PH2110/GEM2006 and GEM1004FC

Logic/ PH2110/ GEM2006

What is it about: Logic is basically the study of the laws of truth. In this module you learn how to distill complex English statements down to mathematical formula so that you can determine its truth value. What makes it difficult is the complexity of language: whenever we say something we usually carry many different meanings and this gives logicians a pretty hard job interpreting it.

Lectures: slow-moving, focusing on the basics, but the lecturer occasionally throws in some interesting philosophical bits that you might just miss out on if you doze off. But generally boring because who likes hearing two hours of variations upon "Snow is white, therefore there is snow"? The textbook is a useful complement to the lectures, if you find yourself lost just go back to the text.

Tutorials are very, very helpful. For me, at least. I find them more interesting than lectures because with tutorials you get down to the more complex and weird questions. I have a good tutor and very pro-active classmates who are not afraid to contradict each other. There are no participation points, only attendance points, but it's always good to go prepared (though you probably know this already).

Quizzes: straightforward, but gets harder throughout the semester. Predicate logic is the most confusing by far because it gives you so many equally valid ways to interpret a single statement. My advice would be to keep reading and looking up sample problems. With logical interpretation, as is with things like language and translation studies, it always helps to be exposed to as many examples as you can so are prepared to interpret any weird-looking statement that pops up in the final.


Reason and Persuasion/ GEM1004FC

What is it about: However you may infer from the title, it is not about how to argue better, how to think rationally, or even how to make rational choices. This is more a module about personal ethics and understanding different ethical viewpoints. Why this should or shouldn't matter is up to you.

Lectures, readings: All prepared beforehand on the Coursera website. The content is basically three dialogues by Plato, so you will be doing some ancient Greek philosophy. There are also prescribed books about moral living and interpersonal relationships.

Essay: How to solve an interpersonal dilemma. You are to propose a principle and show how and why it works, and why you think it is the best.

Tutorial/discussions: The Plato tutorials are informative, the tutors take you on a cursory page-by-page walkthrough of the text, kind of like those Shakespeare spoon-feeding lit classes I used to go through back in St Nicks. Though no harm in pointing out that there are some very good Youtube and iTunes U vids out there that do the same, but with deeper and perhaps more formal analysis. No participation points but you need to clock attendance. Also you need to post on the forum a certain number of times, which shouldn't be a problem as long as you know how to write and respond to critiques or arguments by your classmates.

Final: Open book, and apparently while the readings will definitely help, there are people can do well without reading one line of Plato. Said by the lecturer himself. It will be LSAT-type MCQ's testing your critical and logical thinking except the excerpts are from Plato, not some obscure literary or social sciences journal.

get ready for rant

I did not learn anything in tutorial. I would either a) say the "normal thing" and get questioned mercilessly for how "proper" or "mainstream" it is or (almost) b) say what I really think (see next para), and get everyone looking at you weird because it's obvious this person don't give a shit.

I really do think that most of these problems are not meaningful to us in any way. What do advice columns have to do with ethics? What happened to the comprehensive and coherent long arguments in textbooks and journals? Can someone explain to me why we are studying something on the Internet and actually writing a paper about it? So what if girl hates her sister in law for being a tight control freak? Or if some guy wants his girlfriend to stop falling asleep during sex? If this guy comes up to me and I did not know better, I'm gonna say are you joking, I have actual problems to deal with. I get the feeling a lot of these people write to advice columns for the sake of feeling better, to have their own drama moment. I spent three years reading actual biological science and seeing it in application, of course I'd have problems with these moral, abstract thingies!

Blessedly made it to the halfway point of the appallingly thick Happiness Hypothesis, which I find by now a pain to read in comparison to the lighter and more condensed things like Daniel Goleman's ____ Intelligence series.

squiggly lines

I learnt to read electrocardiograms! In a very basic sort of way. I didn't know how to diagnose myself when we found that my ECG was a mash of squiggly lines, that my heart rate rises and falls with my breathing, and that my Q-T is sometimes higher than my QRS. Although that was after I drank an entire can of coffee milk as an experiment. Heart rate became extremely irregular and sort of skipped all over the place. Which frightened no one, so I freaked out internally (yep that made my reading worse). My group were more concerned that our results wouldn't conform to predicted results. No one asked about my apparently abnormal heart. Although I honestly wouldn't know what is wrong with it either, but.

spicy tomato roller coasters

Today was a free day and I spent most of it being a pleasant hermit. Played around with Disney mashups with my cousin, who's staying with us for a while, and we found a way to sing Second Star To The Right and I See The Light TOGETHER. Simultaneously. With the same chords, and it doesn't even sound weird, it sounds freaking amazing.

Then went out on a whim, and came back with sea salt chips, almond pocky crush, maple syrup caramel corns, Picola sticks, Quattro cookies and spicy tomato flavored roller coasters! Which sucked. The snacks are not to help me study, I just thought, in a stroke of the most random kind of inspiration, that snacks might help me tone down my brain's negative affective style by feeding it more positive experiences. Something I learned from the very verbose Happiness Hypothesis, of which I swear this latest chapter on gratification and vengeance is an ode to fifty years of trashy pop psychology:

Reciprocity is like a magic wand that can clear your way through the jungle of social life. Reciprocity is an all-purpose relationship tonic. Used properly, it strengthens, lengthens and rejuvenates social ties.

I found the piano shaped mousepad I liked, which is ironic tribute to the fact that I missed the registration deadline for my ABRSM exam by a few hours. Happier was I when cousin came home with a box of glazed Krispy Kremes, now I can go to bed forgiving the universe.

what is it that diuretics do again?

I slept like a pig and woke up an hour before my logic tutorial. I am amazed that my sleep-deprived brain managed to remember it was still on the very moment I opened my eyes. Still surprised that I made it to class before my tutor. We did logic trees, which are sort of interesting in that nerdy way, and did I tell you about this annoying kid in my class who loudly interrupts the tutor every fifteen minutes? Well, I kind of admire this kid.

Then pharmacology lecture, which I had to be absolutely awake for, and I did not have a shred of breakfast or coffee since this morning. Never did know how to take care of myself on Tuesdays. But I pulled through nevertheless, and was at least grateful for professor's warning at the beginning that diuretics was a tricky topic. My meningeal arteries are still throbbing.

Read another chapter of Jonathan Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis on the train, the gist of which seems to be, "it's okay to imagine you're superman" and I must say this latest chapter unsettles me for some reason. Maybe it's because he chose to end it by endorsing Prozac. Aw, who am I to judge the man and his love for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I mean, they only alter your nerves permanently and change the wiring in your emotional hindbrain, that is all. No harm in that -.-