Visual Riddles as Metaphor
Perspective changes everything. In the following riddles, how we look at the images changes what we see. Your Definition Argument is your chance to frame the way your readers see the component terms of your premise.
Define Fairness.
Does “fairness” mean giving everyone 1) the same amount, or 2) what they have earned, or 3) what they need, or 4) what they deserve, or 5) whatever it would take to make everyone equal?
Or does it mean something else? In your paper, it means what you say it means. For 1000 words, you are the Boss of the Language.
Spots Turn Green or Disappear
If you follow the light grey spot around the circle for 30 seconds to one minute, you will notice that the other spots will eventually turn green.
But if you stare at the cross in the middle for the exact same time, the spots around the circle will disappear.
Named after Paul Troxler, the Swiss physician and philosopher found that the brain ignores visual scenes that don’t change.
Lines Curve when you Look Away
What if . . . all the lines are actually curved, but you can focus your readers’ attention on just the portion of your topic that you can render as logical, predictable, right-angle intersections? It won’t be easy to keep their eyes from wandering. Omit needless words.
Clockwise or Counterclockwise? Neither.
If the image moves clockwise (raised foot moves from right to left), force it to move counterclockwise, and vice versa. You can do both by changing your perspective on what you’re seeing. But remember, it’s not moving at all. It’s just a series of still images shown in sequence that our brains interpret as motion. We’re hard-wired to impose meaning wherever we look. Good essays help us recognize the connections between data points.
Mechanics
We may spend some time today reviewing Citation Mechanics. I notice this morning that 10 of you have posted Replies to the Citation 1 Exercise “The Daniel Flath” demonstration.
A Citation Model is also available for your reference and study: the Citation 2, CDC Model.
At the same link, you’ll also find a more complicated Exercise, the “Money Is Fiction” exercise in which you’ll cite the book’s author, or the author of the book review, or both.
Finally, I’ve deconstructed a student response to the “Money is Fiction” exercise in excruciating detail. (This is spectator sport for those really interested in citation excellence.)
Followup: PTSD Claims Advice
If you’re considering revising your PTSD Claims post for a grade improvement, click through here to a breakdown of a single sentence from the text that analyzes the value of several claims in excruciating detail.
Definitional/Categorical Unit
A White Paper
You’ve been collecting your sources into your Annotated Bibliography (Proposal+5) post. I’ve been doing the same for my research into the topic of The Eradication of Polio. As I gather those sources, I interact with them in several ways, 1) by Purposefully Summarizing them, 2) by organizing them loosely into sections, 3) by trying out Introductions and 4) Practice Hypotheses, 5) by linking to them so they’ll be easier to find later, and so on.
Let’s take a look. You might want to incorporate some of these practices into your Bibliography. It’s a good way to memorialize your best ideas before you forget them.
A Model Definition Argument
- Link to Your Professor’s Model Definition Essay, “Political Paralysis”
- The argument is categorical.
- It provides an answer to the question, “Does polio belong to the category of eradicable diseases?”
In-Class Exercise
- During my presentation of “Political Paralysis,” leave a Reply to indicate whether or not the illustration helps you understand the purpose of the Definition/Categorical argument.
Definition Workshop
Let’s lay out the parameters for: A Protected Class that Deserves Heightened Scrutiny
The Premise:
This class is “Presence Required,” but some students will be excused from having to attend in person. As authors of a Definition/Categorical argument, we’re in charge of establishing what characteristics qualify students as members of the “protected class.”
- What types of students will be automatically excused?
- What characteristics do those students share?
- Do the qualifying students belong to any particular category(ies)?
- Analyze the results
- What underlying values support our conclusions about who should and who should not be excused from class?
- Notice that we have considered very specific cases, and evaluated them to find underlying similarities or categories.
- Moving from the specific to the general, we find ourselves making moral or ethical claims about fairness that expose our basic social beliefs.
- Can we find the solution that responds to our shared values?
The Professional Version
- The “Protected Class” Model
- The editors of the New York Times defines a crucial constitutional term: protected class that deserves heightened scrutiny.
- Includes a brief In-Class or Take-Home Exercise
- In class today, leave a comment on the Protected Class post.
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
-Riddle: perspective changes everything. 5% of people are going into your writing agreeing a tiny bit and reading it with an open mind. They want to get persuaded or learn something new. Try to change the reader’s perspective when they are in the middle of the topic.
-Fairness: is up to the person because it can be determined differently. Make sure when writing you understand the difference between fairness and the determination of it. It is being equal with each other or giving something to someone in need.
-When you keep your readers’ attention they focus on the square. If you put in a lot of nonsense then the readers will get uninterested and wonder about something that you are not trying to help them understand or see. A great argument can change a reader’s perspective.
-Make sure the claims that you make are detailed so that the reader can understand what you are trying to describe. This makes the reader not confused and easier to understand.
-Writers do the thinking and readers do the reading. The readers just do the arguing and they don’t really follow anything. They just follow how the writing goes. The writer puts his thoughts into patterns and writes an organized paper.
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Nice work, RavensFan
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Where you start determines how far someone can take you in 1000 words. Our audience is the group of people that would be open to our hypothesis because they aren’t in the agree or disagree camp. That is our target audience.
Our readers are trying to form their opinions while they are reading.
The job is to change the perspective of the people who are already on one side of the argument.
One way to define fairness is that everyone gets the same amount of whatever they want. However, is equivalency fair? The definition of fairness is arguable.
When we keep our reader’s attention, we can get them to see what we want them to see that will continue to keep their attention. Not holding their attention could cause the opposite of what the writer was trying to accomplish.
We only have 1000 words to keep our readers attention.
Some more exercises and resources are linked on the class agenda page for today that we can utilize to work on our understanding of mechanics if we need them.
The grades for the PTSD claims assignment can be changed and improved.
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Beautifully stated, ILoveMyDog.
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-Perspective changes everything, where you start is where someone can take you in a thousand words, Professor Hodges claims. There are only a small number of people who are open to perspective, and those are the best people to write to. That is due to opening their eyes and giving them a new perspective on an idea, even though it is possible that you will not change their mind.
-Fairness example: Is it fair that in the class everyone gets something? Is it fair that people get different amounts of something? It all depends on what you think is fair. Fair could mean that everyone has an equal chance, gets an equal amount, or they get what they have earned, need, or deserve.
-We looked at different optical illusions which demonstrated how when we keep the reader’s attention, we need to get them to see the argument as long as you hold their attention. In the optical illusion we saw dots disappear, and straight lines turned into curves, and these made us focused and paying attention which is what we need to do with our readers.
-We learned proper mechanics and went over our examples of the quotes that we had to fix. I have further learned about when to lowercase and capitalize words and to put periods inside quotation marks.
-The white paper taught me how to collect sources, read sources and then create an essay. The white paper example, “Why We Will Always Have Polio” by Professor Hodges was written to inform us about this disease which can paralyze people. The question is can we fully get rid of Polio.
-Never start an essay with a rhetorical question.
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Regarding Definition arguments, it’s your job and your privilege to Define Fairness “for the sake of this paper.”
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– The Perspective of something changes everything and where you start determines how far someone can take you in 1,000 words. The audience can vary from “I completely disagree with you” to “I completely agree with you. “ There’s a small % of people who are open to new perspectives or new to the topic you’re presenting, those are the needed people to accomplish your 1,000-word works. The purpose of writing is to change the perspective of the readers.
– Defining fairness: “Everyone gets the same amount”, is giving the equivalence fair? If people start receiving what they’ve earned, it will cause a discussion on why they get what they get. In our paper, be the boss of the language displayed.
The professor showed the importance of perspective and keeping the readers’ attention with the use of motion imagery and different optical illusions. Getting and keeping the attention of readers is beneficial in persuading them reader to take on the idea we present to them.
– If you let your readers get distracted from where to look, they start questioning what you haven’t already addressed.
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I love this:
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1)Perspective:
Audience Diversity: Recognize the varied viewpoints within our readership, spanning from disagreement to agreement, with a receptive minority open to new ideas.
Receptive Minority: Identify the importance of targeting open-minded individuals who are willing to consider alternative perspectives, as they hold the potential for transformative engagement.
2)Fairness:
Subjectivity and Complexity: Highlight the nuanced nature of fairness, which can be interpreted as either equality—where everyone receives the same treatment—or equity—where resources are distributed based on individual needs and circumstances.
Writer’s Responsibility: Emphasize the writer’s duty to navigate the complexity of fairness with clarity and precision, ensuring that language reflects the multifaceted interpretations of the concept.
3)Engagement and Attention:
Captivating the Reader: Stress the importance of crafting compelling narratives and vivid imagery to captivate reader attention from the outset, guiding them through a captivating journey of thought.
Preventing Distractions: Address the challenge of maintaining reader focus by steering the narrative with precision, avoiding tangential thoughts or superfluous details that may derail the reader’s understanding or engagement.
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Holy crap, Batman! You are so good:
and:
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– When you write an essay, there are three specific groups of readers. A group will completely agree with your argument from the beginning, for this group, you must give them a little information that comforts them. The other group will disagree with your argument from the beginning, for this group any information that is presented to them will challenge their opinion. But there is another group that is in the middle of these two groups and they are your ideal readers. These few people in the middle are either confused about which side they should take or they know absolutely nothing about the issue you are trying to address. And we must lead them on the path where they can decide which group they belong to.
– Perspective changes everything. How you view things matters.
– Define fairness, giving people what they deserve or giving to everyone equally? Never take for granted what fairness really means because there will always be circumstances that will challenge its true meaning.
– When writing an essay, our goal is not to deceive readers but to get their attention. Keep their attention exactly where it needs to be and address any possible doubts they may have, as this will prevent them from wandering elsewhere and losing their attention.
– Writers are the ones who guide readers to possible conclusions. Readers simply react and follow the path shown to them. As writers, we can brainstorm and we can define whatever we want. The challenging part is organizing our thoughts, ideas, and evidence in an essay with limited word capacity.
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Somehow you find the time in class to construct these sweet little essays, ILoveBees. You’ve had a long stretch of 4/3 grades all the way back to JAN 17. Time for me to acknowledge your quality and consistency. Don’t let it go to your head:
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-Visual riddles as metaphors:Perspective changes everything. Where someone starts is what determines where that person can go with what they are doing. There are always people that will listen and people who will not listen. However, there are some small amount of people that will listen and care about the argument made and will take in the knowledge that the person has given them in the argument. Some people think they know what they know and don’t want their mind changed. No matter the argument those people believe that it doesn’t matter and their opinion will not be swayed by anything. How images are looked at can change what is seen.
-Define fairness: Fairness can mean many different things. It is not easy to define and one’s perspective can be different then another persons. It could mean giving everyone the same amount, what they have earned, what they need, what people deserve, or whatever it would take to make everyone equal.
-Spots turn green or disappear: If a person knows the reality of the image, they will not be able to see it for long. Distractions prevent reality from being seen. When looking at different things in the image, different outcomes occur.
-Lines curve when you look away: Readers can have their attention held when told to look at a specific thing in an argument. If the readers get distracted they may start to wonder and find curves or problems in the argument. The reader may find spots where a certain topic is not addressed if the readers gets distracted.
-Clockwise or counter-clockwise: The image is still but the viewer views it as moving and can make it move in any direction the person wants. A good argument or essay allows a writer to get readers out of their comfort zone or they can change the readers perspective.
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-Eagles fan
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These are some of your best Notes yet, EaglesFan. Very thoughtful and thorough.
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Some readers go into your writing either already agreeing or disagreeing
Your audience is the 5% who are open to nuance and new perspectives
We haven’t defined fairness, it could mean everyone gets the same, or everyone gets how much it takes to make them the same, or something else
The green dots disappear because when you are distracted you cant see the stuff around you
You want your reader to focus on the square in the center, if you talk about nonsense they will see the curves in the corner
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Nice work. 🙂
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The majority of readers are going to have preconceived notions (agreeing or disagreeing) about what they’re about to read. Your target audience, your ideal readers, are the ones that don’t have an opinion or are uneducated on the topic.
You know what reality is, but you can’t keep hold of that when someone else is distracting you.
When you keep your readers attention, you can hold their attention on the square. That’s the goal at least, to keep the reader attentive to the square.
You can talk yourself into the opposite based on perspective. That is the point to the clockwise/counterclockwise image. Your perspective changing takes active will or someone else making a valid argument.
You can only demand if it’s a right.
Polio is transmitted through poor hygiene.
Don’t start out with a rhetorical question in this course.
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Nobody has ever described this as the point of the clockwise/counterclockwise image. Very impressive.
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Perception changes everything
Where you start could change where you are in 1000 words
Your audience is a really small group of readers who are open to a new perspective, with everyone else in between completely agreeing or disagreeing.
Fairness? Giving everyone the same amount, what you have earned, what they need, what they deserve
Is not to give an equal amount but more of it depends on the person on what their definition is.
With the exercise with the dots and the cross, the dots disappear; point? You may know the truth but your mind still changes how it looks.
If the reader’s attention is not fully grasped where their mind can wander there will be curves found and the reader will find a way to see curves even if there aren’t any.
Citation mechanics exercise are placed under the class today, try it out and see if it works
Claims should always be taken for what it is worth, read it and see how it are written and go with that
The purpose of the white paper is to have drafts or ideas of my work and constantly bring in new ideas, replace, or get rid of some work, and bring in new work
Writers are made to write and readers are made to read, they are to be persuaded into what the writer wrote
Collect sources and read sources and write an organized neat essay
Polio is spread by bad hygiene, 0-5 yrs old
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Fair Notes overall, Gymrat, but this is the one that earned you the 4 today:
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To accomplish something in 1000 words you have to show and give information to the audience so that at least a few will agree with you and some disagree and that 5% that are your ideal audience that are totally not moved
Fairness to me means that everyone gets an equal share of something, for example, a dad gives his son new shoes. It’s only fair if the daughter gets one too. But if the son got a grade on his exam and he daughter didn’t its only fair if the son got the shoes and not the daughter.
The illusions were very cool to look at and interesting to view and see how a perspective can change your view on something.
Listed many different examples of mechanics citations for us to look at and review that would help us very well with understanding what we need to do.
Broke down claims and looked over one of the short stories breaking it down and understanding how to find the claims and how to talk about it as well.
When writing a proposal it needs to be specific, defined, researchable. We viewed and looked over the professors White Paper – a work in process paper and it gave a good example of how we should use our sources to help us with our papers. The story broke down the difference between Polio and smallpox and was able to understand and evaluate the difference in the story
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These are “talked about” Notes that don’t actually record a lesson or takeaway. They merely describe what occurred:
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Perspective can change drastically. When it comes to 1,000 words, you can change someone opinion completely. For your 1,000 words you are the “boss of your language”.
•Claims: need to be detailed enough so the reader understands what you are speaking about.
•By holding the reader’s attention, you can get them to see things your way. Optical Illusion exercise shows how eventually, perspectives change.
•Our PTSD claim grades can be improved.
•Mechanics Exercise- under class notes today.
•Fairness- depends on what you interpret as “fair”. Fairness can mean everybody receiving the same amount, everyone getting the same amount of something removed, and whether they deserve it or not.
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Periods and commas belong INSIDE the quotations ALWAYS.
Corrected:
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I’m sorry it’s taken me a day. I initially wrote my notes in the comment section during class and my computer did something strange and deleted it.
– the professor brought up the idea of warping someone’s perspective by only focusing on one small part of an essay or idea. this can be seen with the optical illusions above. And this also shows the power of diction as it relates to shaping prespectives.
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OK. 🙂
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Visual Riddles as metaphors
– All three images are good examples of how our perspective can change they way we see an image
– These images are used as metaphors for how we can change our readers perspective.
Define fairness
– Fairness, like most words, means different things to different people. The meaning you assign to a word can shape your argument
– In our paper we get to come up with our own meanings for words
– My one question for the professor is how far does this go. My instinct is to
think we can change the definitions of words within the bounds of reason, but
where exactly are these boundaries?
Mechanics
– The Daniel Flath exercise is for improving citations
– The Money is fiction exercise is for citing a source within a source.
PTSD claims
– PTSD claims have been graded. We can ask for feedback if we are willing to make revisions
-Different classes have handled this assignment in different ways. In our case most people chose a very similar format.
-In class we analyzed one of the claims that was made by the article. This example provides us with a good example of how we can break down claims word by word in order to find their true meaning
A Model Definition Argument
– This is an essay which we can read as practice for identifying claims
– The essay is focused on whether or not eradicating Polio is practical, not if it is theoretically possible.
White Paper
– “Readers Don’t Think. Writers Think.” – davidbdale
I disagree with this claim for a number of reasons, and I think the support he gives for his claim could use some work
“The truth is, we don’t have a thought in our heads. We receive impressions, we experience sensations, our instincts control the momentary notions that flit across our consciousness: none of that adds up to actual ideas.”
Because you don’t give us your own definition of a thought, one can easily point to the “impressions” and “momentary notions that flit across our consciousness” and claim that these count as thoughts
‘When we write, or speak, we are forced to organize the chaos in our heads to communicate the patterns of our impressions in a comprehensible fashion. In other words, we don’t have ideas until we write them.”
I agree with the first part of this statement, writing is a very useful tool for organizing what goes on in our head. You statement “we don’t have ideas until we write them.” is well worded, but falls into the same pitfall as the previous claim “we don’t have a thought in our heads.” Since you don’t give us your definition of what an idea is, I could easily claim that the “chaos in our heads” count as ideas.
-Other than the previous claim, the white paper gives us a good run down of the research process we should employ while writing our essay.
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Now THAT is what I call a set of Notes!
—My answer is that within the boundaries of your argument, there is no limit to how far you can go to define your terms. If you go beyond the willingness of your reader to follow, you lose a reader. OR, as is clearly the case in the example you detail more than once below, you actively engage that reader into a spirited give-and-take in which you BOTH learn something about, let’s just say, what qualifies as an Impression, what qualifies as an Idea, and when the process of gathering impressions into thoughts results in an Idea.
—Thank you so much for playing the classroom version of our game, Toetio. 🙂
—I know I can count on you to challenge received thinking in your own essays, which I am eager to read.
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I was absent, these are my notes from the agenda:
Perspective changes everything
You define what fairness means. When you write your paper you decide what the definition of fairness is
Spots: I did stare at the light grey spot for 30 seconds and the other spots did turn green, I also stared at the cross for 30 seconds and the dots did disappear. My takeaway from this was that it confused me and make my eyes hurt. However it was very fascinating to see how it messes with your eyes and you see different illusions.
I also found the curvy line analogy to be accurate. When you add useless words to your essays it can make your readers think in a different way, or they could get lost in all the words and lose focus of what you were trying to say.
If your readers lose focus of what we are saying, the essay is essentially pointless, it is important to know your audience and saying on topic to keep them engaged.
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Thanks for following the Agenda, HockeyFan, and taking good Notes.
—True, but . . .
—More important than defining the specific term, “fairness,” the point is that YOU’RE in charge of ALL the terms in your Definition/Categorical argument that are crucial to your reader’s understanding. Fairness may not be among them. But something important to your argument WILL be. “Safety,” maybe, or “Affordable.” Not the same thing at all to all readers.
Nicely stated.
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AGENDA NOTES 2/21
Your prespective changes everything in a scenario, where you are , where you start
Our audience of readers are the right gap in between agree and disagree and those are the people willing to have their minds change showing they are a small group
Fairness is hard to explain or interpret because some people see fairness as something different in how they are treated ,
Fairness mean’s everyone gets the same amount of what they want , need , or deserve
When you stare the cross the red box in the center the green circles go away when you focus hard on the middle
The second example for the green boxes you learn as the middle of the example is green boxes, however you see in the corners and sides and see the green lines curve
In the female spinning example you see the illusion is that she is seen to be moving i both directions both , clockwise and counterclockwise
You can see the girl spin in both directions if you are willing to open your mind about it
If you need help regarding citations techniques then look at the models that professor hodges created
Periods must be on the inside of the quotation marks so that the sentence will look cleaner
The citation examples was shown so we can open our minds to a new and better way to cite sources in a better understanding and
When we are writing or speaking we use ways to create chaos in our heads to communicate
Polio is not a killer it is a paralyzer that happens to children
Everything is eradicalble
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These say what happens but miss the point:
This one gets the point:
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Perspective changes everything. “Where you start determines where someone can take you in a thousand words”
Theres a bunch of people that arent going to listen to your essay, theres a bunch of people who will. A small percentage will agree/disagree, they havent been moved. They believe they know what they are talking about, and they dont need you changing their mind.
Fairness- “the same amount” “what they have earned” “what they need” “what they deserve” or “whatever it would take to make everyone equal”
(Fairness is up for debate)
When you keep your readers attention, you can talk them into the square
If you start throwing in random info in your paper, you reader will get distracted and maybe uninterested.
We are prejudice, we have these built in notions
We can think all we want, be we will come right back to the tracks?
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Ummmm . . .
What you say might be more accurate than what I believe, but what I said was that there are HUGE segments of the reading audience who AGREE and another huge chunk that DISAGREE before you even start, and you’ll have a hard time providing much value to either. The small segment in the middle who aren’t already “dug in” are your Ideal Readers. You might be able to persuade them.
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– Where we stand can really change how far those 3000 words in our essay can take us. If we let our readers get distracted from what we want them to see they’ll get distracted from things that aren’t there.
– Our readers develop their opinions as they read; it is our job to target open-minded readers as they are the ones who can be swayed by our arguments.
– Fairness is a difficult term to define as the meaning shifts from person to person. Everyone receiving the same or everyone having equality are just two ways to define fairness.
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