style demands too much from the reader.

If the reader is being asked to much by me, then perhaps they aren't my targeted audience?

Actually, I have an idea. Let me try to rework your introductory paragraph; perhaps you will like it or perhaps you won't.

I was an English and Philosophy major before I switched to physics and mathematics, so I am not completely retarded about writing.

 

[complexPHILOSOPHY]

Are you familiar with etymology?

 

[verty]

Comments on Essay 6.

The first paragraph sounds to me like preaching, like something I would read in a Michael Moore book, although having said that, I think this is your best essay yet. I can hardly find anything to complain about, so that must be good.

However one thing that did draw my attention was "the war was said to be ...". This is a statement about what happened historically, and history is very difficult to justify because historians are known to distort the truth. I think when discussing history, one really should quote sources.

Actually, there is one caveat. I don't mind this style of writing. For instance, when you say "crusades have evolved into what is called terrorism", I know it is just your opinion and that it is unqualified in this case, but I try to give it a charitable reading because I happen to agree what what you have said or think that there is still the potential for reading it to be beneficial to me. Unfortunately, usually the purpose of writing is to reach people who disagree with you and not all of them think that way, so even though some statements seem agreeable, they probably still need to be justified. If the crusades and terrorism share some common nature, perhaps you should talk about it rather than asserting it.

Obviously the task is to judge which statements should be justified and which not, depending on the target audience. With complexPhilosophy's introductory paragraph, the subject matter is very technical so his jargon is generally acceptable, although I still disagree with 'hyper economy'.

 

[verty]

@complexPhilosophy,

Well since I was not in your target audience, I'll not worry about the applicability of such terms as 'hyper economy'. Since you contend that it is common, I accept that.

I am indeed familiar with abstraction and with the ability to use words in different ways. I was not aware that hyper economy was a well-defined term. It sounded to me like an ad hoc use of hyper to mean superlative.

I said I would attempt to rewrite it because I had formed the opinion that what you had said was overly technical, and without having read it too closely, I thought I could make it less technical. I was indeed mistaken, as those who would understand the subject can rightly be expected to understand the jargon. My beef with hyper economy was simply because I didn't think it was well defined, as I have said.

Lastly, I am not familiar with etymology although I have read both about linguistics and the philosophy of language. Etymology is ontological whereas I was more interested in the general nature of those subjects.

 

[verty]

Ok, no more critiquing from me because you know my perspective by now and I can see there is disagreement, and I don't deny that I am giving my own point of view with little concern of how others judge it.

 

[Werg22]

Thanks a lot verty, you have given me very good insight. As I said, I will later write other essays, I hope they will reflect what I learnt.

 

[Werg22]

Essay 7

Assignment: What do you define as heroism?

Heroes are often portrayed as romantic figures, fighting evil with courage and determination. Their enemies are among dragons, evil knights and wicked witches. But to me, there is another kind of hero; that is a person who shows great convictions and an unwillingness to accept injustice.

Frederick Douglass did not slay any monster, nor did he fight against evil sorcerers. Rather than that, he was a political activist. During the period of the American Civil War, he advocated for women’s rights, claiming that women were equal to men on every level. However he might have been in favor of the feminist movement, he soon alienated its leaders because of his opposing abolitionist views. To him all men and all women of all races were equal, and he did not allow himself to pursue equality for one at the expense of the other.

Frederick Douglass no longer lives, but his legacy of justice has survived. His refusal to comprise his standards of equality animate today’s society. People of all color and sex share equal rights: the right to vote, the right to work, the right of ownership and much more. The true lesson that society learned from Douglass is that all causes for equality are similar in goal and ought to be mutually inclusive. And this, in my opinion, is amply sufficient to qualify this man a hero.

Bejamin Disareli, a British statesman of the 19th century, tells us “The legacy of heroes is the memory of great names and great examples”. Never has this been truer than in Frederick Douglass’s case. Through his behavior he has given us a symbol of altruism and justice. Many came after him, such as Gandhi and Mother Theresa. Hopefully, figures like such will continue to bless humanity.

 

[Werg22]

Essay 8

Is the pursuit of material good a "good" or bad "thing"?

Romantics will often assert that materialism is a soul-rotting, undesirable trait. Whether they are right or not is of little importance for mankind’s good. I believe materialism is engraved in our human genes, and rather than vainly trying to eliminate it, it’s best to use it in the interest of all.

Louis C. Graham, an American amateur historian of the 18th century once wrote “It is not to please us that the baker makes a loaf of bread, rather it’s for his personal interest; that is to say money”. There is very good reason to believe that he hinted at the truth; after all he did point at the whole idea behind capitalism, such as adopted by Western countries. The promise of money, or rather its implications, and the horror of its absence exhorts the doctor to keep on receiving patients, the firemen to extinguish fires and the garbage man to keep on coming back every week. Sad or not, capitalism is yet the best economical system humanity has found since it has allowed a majority of people to have a relatively comfortable life, something unrivaled in previous societies.

One alternative to capitalism is communism. Its main idea consists in the elimination of the pursuit of money by assigning every worker a position which he could never leave, thus excluding any kind of ambition. This condition let the people of Russia to live in despise of communism, and when it was abandoned in 1989, it showed. This turn of events tells us one thing: it is not wise to ignore human’s natural knack for material good. I believe capitalism has been surviving in America for over 300 hundred years for opposing reasons; it uses materialism as its strength.

By adopting a capitalist economy, China has propelled itself to the rank of a super economy within only a few decades. Capitalism may not be perfect but it revolves around what I believe to be the right idea – materialism. One can only wonder what mankind would look like if there was no materialism in this world. I, for one, think it would be in a state of complete lethargy; in this sense the pursuit of material good has been beneficial to mankind.

 

[Fizziks_Fan]

SAT writing is bull.

I got a 12 on the essay and my writing is crap.
A friend of mine writes 10x better than me and he got a 11.

Don't waste your time and go study something useful.

 

[verty]

I think essay writing is a useful skill.

 

[verty]

Werg, well done; these two essays are excellent.

PS. This is my opinion in short. :)

 

[Werg22]

Hey verty... have you read the last two essays? What is your opinion in short?

Edit: ^^ Thanks.

You might wonder why I'm still awake. I'm just too nervous! I just hope my fatigue doesn't surface during the test... I might have to try coffee for the first time.

 

[verty]

Don't be nervous, remember to keep a cool head. If something worries you, take a deep breath and then think about it with a cool head.

 

[Yowhatsupt]

you need to have three topics in three body paragraphs. It's a basic 5 paragraph essay. All you are being tested on is your essay structure and ability to put together idea. Facts do not matter. With that said have your introduction go from global to local. Have your conclusion go from local to global. Write three paragraphs. Write enough to cover BOTH front and back pages. It's very hard to get an upper score if you don't. I got an 11/12 when I took mine. It doesn't have to be a good essay, all it has to do is meet all their requirements.

 

[Sojourner01]

CP, I share the opinion that you've overloaded your essay with jargon for no reason that I can see. This is one of my pet hates - writing with uncommon terms which, while I do understand them, don't contribute anything to the subject matter being discussed.

 

[verty]

Perhaps I'm naive but I think Werg will confirm that he would rather have learned to write good essays than to write one SAT-specific essay. Should one rather get 11/12 or learn to write essays?

 

[Werg22]

you need to have three topics in three body paragraphs. It's a basic 5 paragraph essay. All you are being tested on is your essay structure and ability to put together idea. Facts do not matter. With that said have your introduction go from global to local. Have your conclusion go from local to global. Write three paragraphs. Write enough to cover BOTH front and back pages. It's very hard to get an upper score if you don't. I got an 11/12 when I took mine. It doesn't have to be a good essay, all it has to do is meet all their requirements.

I read that a good majority of the essays that get 12/12 are four paragraphs long. Anyway I just finished the SAT, it was pretty smooth. And yes verty, I would have preferred to have mastered essay writing as whole and surly I made a move in that direction because of you. The SAT essay may be over, but school's essays are not!

 

[verty]

Ok, there's far too much cuddly stuff going on here. I think the point has been made, so I'll now leave it.

 

[complexPHILOSOPHY]

CP, I share the opinion that you've overloaded your essay with jargon for no reason that I can see. This is one of my pet hates - writing with uncommon terms which, while I do understand them, don't contribute anything to the subject matter being discussed.

If you are familiar with the subject matter and my fusion of philosophical perspectives and concrete, real world perspectives, than you should have no problems grasping my paragraph. I have received plenty of positive criticism regarding my writing from very established individuals, so perhaps, like I said, you are not in my target audience.

I invite you to reconstruct my paragraph in a less technical way, using the least amount of 'jargon' as you put it (or as I see, the use of the English language) and we can compare the two, and see if the concepts and ideas are all still there in the fashion that I described them.

I used the words that I used, for a reason. They encompass broad and deep concepts, that would require the use of even more words and explanations.

 

[Sojourner01]

I almost certainly wouldn't have structured my essay (if I were to write one) in the same way. since it's only an introductory paragraph, I can't make any judgement on its content since, so far, you haven't elucidated any.

What I'm getting at is that, unless the point is to show how clever you are - which I suppose is the point of SAT essays, after a fashion - a writing style that most intelligent and literate people (that is, seniors in technical degrees or above; most of us on this forum) find cumbersome is unnecessary and actually obstructs your goal of communicating noteworthy information.

 

[^_^physicist]

a writing style that most intelligent and literate people (that is, seniors in technical degrees or above; most of us on this forum) find cumbersome is unnecessary and actually obstructs your goal of communicating noteworthy information.

Ahh but this is where you are split. CP's style, is not directed towards you for a reason. It is directed towards those studying and manipulating texts in the realm of the humanities, with the aid of histo-contextual tools; which include rhetoric. Granted, for an essay, the introduction was obscure, and I say this because it follows the dreaded "upside down pyramid," which is a big no-no; however, due to the topic he is addressing the non-standard method is a viable choice, as the constuction adds even more to his development of his arguement.

(@CP: I too enjoy the humanities from time to time).

 

[^_^physicist]

It was stated eariler that werg22 can't do a damn thing about the SAT's. Well that isn't entirely correct. Other activities, high grades within school, and a strong ablity to control the English language will all reflect higher than SAT's (at least in my experance) for admission to college. Granted, I am biased towards the SAT, as I did quite poorly compared to my projected (and expected) scores (I was expected by all accounts to get within 30 Points of a perfect, which at the time was a 1600, my score, a 1130) the 4 years ago that I took the test. But yet, I managed to get accepted to all of the colleges I applied to.

So needless to say, the SAT isn't all that important. So Werg, don't worry about your score if it isn't perfect, heck even if you think its poor. The schools you apply to are going to look at more than if you could right a damn SAT essay.

Just wanted to throw in my two cents.

(PS. Your essays weren't bad, consitering that you only had 25 minutes; however, at times the flow/connection between paragraphs was poor).

 

[danny411]

In response to the first 4 by werg

pretty good writing specially for 25 mins...good examples from life...makes it easier..

I noticed that you have no rebuttals? why ? is that a strategy of yours? I mean the length is short so its hard to do ?

1)tech is good. But has it made life better ? Some people think it hasn't.It increases our dependency on it.

2)what motivates people to change? yep i agree there is a catalyst that prompts most people to want to change. I had a criminal record and it messed things up for a long time.Why did i want to change ? Not confrontation with other people. My friends all died. This is why i wanted to change. I didn't want to end up like them.

3)the door to success is labelled push. Yes i agree that you have to be proactive. I think this is what the prompt is talking about. You have to go out there and open doors by being proactive. Most people don't have no lineage or pathways to success so they got to forge them.

4) Loss teaches us more
yes, we reflect on losses to change things, this is what allows us to progress forward. If you always did things correct there would be no need to change things so you would continue to do them the same way. But if you get a crappy mark then you will look at the reason why and never let it happen again.

Pretty good writing. Not really academic enough though. If you get a prompt about the dangers of medical treatment don't use frankenstein. That's ficational(made up). Use real examples such as the eugenics movement, witch hunting, prisoners abuse(labotomy, shock treatment, coerced used of experimental procedures), abuse in mental institutions( shock treatment, hypothalmic stimulation, hypocampus removal, sterilization, forced confinement, force drug treatment)maybe even medical malpractice stuff if you know it.

Overall, good writing under the circumstances. I think when i do mine i will have to scale back from abstract metaphysical arguments--

should i use a rebuttal?