Post #2

Research is extremely important. Why? Without research the human race would not know anything! Research can be anything from a simple observation to an extensive experiment or from a small case study to a nationwide survey. Research contributes to our knowledge, without research our knowledge would be nonexistent. For example, as a young child, when our friend gets their tongue stuck to a frozen pole we observe that the action looks quite painful. Then after our friend becomes unstuck from the pole, they tell us how painful and horrible it felt. From this observation we now know that we never want to stick our tongue to a frozen pole. Research tells us many things other than developing our common sense, such as finding cures for diseases, learning about a new topic, deciding which governmental candidate would be the best representative, and how to be more efficient in our daily lives (hybrid cars, recycling, landfill use, etc.)

I can deeply relate to the article "Absent-Mindedness: A Blessing in Disguise" because I am extremely absent-minded. Several times a day I will be talking to someone or I will try to get someone's attention to talk to them. Then when it is my turn to finally talk, I will space out and forget what the subject was even about. I also sometimes go into a room to get something and then forget why I was even in that room in the first place.

When I read the title of this article I was immediately intrigued. In the article many experiments proved that several people in the human population are absent-minded, but sometimes that isn't such a bad thing. The article posed the exact opposite situation to show how absent-mindedness can be a good thing. A Russian journalist named Solomon Shereshevskii retains every single memory and piece of information that is put in front of him. Shereshevskii reported that this is extremely frustrating because every time he needs to recall something, he has so many memories of that one thing.

The article also points out that by being absent-minded our mind weeds out all of the dull points in our life and useless information we learn. Therefore we only retain what is important and significant to ourselves. How would you like it if you remembered every horrible, scary, dull, and hurtful experience in your life (how depressing!)?

I have learned several new concepts in this chapter. I learned why scientific research and facts are used over our own common sense. I thought the concepts of hindsight bias and overconfident very intriguing because they are the kind of concepts that I always knew existed in the world, but I never actually observed them in the world. Now that I understand these concepts I see it happen so often in my everyday life. Knowing these concepts has also made me more critical of myself and making sure that I am not falling for them.

I have also learned how to better use my critical thinking. I find myself using the attitude of skepticism much more to ask questions about articles and certain research, but on the opposite end I have also left my mind more open. From some of the examples in the book and through a research paper I am working on, I have learned that nothing is impossible!

Lastly I have learned a great deal about different ways to study and research (case study, survey, and naturalistic observation). I found the case study and survey very interesting because there is so much more involved with the than just asking and answering questions. A very large aspect of these two research method is to make sure the selection is random and that there is no similarity of any candidates. Any small deviation in the random selection can greatly alter the accurateness of the study. This has led me to examine experiments in more depth to find how reliable and accurate the results may be. I also learned that how you word things can make a huge impact on how others respond. This is an area I would love to look deeper into because it is harder for me to accurately express myself in written words.