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The idea of looking at moral values from a science perspective has truly been valuable to the world. It may have answered several questions on what is right and wrong, as from the beginning, we have always related morals with religion and culture, more like morals and values have come from religion mostly. This idea of moral value that have been derived from religion has always intrigued me, the idea of what is right and wrong in the perspective of religion always went against the idea of right and wrong from a science background. This has led me questioning my moral values that do not make sense in a developed society. I guess what I am trying to say here is that, morals that have been derived from religious perspective have always been constrained and inflexible with progress of the world and modern ideas whereas the morals from the science perspective are based on facts that are flexible with the development of the world. Like the example mentioned by Sam Harris about Muslim ladies wearing burkha in a hot weather does not make sense. Religion have a limited boundary which may not be crossed, they already know what's right and wrong like Sam Harris mentioned in his speech, the morals experts know everything, which does allow them to explore more in the world and what it has to offer. On the contrary, science continuously tests its boundaries and if people had followed the moral codes according to religion they most probably never would have found answers to so many questions especially in the area of science such cure to so many diseases. It also justifies the moral reasons we believe in. However, morals based on science perspective have liberated the world of any social and basic moral obligation to the world and its society. Where religion has kept people within the boundaries of moral obligation towards the society, science may have liberated them form any such obligations, cases such the rape, murder, terrorist attacks and bombing nuclear plant

The ideas presented by Sam Harris is the TED talk is quite intriguing, and the point that he had brought upon religion's role in today's views upon morality is surely true. To a large extent, the modern society's thinking contain remnants of religion's former dominance upon approaches to life and of morality. As in the case of the large Abrahamic religions that are rooted rooted in the world, their static nature almost hinders with relevant questions that are more relevant to be rectified today, as Harris pointed out, the question of gay marriage and to that of nuclear proliferation.Where in the lack of religion's preponderance in people's moral compass, staggeringly imminent issues that have a wider set of impact upon the world may undoubtedly be solved more efficiently through a wider popular agreement of its urgency and importance. Perhaps, a logical pathway to morality as is with science would offer a more pragmatic solution to the problem of determining moral dilemmas, or of weighing the importance of issues over others.

This TED talk was actually very interesting. He brought up the idea that science can be the ultimate guide to answering moral questions and that this could be more accurate than religion. To an extent this could be true but I do see some loopholes in this claim. Science can't take things into account such as - intuition, overall context of the situation and its possible impact on society, instinct or even extrasensory perception (information that is not acquired by the usual sensory perceptions but instead with the mind). And even if there is scope for science to gain hold of these aspects as well, such technology has yet to develop. He did give examples of faults he found in religion and spoke about how we shouldn't blindly rely on religious beliefs. For instance, he pointed out that Muslim women wear burkas even when the weather outside is hot but what he has failed to point out is that - why do these women do so? He has looked at this situation from a very narrow point of view. Not all woman are forced to wear the veils and some insist to wear it themselves. In France a few years ago, when the French had planned to ban the veils, there were large protests lead by Muslim women. This clearly shows that many of the women choose to wear the burka and have their logical reasoning for it. I agree with Palak, because of religion and it's teachings of morality some of our actions have been somewhat restrained. There is always some 'fear' element when we do something we aren't supposed to be doing. I am not so sure about other religions but in my religion for instance we have always been told that "God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent" But if all of a sudden we rely on science to answer our moral questions, our actions could become more liberal because of this lack of fear. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not so sure. To conclude, I'm not quite convinced whether science can answer all of our moral questions. Maybe because there are some aspects of m

I found this video to be fascinating and thought-provoking, as it opened my eyes to this perspective of viewing the history of our universe. After viewing this video, I would find it interesting to see if there is any correlation of time between the "Thresholds" and determine an estimate of the next threshold. However, based on the infographic displayed in the presentation, it seems like there is a high concentration of the thresholds at the beginning and present points of the universe. I also find it problematic to determine how such a threshold could be defined, as Christian himself said that he "considers" humanity as a threshold. This implies that there is no definite way to define such a threshold, which throws me off a bit as there is a lack of precise methodology in his selections. This video also made me consider what implications these thresholds have on the future. What kind of thresholds will be possible in the future? In retrospect, based on the previous threshold, I can't imagine a possible way that our universe could become more complex, however, taking into account the previous thresholds, I don't think that people at those times expected the way that agriculture and fossil fuels would have the effect that they did.

Perhaps what is most intriguing in the video is the idea of thresholds to signify significant developments in the universe as dictated by increased levels of complexity in contradiction of the law of entropy. The question of what may lie ahead of us, or the universe. Would it only envelope humanity, or would it apply to the universe as a whole - as an idea that may apply to any life form. The question that also arises from this video is that, if we do not have collective learning, is the idea of history nullified? Just because we do not have a recollection of an event, should it not be disregarded to having happened at all? The definition of history in this case, supposes the otherwise.

One of the aspects that stood out to me during David Christian's "The history of our world in 18 minutes" is the concept of multiple kinds of history. When studied on an academic level, modern history revolves around human interaction, economics and development. History before human existence is then very difficult to discuss, unless the discussion is from a scientific perspective. What I found so interesting about Christian's discussion is the suggestion that there is a history of the universe, of life on earth, of humanity, and of the self. I have never considered a person's individual experiences throughout their life as history; instead, I viewed collective events and experiences as history. In hindsight, I think that is a very utilitarian perspective towards history and is probably a result of how I have been taught history. I now think that history can either be science based and objective/subjective, social science based and subjective, or personal and subjective. However, I find it interesting that science based history is only partly objective. When we discussed science as an AoK, we seemed to agree that science was objective with a few exceptions here and there. However, when Christian discussed thresholds in the world's history, he did not clearly explain methodology in determining whether an event in history could be a threshold. The way Christian then went on to determine thresholds seemed to be subjective, leading me to think that even science based history could not be completely objective.

This TED talk was truly a different way of approaching history and exploring different perspective in 18 minutes. I particularly liked the egg analogy as it provided a better understanding of the way he approaches history of the universe . He uses the egg analogy to understand that the universe works from a step by step and structured to unstructured way and lack of order seen in both, in the our universe as well as the society. This particularly stood out for as it is thought-provoking statement which made look back into history and remember a few examples of it. I loved the idea of "thresholds", this is a very significant concept that I have never come to think about it prior to this video. Not only it could be applied to the science behind the history of the world but also to our personal lives and we could also see to some extent in our history., I agree with Amal on the point that history can now be perceived as being the science based as well and it truly interesting how it can be explained. throughout my life i have considered history as the study of historical events and its subsequent consequences. It had always revolved around the idea of war in different countries. However this video has truly broaden my perspective on the word "history". I really enjoyed the video and had too much to learn.

This was a very different and informative TED talk, more so than previous TED talks I have seen. The structure of the talk worked well to compliment the meaning and explanations of the ideas presented by David Christian. Moreover, the analogy with the video of the breaking and mixing of the 'egg' played in reverse to represent the opposite of the Law of Entropy was intriguing for me, and grabbed my attention. The ideas presented in the bulk of the talk discussing different historical 'Thresholds' was also an 'eye-opener' for me personally because I had never thought about history in this way. With this perspective on how 'History' can be applied as one of our Area of Knowledge's we can gain a complete different variety of concepts and see things in a very different perspective as let's say one of the pervious TED talks, showing us how mathematics can be integrated and used in history as well. I feel that these are two very different perspectives, not ones that we would normally find ourselves thinking about but because of this very reason, they are very beneficial to look at when gaining an insight of knowledge about history.

I watched David Christian video called "the history of our world in 18 minutes". I found the video fascinating as I still have trouble understanding how people managed to get all the information about events that happened 13.7 billion years ago. I liked the fact that the only reason we got to where we are today is because of unexpected events that occurred in the past. This could be seen from the asteroid hitting the earth which eliminated all the dinosaurs, and allowed further and more complex life to be created after the event. The unexpected events were also found in the small errors of DNA which allowed them to evolve and form something even more complex. It is obvious that these events could not have been predicted in the past as there were no signs of them occurring. For example, the dinosaurs did not have enough knowledge of the incoming asteroid and about the damage it would cause. However, as David Christian mentioned, humans are the only species that have collective learning. This means that we can build upon our knowledge and create history. This is also the only reason humans have been able to learn so much about the past events in detail, as the knowledge found by people has not been lost. People have been able to use the knowledge they have developed from past events to do many things such as predicting future events. The more we know about the past events, the more we will understand if similar events come up in the future. The thresholds were described from coming from unexpected events. However, with all the knowledge gained from past events, I think humans would be able to make these events seem less unexpected. For example, if another asteroid were to hit the earth, humans would most likely be able to find out much more information about it, such as when it will hit and what the consequences of this event will be. This doesn't mean that they will be able to control the situation and prevent it, but I do think humans have a larger ability

I watched the video of the presentation "The Mathematics of History" by Jean-Baptiste Michel. I found his efforts in trying to explain parts of history using mathematics very interesting. Although I agree that historical events can often be explained by logic and relations, I feel Mr. Michel is pushing it too far by claiming that mathematics can be used to measure and explain historical forces and as a consequence potentially even be used to predict the future. Let me show what I mean by focusing on his example of frequency of wars versus number of casualties. Mr. Michel showed in his presentation that there was a logarithmic relationship between the number of wars during the last two centuries and the number of casualties in these wars. More specifically, he argued that taking the number of wars with a certain number of casualties (e.g. 1K-10K), the number of wars that were 100 times deadlier (e.g. 100K-1M), were 10 times smaller. Obviously it is difficult to argue against the fact that there is an inverse relationship between the number of casualties during a war, and the number of wars of that magnitude. After all, the vast majority of inter-state wars are relatively small in terms of casualties, and a major war like the World War II only happens once or only a few times throughout history. However, I would claim that the mathematical relation shown by Mr. Michel is more of a "snapshot" than a universal rule. Had he for instance looked at the last four centuries, rather than the last two, I am pretty sure that the mathematical relation would have been a different one, as the number of smaller conflicts would have increased, but no other major conflict like the World War II would have happened during this period. As a result, the "100 to 10" formula argued by Mr. Michel would no longer be correct. In my view the number of casualties in a war and the frequency of wars of different magnitudes are driven by a number of various parameters, and cannot

The ideas that Jean-Baptiste Michel presented are quite troubling and inaccurate. The aim on his presentation was to open the viewer's eyes to the mathematics of history, but the body of his presentation, in my opinion, did not work towards the effect of his aim. The example that he presented about the wars in the previous two centuries displaying a mathematical relationship that may be graphed does not necessarily display that mathematics plays an important role in gaining insight into history. This is a simple compilation of statistics, displayed on a graph, not an in-depth analysis of a historical event. What he is doing is narrowing down "History" to a set of numbers: Dates and casualties, which he portrays using mathematics but does not go to the lengths of what I would consider historical knowledge. This is merely a trend of occurrences, similar graphs could be drawn about the increasing population of cockroaches, but that wouldn't make it "Historical knowledge". This TED talk has not influenced my perspective that, although math may play a minor role in some aspects of history, the essence of history: the understanding of people, nations and events in the past remain an area which is alien to math. It is not as if this is a major disadvantage or problem, I believe that it is fairly normal for such a complex subject, which is heavily influenced by the interactions, beliefs and emotions of humans remains largely untouched by the rigid logic of mathematics.

After watching the TED talk, 'The Mathematics of History' by Jean-Baptiste Michel I was left quite astonished. Before this video, I hadn't ever thought in-depth about how mathematics could be used in history, to agree with what Azat has stated above, it's almost "alien" to the subject since history is about the past, and is affected by humans and their actions, whereas mathematics deals with numbers and numerical reasoning. To expand on this thought and in agreement with Michel, one of the core elements of mathematics is finding patterns in numbers, and this does indeed relate to history insofar that finding patterns in history is helpful as it might help us predict future human actions in a very vague way. This relationship gave me a new perspective on the topic as again, I had never thought about it in this way. However, I am of the opinion that Michel's presentation was extremely short and could have benefited if he expanded further, explained further and also gave us more examples. I say this because as a viewer and listener, I am very interested in this discussion as it's a new perspective for me, and listening to someone with greater knowledge about history and historical events explore deeper into it would be very interesting. I feel that Michel just gives us a small opening into this topic, and I would be very interested to see how far we could go with correlating mathematics to history in order to vaguely predict the future.

First of all, I would like to say that the main idea from this ted video is very interesting, how bringing math and historical events closer in order to understand human behavior and explain it in a logical and mathematical manner. One of the most interesting about this video was his explanation on the statistics on the number of casualties and the duration of the war and how it reflects on human behavior of perceiving quantities. However, he did not consider other factors that correlates in each war. Each war would have different factor that will explain the size of the war's causalities that I think will make his explanation on the statistic to be different. I had another problem when I was watching the video. The first formula he showed about the change in irregular verbs to regular verb was confusing. He did not explain it with an example to give a better clarity to his audience and this made me think that he is just putting an equation just to show there is a relationship between math and change in human behavior. It did not give me the certainty that it will work for each irregular verb as it has lack of explanation. Despite the lack of clarity in his formula, maybe it does work since based on his biography, he is an credible person. Despite of the few problems I had when watching the video, his idea is still valid and can be more relevant in the future when most things will become digitalize.

The presentation by Jean-Baptiste Michel sheds a new light on the issue of the role of mathematics in history. While the majority of people willingly cling on to their preconceived notion that mathematics is of no value in terms of historical knowledge, Michel argues that mathematics can be used to enhance our understanding of the past. Two support his argument, Michel even provides two examples of the application of mathematics to history. In my personal opinion, while the examples provided by Michel did demonstrate the role of mathematics in history, they did not show its importance. Sure, we now know that history is quantifiable but what Michel does not tell us is how quantifying history improves our understanding of it or why it is useful in terms of historical knowledge. So it follows that the importance of mathematics in historical knowledge is yet to be demonstrated. To put it simply, I still can't imagine history students performing calculations on their calculators in order to 'learn' history.

This TED talk gives a whole new perspective on hoe math can is not a only a logical subject but also a subject that helps understand other things like nature or culture. Obviously, I knew that math is a vital subject in our education and would help s understand other things but thins video shows why and how it is important. I agree with Baquar on how people think math has absolutely no value unless you are doing something in your carrier like engineering. I may be repeating myself here, I am intrigued by how math has different roles in one's life, in history, in culture. but as Naquib mentioned that math does show the importance of a war, at least its a start of a new Math language that will improve our understanding of everything, I realize that it is a long process and has many flaws but its a start. I have always hated math but if math is going be like I would be really interested in learning and understanding our environment.

I always thought that Mathematics was about numbers and equations put together to result in something concrete. However, after watching the TED talk video, it opened me to a whole new perspective. The idea of calculating history using mathematics is fascinating. Whats even more fascinating is how a formula was created to do so. This broadened my knowledge and perspective on what Mathematics actually was. If we can use Maths to understand history, we can also use Maths to calculate and understand things in the future. Not only that, but we can use maths to understand other aspects of our lives. This itself is very interesting to me and quite cool. I agree with Dylan, the video was relatively short compared to how gripping it was. If the video was longer, and if he provided more examples it would help me better understand the variety in what Maths can be used to understand other things.

I found this video very interesting. Combining history and mathematics is something I've never heard of before. Yes, it does bring a whole bunch of possibilities in the way we can perceive history but I don't find his examples that convincing. I feel like we need to explore this aspect in much more depth to conclude that mathematics does in fact play a role in understanding history. Another point I'd like to make is that, what if we do assume for now that mathematics is an integral part of history- so what? What are the advantages/disadvantages of perceiving history in this way? Do we 'understand' the past better by involving mathematics? Wouldn't understanding the past now become more objective than subjective( does this make history more accurate)? I'm still very interested in exploring more examples of mathematics in history but I do feel that this may bring in some disadvantages in the learning of history. To conclude, Jean-Baptiste Michel has indeed opened up a whole new perspective in the field of history but it is too early to be fully aware of the importance and consequences of this sort of thinking.

Reading through this article, I could only wonder one thing - who exactly establishes these moral expectations? According to Jeffrey Kluger, each group of individuals possess their own set of "oughts", or a set of rules and regulations that the groups follow; this characteristic was proven in a group of apes, also demonstrated in communities of human beings. In such groups of individuals, who sets the moral values? How do we know whether they are the 'right' set of morals values to follow? For example, as Kluger claims, the general rule for helping people is to help those close to home, yet ignore those far away. Is this morally justifiable? This rule states the importance of helping those who are close to you, yet neglecting those who you can't see. Surely, a man suffering next to you is equally as needy someone suffering in say, another country. Taking a utilitarian approach, we should be helping as many people in need as possible, whether on your street, or in a whole different continent. I realise that this is unrealistic: we cannot possibly hope to help every single suffering person in the world. Alas, how do we know who to help, and who to neglect? The subject of morality is based on such uneven ground that it is difficult to even establish what 'good' and 'bad' are, in terms of morality. What is good and bad may boil down to the neural activity in our amygdalae and our dorsolateral prefrontal cortices; but until we can express with confidence that the secret to morality may be within the most complicated organ of the body, we will not be able to wholly understand morality, what is 'right' and 'wrong', or even who decides what is 'right' or 'wrong'.

I think one of the more interesting ideas discussed by the Author was his meaning upon criminal courts. Since our morality ranges extensively from person to person what will happen within court cases. Are we all the same and deserve the same treatment when being prosecuted by the law? This question was raised by the Author. I believe Individuals suffering from clinical insanity and behavior issues deserve a different set of lighter punishments because of their inability to reason. However not all criminals are suffering from medical issues making a category for cold criminals. But the question that arose for me is; where is the line between being clinical insane and having an extreme side of morality? Are we one day going to be able to find the brain roots of serial murder before they actually do it? If so, is this a correct method of responding to criminal cases. With this technology or method will the police can arrest individuals even before they have committed a crime. But does having a serial murder characteristic actually make you a murderer? All these questions could one day become major topics in the world.

After reading this article, I came up with a question, "What if all the moral actions we know as a community is wrong and all the immoral actions is right?". Of course, if this was to happen, our community will be subjected to go chaos. We will end up breaking apart and losing the community itself. That is why a lot of us are often are influenced by morality gained from culture and religion. Though, one of the questions I have arrived from my statement, how do we know if our known moral values is the right one? As Jefrey Kluger said in the How We Stay Good section, people only follow the right morality establish by a group or community just to prevent them from banishment and also just to get food. In a community, something is immoral when it affects other people like the example given in the article where a group of chimpanzees in a zoo is only given food when all the chimpanzees are present, but two were not present and this affects the whole group and made their change of mood to surly. Thus, in a group we have specific moral values to benefit people and ourselves. But then, what if we come across a moral dilemma, such as the Runaway trolley, where we have to sacrifice one person for the benefit of saving five other people. Then, how do we know which moral values to consider? Then, of course a lot of us will consider the utilitarian approach and say there is more good done than harm. But killing a person is considered immoral, but it is moral when saving other people's life. People's life has become objects where one life is equals to another.

Reading through these responses, I notice a trend towards the hypothetical what ifs that often dominant ethical discussions and applications. While I genuinely applaud this tendency and feel it generally reflects a healthy, developing mind capable of critical thought and reflection, I also fear an intellectual quagmire that results in a great deal of philosophical musing and little actual action. Some of you raise relevant points situated in actual ethical schools, and this is good to see as well. Finally, I am comfortable with the argument that morality is as much a projection of human thought as it is an inherent characteristic of an action, (is an act within itself moral or immoral, or is the perception of the act what deems it so?) but that does not seem to resolve our need for a behavioral compass. The beauty of this potential conflict is that how we come to know of the inherent value of an act is equally important to the value itself.

"Sometimes we can't help it, as when we're suffering from clinical insanity and behavior slips the grip of reason." Above is a quote taken from the article 'What Makes Us Moral' by Tiffany Sharples and Alexandra Silver, in my response I would like to discuss this idea and give my own opinions and thoughts. I would like to start off explaining a little about my background because I feel it's relevant to this response due to my own bias. For a majority of my childhood (up the age of about 10) I grew up in South Africa and I was exposed to crimes which include murder, rape and theft on a daily basis. In South Africa it is common, if not an 'unspoken mandatory commodity' in all houses to have full alarm systems for all doors and windows, sometimes guard dogs, big gates and fences on top of walls to make it even more difficult to enter, and sometimes even electrical fencing around your property. With that said, and all of these security measures, the crime rate is still extremely high. This made me, personally very scared of crime and extremely against any idea that people who commit murder, rape or theft getting a 'lighter' sentence for prison time, I believe for premeditated murder or rape, death penalty should be given and for theft, a very large prison sentence. The article I have mentioned above brings up a very interesting point about what if the criminal has a mental disability or is doing these crimes without their reason in place. This really made me question one of my most moral thoughts about server punishment for criminals, more so than is given in some countries. To what extent is it justifiable for people with a mental disability to get a less severe punishment? After contemplating for a while, my opinion on this would be that even if they have a mental disability, if one was to sentence a less severe punishment, what would stop that person from doing this punishment again? I feel the conclusion to this is very situational. If a ment

What interests me most about this article is the author's discussion of the use of morality in court cases. Since the court requires a severe disability to exempt criminals from the normal punishment, it is safe to say that those courts think that everyone without a severe disability has the same moral compass. However this may not be the case and like Aleks points out, our sense of morality can differ extensively from that of others. There were clear examples of this in the article; the outrage among the delinquents upon discovering that two of the other delinquents in the treatment center had mugged an old lady. Clearly there was a difference in the sense of morality between the two who mugged the old lady and the others who were outraged. My favorite example of this differing sense of morality though comes in the form of the trolley dilemma discussed in the article. While 85% of people said they would not push a man in front of a train to save the lives of five other people, 15% of people said they would push the man. So clearly there's a differing sense of morality between people. And this brings me to my point; the use of morality in courts. Would you punish someone for not saving the lives of five others at the expense of one? Or would you punish someone for pushing one man in front of train to save five others? If the statistics collected in the survey represented judges and juries then you would have an 85% chance of being found not guilty in court if you did not push the man, and you would have a 15% chance of being found guilty if you didn't push the man. Clearly there is an inconsistency, so is morality an exact enough science to be used in court cases?

While I understand everything (not in it's entirety ;) ) and have many thoughts to share, I struggle with putting these thoughts into words, so bear with me! ☺ Hareth, I'm incredibly excited by the notion you put forward regarding our extent of knowing. If we don't understand anything in it's entirety (which I believe, too) then we don't know much, do we? If we said we knew nothing, we would know that, so like you said it would be a paradox. I find it fascinating. I'm consistently reminded of a scene from this book I'm reading (or attempting to read!) called Invitation to a Beheading. In the text there's a reference to an extremely talented violinist who plays on a street corner. He plays this incredibly beautiful piece, but no one is there to hear it. Did it actually happen? He played the piece so it would be a truth, but if no one is there to appreciate it, does it lose its integrity? Does a truth lose its value if it's not immediately recognized as being a truth? As for why you should believe the truth, Hareth, I think beliefs make up a person. If we believe in nothing then what are we? It doesn't matter what you believe, but I think beliefs are the driving force behind people, they give us something to fight for and nurture. It gives us our 'humanity' if you will.

Hmm this is a tough one, nevertheless tally ho. What I obtained from the article is that not what we believe in is important but as long as we can reinforce it. This to me is the epitome of the way life is right now. From international politics to marketing a brand, it's all what one believes in and how they can reaffirm it to either themselves or others. But what I ask is how can it be that our views stand on the same equal foundation yet we can still argue amongst each other? If they were on the same level then surely we would be capable of seeing that we each have our own faults and success? If we deem ourselves as smart as we seem how come we haven't recognized this fact and mobilized onto it? In the article it states the need for a civil common currency in order to exist with different ideas. Yet as we can see in our world today that isn't working out as nicely. Perhaps the individual is more influential then we really presume.

Overall as Hareth mentioned this Article was good however I believe that the width the author chose to explain this topic was simply to narrow. The writer does a good job connecting the idea between scientific creationism and religious creationism and explains their issues within themselves that seem to be quite vital. However the author talking about the "skeptical challenge" raised some questions within my mind as how can something so vital for proving debate points, not only the creationism issue, but within political means go on within a spectrum of possibilities? Is this fair for societies? If we humans need to justify our epistemic principles from a common point of view because we need shared epistemic principles in order to even have a common point of view, wouldn't this mean that the religion is a book telling you how to follow a bunch of point of views the same with our science books? And why are we asking ourselves how the world was created? Shouldn't the real question be how did something come from nothing? Seriously how it is actually possible that all this came from nothing… it only breaks a few major laws in science.

I really liked this video. I found it really interesting how Thelma Golden displays two examples by two artists (Leon Golub & Robert Colescott), One woman's perspective was that the picture by Robert Cole Scott portrayed how black people were represented and the picture on the right by Leon Golub portrayed the dignity that was needed. In addition, she assumed that the first picture was by a white artist, whereas the second one was by a black artist, when in reality it was the opposite. This also shows how an art work like this can be misinterpreted, thus leads us to wrong information. As a result, we base our judgements from our interpretation. This way we can also form perceptions of people from various cultures.

After reading this article, it seems that a lot of the compliments or questions we ask or give today are quite meaningless. Perhaps it's our duty to ask such questions like the reporter or the waiter incident, or perhaps we do it just to socialize. However I truly feel that not all compliments and questions we ask are meaningless; sometimes it's our obligation to ask or compliment however sometimes it is not and the compliment of question is full of meaning. Its really how you portray said comment or question, the attitude you have towards saying the compliment or asking a question determines the meaning behind it.

I disagree with the idea that we 'talk to no purpose' to some extent. We say all these 'meaningless' things like " hey how are you?" or "what's up?" while walking across the hall; you don't even need to stop to respond, but it's the acknowledgment that holds a purpose. The seemingly futile encouragements or compliments that we say on a daily basis do make a difference; they have the ability to boost another person's confidence or mood (which is why we have pep talks before games). Saying these 'pointless' comments shows that you took notice of that person or that you care about them. Sometimes even one small encouragement can instantly cheer someone up. Thus, although these comments we say on a daily basis may hold no meaning on the surface, but they have an effect on a deeper, more emotional level.

I understand what the author means by his interpretation of these exchanges as "empty". However, in my opinion, such "empty" exchanges are not necessarily as "empty" for the people voicing them. When a person, for example, wishes their friend "good luck" it may not only imply a sincere hope that his friend will do well in the given challenge, but also fills the hole in the persons mind which would have existed had he not wished his friend luck. A clearer explanation of this would be that if a friend of ours was sick and we did not wish them to get well, we feel as if we have acted inconsiderately by not providing our friend with the support to get over the illness, even if the friend does not consider your words as particularly beneficial. It fills a void inside us, makes us feel comfortable with ourselves, that we made an attempt to contribute to the well being of a friend. It may be perceived as a way for an individual to build character, or to reinforce the character that the particular individual exposes him/her to be. Therefore, I consider that although these exchanges may seem "empty" at a social level, they are completely opposite on the individual's inner-self, even on an emotional level. The question I would raise to the author would be: what exchanges would not be considered "empty"? How would social interaction change if such "empty" exchanges were deemed unnecessary by society?

This article brought up an interesting point! In our daily conversations, some of the words or phrases we often use don't have much meaning behind them, but they still come so naturally to us. We tend to say these words because society has influenced us to do so. We feel like its custom to say these words and if we don't then we aren't a part of society. Whether it's a concierge saying "Hope you liked your stay!" or a cashier saying "Thanks for shopping!" how often do they really mean it? Or are they just saying these empty words out of habit? However, words with meaning or without meaning still have an impact on us. If the concierge or the cashier hadn't said that then it wouldn't have the same impact on me and I wouldn't feel as delighted as to visit them again. Sometimes these words are necessary in our conversations even if they don't mean much to us. At times, it does make us feel better but we usually don't realize or even appreciate it. To conclude, although these words may be "empty" or "unnecessary" it does play a vital role in our daily conversations and we often fail to realize it.

Perhaps from the examples given in the article meaningless talking would seem to be, superficially, a frivolous endeavor as it achieves no effective impact or change that would provoke an immediate response or understanding - it's just pointless iteration of something we already know or tacitly understand. Is this all just a trivial speech etiquette or habit? I think, however that it's important for talks like this to be practiced and used on day to day basis: they provide a means of affirmation and sureness to what we say or hear. Additionally, "empty" talking in the form of compliments and greetings instills both short term and long terms effects. Compliments in the form of 'good job' or 'well done' gives a motivational and positive boost on the receiver, despite the fact that such statements would possibly not lead to any further discussion, it serves its purpose well and should be practiced. Along with greetings, they also perpetuate a sort of "friendliness" or positive relationship between people in the long run; a simple "hello" or "how are you" could make a person's day all the better.

This is quite interesting, however I don't really believe in it. I feel that we are looking at this in mostly forms of media. Some people don't really want to hear the questions and answers of the person they admire or watch on TV; they just literally want to see the person talk. For example when celebrities get interviewed on the red carpet, we as an audience don't really care about the movie they're going to be starring in next but we just tend to look at them and their body language. I feel that the relation this article is trying to make towards sports stars and celebrities might be different because of how we view them. I watch interviews on the red carpet just to look at my favorite celebrities, see how they respond to questions, and then immediately move on. However when it comes to people it might be a different story. I think that, often when we say things like 'good morning" or 'drive well' we actually mean it. However we tend not to stare at the person in the eye and have some sort of emotional bond with them while we tell them such things. Maybe we don't do that because it's more customary than anything, but then again me mean it. I also think that there is a difference in the way you pay complements to people. I feel that if you really would want to complement someone, you wouldn't tend to use something totally generic like 'you're cool!' or 'good job', but instead we would use phrases specific to what we like about that person, and I think that makes all the difference.