Essays on Irrationality

People’s budget, income, and substitution effects are connected in demand theory. If the price of some product (beef, for example) is growing, and income (budges) stay on the same level, people start to substitute this product with another (cheaper). These actions are called substitution effects. In case of beef, such a substitution products could be pork, poultry, etc. Substitution effect is one of the core principles of behavioral economics (Hursh, p. 435). People always react to any economic changes, and the most common reaction to changes in prices is changes in budget dispersion. With the same level of ...

Introduction

I have often thought critical thinking is simply my opinion, or generating ideas and opinion through mental exercise, i.e. I can do critical thinking without external help or interaction. Yet, it is so different, because as I searched the literature and in studying in this course, I found that critical thinking involves the individual’s ability to use the mind actively to sense the surrounding environment and realize opportunities and potential hazards by generating innovative ideas (Ruggiero, 2009 as cited in Bruning, 2016). Critical thinking needs knowledge, and knowledge is learned and experienced. Precisely, critical thinking is borne out ...

The five dominant principles of the process of McDonaldization are predictability, efficiency, increased control, the irrationality of rationality, and calculability. The author Ritzer George uses various elements of Max Weber’s work to evaluate and discuss the process of McDonaldization in contemporary societies (Ritzer 14). Efficiency: Efficiency is a principle that deals with the process of achieving a specific goal in a rapid manner and with the least effort or cost. The notion of efficiency is specific to the interests of businesses; however, it is also beneficial to the customer. Examples of efficient processes include self-service gasoline, salad bars, ...

Technology exists as a creation of people, produced through the various ideas to help make the lives of people easier and more productive. However, technology has become too deeply integrated in people’s lives that they start being overly dependent on it, even to the point of stating that they are not able to live without it. Such an idea, significantly evident in today’s society is the thematic background of E.M Forster’s The Machine Stops, serving as a prescient warning of its implications. The isolation and shunning of human nature and a worship of technology will eventually ...

In any conflict, argument or even debate it is standard practice to call for rational thinking and presentation of points. Irrationality is perceived as a negative attribute in a good negotiator. However, Robert Benjamin in his paper series, “Irrationality of Being Rational” argues that human beings are inherently irrational perhaps because of evolution, and therefore the expectation rationality is actually irrational. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and analyze the articles by Robert Benjamin where he explains his concept of the irrationality of being too rational. It is common knowledge that human beings are never truly rational ...

Faith and the belief systems play a vital role in driving the human experience. In their articles, Street (2010), Keane (2008), and Lewis (2002) make interesting discussions about the concept of belief in the universal world. This essay utilizes their influence to argue that belief is not in opposition to doubt. Also, however, there appears to be a clear universal distinction between irrational and rational beliefs. The following is a further discussion on this issue. Belief systems, however, have different ways of explaining forces that operate within the contemporary world. Christianity, for instance, as suggested by Alice Street (2010) ...

Q1. The Matthew effect in Robert Holmes project

The Matthew effect refers to the situation in which the richer get richer while the poor continue to be poorer (Gladwell, 15). The lives and prospects of the people of Robert Holmes coupled with the exposition of Gladwell in his book “Outliers” tend to justify the Matthew effect. They lend credence that it is extra ordinary opportunities that we are faced with in life that shape us rather than extra ordinary talents. It is therefore no surprise that the people of Robert Holmes, who are predominantly black, are stuck with poverty no matter their tacit attempts to escape from ...

INTRODUCTION

My name is John, and I am an alcoholic. This is the declaration made by members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous also claims to be the only effective means of recovering from alcoholism. Declaring to be the only effective source for recovery from alcoholism is like claiming there is only one drug to treat an illness. Alcoholics Anonymous is not an effective form of treatment for all person’s dependent upon alcohol. Studies, statistics, modern science, and rational thought have proven that Alcoholics is not effective.

ABOUT ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Alcoholics Anonymous was created Ohio in 1935 by two alcoholic men. Bill W. ...

Introduction

The Tulip Mania that took place between 1636 and 1637 is one of the earliest recorded financial bubbles (Veen, 2012). While there is no universally accepted definition of a financial bubble, the term financial bubble is used to refer to a situation where an asset price exceeds the asset intrinsic value, or the value that could be earned by holding the asset to maturity for an extended period of time (The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 2012). The Tulip Mania fits the description of a financial bubble because at its height, the price of some tulip bulbs exceeded the ...

The Logic Behind Reevaluating Natural Life Sentences

Jennifer Lackey’s engrossing article, The Irrationality of Natural Life Sentences, is a philosophical critique of the existing judicial policy to incarcerate a convicted offender indefinitely, in light of the fact many prisoners in the United States are facing natural life sentences. A natural life sentence, while typically reserved for individuals convicted of serious crimes, is a conviction requiring the offender to spend the remainder of his or her life as a warden of the state, without any hope for parole. Within the article, Lackey tactfully argues that these types of sentences are an illogical and unnecessarily cruel form ...

A crowd has been defined by many sociologists as a gathering of people with a common or shared purpose. This involves the idea of people coming together in a public system in order to work together or in some cases, do things that lead to a common end in sight. Crowds are viewed in many ways and contexts. This includes sports and entertainment where different people come together to do things. It also encompasses demonstrations and other public agitations like reactions to changes in the stock markets which lead to major modifications in mass attitudes. The purpose of this ...

Most people do not realize the nature of fear and the reasons for its occurrence. Fear cannot be explained with a rational explanation as it is virtual in most cases, the fear of death or Thanatophobia is justified by its connection with disease, pain, loneliness, and suffering. Epiricus represents the first premise that death is not something one should fear death is no misfortune and being dead does not affect one who is dead therefore it is not bad for a dead man.as the fear of death is vain. According to them, human life is limited to the moment ...

Precisely, most people do not realize the nature of fear and the reasons for its occurrence. The reason is that a fear deadens mind, thus, a person cannot oppose it with rational explanation. In most cases, the fear of death or thanatophobia is justified by its connection with any disease, pain, loneliness, and suffering. There is also a belief that death is not bad and people should not be afraid of it because fear is a burden for a human being. For example, Epicurus and his followers believed that a person does not feel pain or suffering at the ...

Process safety in offshore oil and gas industry: a review of the present and future practices

Introduction

Oil and gas industry keeps playing an increasingly significant role in the global economy. Nowadays the world consumes over 30 billion barrels of oil per year, and despite all the innovations in alternative energy, this figure doesn’t seem to decrease in the foreseeable future. Offshore drilling, or extraction of oil through the seabed, is currently no less popular than other forms of extraction. In the Gulf of Mexico alone there are over 3.5 thousand oil platforms in use, and other areas of seaborne oil extraction like the North Sea, West African coast, Brazil, Azerbaijan and Sakhalin ...

Morality can be defined in different ways. Some of the definitions are dependent on several factors. Philosophy is a broad subject that involves the study of different aspects of life, and non-life factors too. Philosophy even becomes more interesting and intriguing when involves the lives of human being directly. This is because it includes the perceptions of different things that people would take normally under normal situations. However, philosophy brings everything into light, though in a rare manner.

As opposed to descriptive efforts of ethics, it is also meant to describe what ethical behavior entails alongside providing reasons to be ethical. ...

Individual Resistance to Organizational Change

Introduction Effective and efficient change management is critical to the continued organizational success. Initiation and effective management of planned organizational changes remains one of the most important aspects of strategic management, but despite the existence of a wealth of empirical and theoretical information on organizational change, the rate of success for such initiatives remains dismal. According to Kotter (2007), upwards of 80% of organizational change initiatives end in failure, with an estimated 50% of such plans collapsing before the actual implementation stage. Erwin & Garman (2010) observes that less than 38% of planned organizational change initiatives were successful, while only ...

Michael Moore believes that while it maybe morally wrong to ingest drugs, that a general principle of liberty should allow free citizens the political liberty to ingest them for recreational purposes. He believes this because he believes the freedom to harm oneself (using recreational drugs) is of a higher order than politically restricting that liberty to do so. He shows historically how t a general principle of liberty is elusive since “Anything that could be called a general right to liberty has proved elusive to the considerable number of philosophers who have pursue it” (Moore, 82). Moore distinguishes between legal rights that should ...

Philosophy and Social Issues

German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is primarily known for is philosophical work on the study of ethics. What sets him apart from other philosophers on this subject is that rather than judge individuals themselves, he instead looks at the subjects of “right” and “wrong” as separate entities in order to suggest the best way for people to behave. Kant grew tired of people acting immorally based on their idea that the ends would justify the means. He believed in deontology, which suggests that moral judgment resides in the act itself and the ends do not justify the means. There is ...

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Introduction Euclid (near 365 - 300 BC) is a Greek mathematician, lived in Alexandria, in the 3rd BC. The main work "Elements" (15 books), containing the basics of ancient mathematics, elementary geometry, number theory, the general theory of relations and the method of determining areas and volumes, which included elements of the theory of limits, has had an enormous influence on the development of mathematics. He worked on astronomy, optics, music theory. Information about the time and place of his birth did not reach us, but we know that ...

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Introduction Pi is a mathematical constant that expresses the ratio of the circumference to the length of its diameter. Denoted by the Greek letter π. First symbol of this number by the Greek letter π was taken by British mathematician Jones in 1706, and it became common after the works of Leonhard Euler in 1737.

This designation comes from the initial letters of the Greek words περιφέρεια - circle, peripherals and περίμετρος - perimeter.

History History of the number π ran parallel with the development of mathematics. Some authors divide the process into 3 periods: the ancient period during which π was studied from the standpoint of geometry, classical era, which ...

Introduction

The Effects of Scientific Revolution on Religion has been a very critical topic in such fields as history, philosophy and other social sciences. The scientific revolution, arguably one of the most important developments in human history is a movement that substantially shook the foundations of religion (Wolfe & Wolfe, 2011). The primary purpose of this topic, is to narrow down the broad topic of the effects of scientific revolution in such a manner that such effects are viewed from the perspective of the medieval religious structures, and not from the eye of the entire humanity. I chose to discuss this topic because it ...

Photographs capture the current state of the world in terms of culture and philosophy. Photographs are an integral part of mainstream media. They are used to pass on information about the status quo in terms of both political and cultural power. Though seemingly simple and irrelevant a deep analysis of photographs reveals a lot about the culture of the society from where the photograph is taken. Photographs are also very important in evaluating the psychology of the person taking the photograph. The media artifact in my discussion is photographs. The following essay discusses photographs under the feminist theory and the queer ...

While the term madness has no standard definition, I understand it as a state of mind where a person is not in a position to make informed decisions. This essentially means that a mad person always or at most times portrays irrationality in their decisions. They lack reason and cannot be judged as being objectively right in their thinking. However, mad people do not see the insanity in them, for this reason, many philosophers, including the famous Rene Descartes, have argued that perhaps we, who think we are normal, are the mad ones, and those we perceive as being mad, are the normal ...

[Writer’s Name] McDonaldization of the U.S. Court System

Introduction

The McDonaldization representation is an undemanding systematic perspective to what has been believed a flourishing game plan, therefore pointing to the extraordinary value and development of the US court system this plan has been titled after. The model of McDonaldization is consisted of four important conceptions: predictability, efficiency, calculability and control. There is the term McDonaldization that was emerged by Maryland University professor and, sociologist George Ritzer, to signify the mixture of current day 20th century US functions for example scientific supervision, bureaucratization and assembly line manufacture. The achievement of ...

Bernard, or “Bernie” Madoff is now an infamous figure in the American media, but before he became one of the most famous villains of all time, he was a well-known and well-respected investment advisor and stockbroker. He worked in the financial sector for many years, even working as the non-executive Chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange for a time (“The Madoff Scam: Meet The Liquidator,” 2010). Madoff formed his own company in 1960, a firm he called Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities. It is rare for individuals who are so powerful in the American financial sector to become embroiled in such ...

Abstract

Strongly influenced by Freud’s theories about the structure and the workings of the human psyche, the surrealist movement dived deeply into the exploration of the unconscious – hoping to find the essence of the human mind and spirit in an alternative reality. Salvador Dali is one of the main representatives of this movement – his works constantly defied the boundaries of reality and imagination. He was a prolific artist, always in search of new ways of creative expression. Due to his personal background, he was always attracted to the world of fantasy, which made him very suitable for the surrealist movement. ...

The First World War was a traumatizing event that caused people and artists to question the veracity of traditional values. Having experienced tremendous distress, people were thrown into a state of anxiety, which was marked by their struggle to find meaning in life. Society itself seemed to have succumbed into a state of cosmic insecurity, fueled by the bitterness and the disillusionment of the war. Individual and national psyches were marked by important, even radical changes, which the artists at the time, including the surrealist painters, successfully incorporated into their artworks. They embraced everything that was new, experimental and to some extent, ...

Almost God-Like

Although for various generations dramatic forms of tragedy and comedy were universally comprehensible and their subsequent embodiment in various literary and expressive art works were clear, contemporary world perception had changed to the extent that reality became so complicatedly tragicomic that narrative art had to review the very essence of tragedy and comedy and pay more attention to their mixture. Various cinema critics might argue that classical Hollywood perception of tragedy and comedy remains the same and does not violate the rules of those dramatic forms. However, contemporary cinematograph witnesses the phenomenon of Roberto Benigni’s comedy and subsequent ...

The life of Pi is a story about a young boy named Piscine Molitor Patel who experiences immeasurable hardships while at sea. Patel is a zoo keeper’s son born in Pondicherry, India. When growing up Piscine was always teased about his name that he decided to shorten it so that he was known as Pi, just like π, the Mathematical symbol. At age sixteen, Pi survives on a life boat while at sea for 227 days after a shipwreck that makes him lose all his family members. The story therefore centers on Pi’s attempts at survival and explores the dehumanizing situation the young ...

The internal corrosion of the human mind has fascinated writers from many cultures, but there are few cultures that produced such a broad spectrum of works that analyze the psyche during the nineteenth century as did Russia. When one thinks of tortuous conditions in Russia, one often thinks of the pogroms of Joseph Stalin, as he brutally brought the idealism of the Communist takeover to heel, making the country an immense network of fear and betrayal, as no one person wanted to be the one to inform on his neighborhood, but even less desirable than that was the role of ...

Introduction

Exponential is one of the major mathematical constants most used in today’s mathematical manipulation and study. Studies carried out indicate some of its unique characteristics and features which have enhanced its applications in arithmetical analysis. This paper gives an illustration of the major characteristics of constant in relation to numerous studies which have been carried out and those that are being carried out in the current developmental framework. An exponential ‘e’, is normally a mathematical constants and is normally applied in various arithmetic and logical calculations. The exponential constant is basically the base of a natural logarithm. Natural logarithm ...

Task:

Trans-boundary policy problem is a crisis resulting from set of rules that defines the clear cut in a boundary between two separate entities. The fight between two countries on the exact boundary line is the best example of this policy problem. Some water resources lie at the border of two countries and it becomes difficult in making the correct boundary line. Learning this helps us enhance our knowledge on how such cases arise and how they are addressed (Blatter 14).

Pro-modern ontology entails the comparison and approximation of objects to its perfect form. The best example of pre-modern onto.ogy is the ...