Erasmus recap :)

So today I’m posting my final reflection and it will be based on what I understand, learned, and realize and how it can be useful in my daily life.

Emergence

The main thing that I learned in this course is that everything works as a system, so let’s see what is a system?  In its simplest form, a system is any collection of components that interact, are connected, or are dependent upon one another to build a sophisticated, cohesive whole that serves a certain function. The most important thing to keep in mind is that all the components are somehow connected and dependent on one another. Without these connections, our system is nothing more than a collection of parts. Moreover, systems have also a functional role. In fact, each system serves a function that distinguishes it from other systems and gives it cohesion. In contrast, the goal is not a feature of individual components but rather of the system as a whole. An automobile, for instance, serves society by providing a convenient method of transportation. This function is inherent to the car as a whole and cannot be isolated to the tires, the motor, or any other component.

In addition, the key word of this class was emergence and at the beginning I wasn’t really aware of the meaning of this term. Then, with the definition of Kurt Lewin, that state that “the whole is not ‘more’ than the sum of its parts, but it has different properties. statement should be: The whole is different from the sum of its parts. In other words, there does not exist a superiority of value of the whole. Both whole and parts are equally real… the whole has definitive properties of its own”, I was able to have a better understanding of this term.  In fact, according to the emergence theory, life is found not in its parts but in the collective emergent properties of the whole they create. Although life is a profound emergent phenomenon, its fundamental holism and emergence are not at all mysterious. A collection of molecules either has or does not have the ability to catalyze its own formation and reproduction from simple food molecules. It’s the opposite of another philosophical term that we saw which is reductionism. The idea of reductionism holds that human behavior may be understood by dissecting it into its smaller constituent pieces. This idea states that in order to comprehend how our systems function, must pay special attention to the most basic components that make them up. I will tend to agree with the second theory that we have seen. Let’s try to illustrate why? For example, reductionist can say that we were able to run away from spiders because our fear centers triggered a stress response that helped us run faster. However, it can’t explain why we were afraid of the spiders in the first place. So, for me we won’t have a real understanding of what is really happening.

So what I’ve learned from this concept of emergence is that we could try to see thing more in depth and pay more attention to our actions and behavior as it can have irreversible consequences. We can see for example with our planet (in the next section we will take more in depth about human impacts of environment), how small actions can lead to huge consequences. In fact, throwing a small plastic bag can seems to be not that important for some but we should not forget that we are 8 billion of earth so if we all adopt these types of irresponsible behaviors, we will be losing our planet.

Anthropocene

Another term that I have been able to discover during this course is “Anthropocene”. The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. When did this began?  A popular theory is that it began at the start of the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, when human activity had a great impact on carbon and methane in Earth’s atmosphere. Others think that the beginning of the Anthropocene should be 1945. This is when humans tested the first atomic bomb, and then dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The resulting radioactive particles were detected in soil samples globally. In 2016, the Anthropocene Working Group agreed that the Anthropocene is different from the Holocene and began in the year 1950 when the Great Acceleration, a dramatic increase in human activity affecting the planet, took off. The planet it trying to cope with human impacts what is termed “ecosystem homeostasis”. Homeostasis is the process of regulation by which the body maintains the different constants of the internal environment within the limits of normal values. It can also be a characteristic of an ecosystem that resists changes and maintains a state of equilibrium. When it’s applied to the ecosystem, we refer to the “Gaia hypothesis”. The Gaia hypothesis, often referred to as the Gaia theory or the Gaia principle, postulates that all living things on Earth, both organic and inorganic, are intricately linked to form a single, self-regulating complex system that preserves the circumstances for life. The scientific study of the Gaia hypothesis focuses on studying how the biosphere and the evolution of living forms contribute to the stability of the earth’s climate, the ocean’s salinity, the atmosphere’s oxygen content, and other elements that make the planet habitable in a favored equilibrium. However, if the phenomena of Anthropocene become worst, the biosphere of the earth won’t be able to maintain any equilibrium at all.

Human and AI

Furthermore, another topic that I found really interesting was Artificial Intelligence (AI).  which is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. There is still controversial opinion about this topic as we don’t know if it will lead to better world or to a chaotic one. In fact, AI can have lots of advantages such as diminish human error, facilitate decision making, reduce risks or better work flow. However, for me it is scary as the robot is one example of artificial intelligence in use, and it is replacing jobs and raising unemployment (in a few cases). As a result, some assert that there is always a possibility of job loss as a result of chatbots and robots taking the place of people. For instance, in certain more technologically advanced countries like Japan, robots are regularly used to replace human resources in industrial enterprises (this statement is not always the case). Another disadvantage of AI is that it has no ethic, morality and ethics are significant human traits that can be challenging to include into an AI. In fact, numerous people are worried that as AI develops quickly, humans will one day become completely exterminated by it. The AI singularity is this point in time. My post about this class was named “Blurry future” as for me, it illustrates well how AI is. We don’t really know if it will enhance our future or destroy it.

On the whole, what I learned was mainly that most things are connected to each other and that even when something seems to be working on its own, it isn’t. In fact, there is somehow always a hidden network.

I found this movie really interesting (in terms of content only because to be honest it was really difficult for me to watch the 9 parts at once) and it is somehow a combination of the different topics that we work on this semester.

For me, it is true that you cannot examine any one of our global issues in isolation while attempting to comprehend it or resolve it because of their interconnectivity. No one of the challenges we face today can be resolved by repairing individual parts. It is important for us to change the way we perceive the world because all the issues are really just parts of a larger crisis. We must change our perspective since what we are doing right now only moves the problem to a different area. It can be seen that, many problems in our society are fixed in a superficial way, where they would rather make consequences disappear temporarily rather than trying to prevent issue at the origin of the consequence to happen. Furthermore, no matter how much we try to separate things in comprehend and analyze them, we won’t find any effective solution until we are able to truly understand everything as a vast network of small connections that form larger ones.

 

In today’s class, we spoke about artificial intelligence (AI), which is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. There is still controversial opinion about this topic as we don’t know if it will lead to better world or to a chaotic one.

It is true that AI contributes to many advances in medical fields and is helping a lot inà improving the health systems. In addition, it also improves work efficiency and therefore is also reducing the duration of time to accomplish a task in comparison to humans.

The fact that AI can replace humans is scary for me. Nowadays, the number of unemployed individuals is still high despite the fact that there are more people graduating. What I want to illustrate is that AI is not useful to tackle some issues faced by society as there are more and more human jobs that are performed by robots. I wonder how it will be in few years though…

In today’s post, I want to focus mainly on two key elements that we saw in the 6^th class: homeostasis and complexity.

Homeostasis is the process of regulation by which the body maintains the different constants of the internal environment within the limits of normal values. It can also be a characteristic of an ecosystem that resists changes and maintains a state of equilibrium. Moreover, complexity is the state of having many parts that are hard to understand or figure out. It can clearly be seen that homeostasis has a close link with complexity.

How?

Homeostasis occurs when the equilibrium of something is disturb, this can result from the complexity (which thus results into changes) of the state inside body. It can thus be said that somehow homeostasis is a solution to tackle changes. This term is applied when taking about the body, but don’t we also use this mechanism in our day-to-day life? (Trying every time to maintain stability to live in a rational way)

Of course, we are, this can be seen by the process of cognitive dissonance. The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes.  People attempt to relieve this tension in different ways, such as modifying their beliefs.

Furthermore, with the gaia hypothesis (if I understood it clearly), we can see that the ecosystems also have this “instinct” of autoregulation.

That’s it for today’s post, can’t wait for next class 😊

People’s view of the world differs depending on the individual. As we know, some have a reductionist approach to the world, while others, on the contrary, put emphasis mainly on the connections between different things.

What are my thoughts on this?

For me, most humans tend to focus only on the “parts” without necessarily realizing that everything is connected. A “small” action can turn out to have a huge impact. There are lots of examples to illustrate this, such as climate change, deforestation, pollution, etc. These things show how “small” actions from several individuals can have long-term consequences.

Of course, this can also happen in day-to-day interactions with humans. That’s why, before saying something to someone else, think twice. Your words and actions have greater impacts that you think, and some of them are irrevocable.

In this class we have seen two philosophical theory that are opposed to each other: Reductionism and Emergence. The idea of reductionism holds that human behavior may be understood by dissecting it into its smaller constituent pieces. This idea states that in order to comprehend how our systems function, we must pay special attention to the most basic components that make them up.

On the other hand, according to the emergence theory, life is found not in its parts but in the collective emergent properties of the whole they create. Although life is a profound emergent phenomenon, its fundamental holism and emergence are not at all mysterious. A collection of molecules either has or does not have the ability to catalyze its own formation and reproduction from simple food molecules.

Furthermore, I will tend to agree with the second theory that we have seen. Let’s try to illustrate why? For example, reductionist can say that we were able to run away from spiders because our fear centers triggered a stress response that helped us run faster. However, it can’t explain why we were afraid of the spiders in the first place. So, for me we won’t have a real understanding of what is really happening.

That’s it for today’s post. Can’t wait for the next class to see more theory. (However, I hope we won’t be in this tiny class again haha)

To be honest, for me this 3^rd class was a little bit difficult to understand. It was a kind of blurry and I”ll try to explain myself. One of the best things about the system theory class is that we can express ourselves and give our opinion at any time. However, I really think that if the class was more “straight forward” and concrete, it would be better. Each opinion was of course subjective and each of them seems right (so every time the words keep changing categories). That’s the problem, at the end I was not able to really understand what was really considered as “a system” or “a collection”.

In this part, I’ll try to illustrate how I would define a system. The definition we saw is that a system is “any group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent parts.” For me, it can be compared to a chess game. This is exactly what the notion of interdependence expresses. As in the game of chess, any action performed in relative independence represents a blow on the social chessboard, which infallibly triggers a backlash from another individual. That’s it for today’s post. See you in the next class 😊

I found this 2^nd class interesting because once again we all had to answer one question and there were so many different answers.

For me, I will describe home as being my country of birth because I have so many memories there. All the laughs, tears, parties, and I think the most important thing that still makes me feel connected to this place; is that my family. I grew there and even though I didn’t live there anymore, I still think it is a place that means a lot to me.

However, while discussing with some other students, I realized that “home” is not always the country where you were born but it is where you decide it to be.

I think that’s it for today’s post, I’m very happy that I was able to share something that really to me with other people. Can’t wait for the next class! 😊

At the beginning of the class, I was not able to make links between what we were discussing in class. Afterwards, it all makes sense and I realized how everything was interrelated/ interconnected.

This made me realized how all our actions and our words can impact not only the person in front of us but can lead to a “chain” of actions. I think this will be very helpful for me because now I pay more attention about how I act and what I say to others because I’m aware that there will always be consequences (which can be positive or negative).

Moreover, I really enjoyed when we did the “group work” because it was interesting to see the point of view of other people. All students attended the same class, but everyone experienced it differently, that’s incredibleee!! What I also found amazing was that we were all from different countries and that life brought us together here and I’m really grateful for that. This was for me like “a new beginning” because we don’t know each other so we don’t have a subjective opinion about each other, and I think this is what facilitate interactions during Erasmus.

In this part, I wanted to explain the title of today’s post “out of my comfortzone”, for me it is difficult to express my thoughts and emotions (and even more difficult it in English haha). I am sure that writing on this blog every week will help me to deal and work on this.

That’s it for today’s post and I can’t wait for the next class 😊

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