GRE Issue: Uncomfortable Truths
Sep. 9th, 2010 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabular_rasaSo until I take the GRE, I’m going to replace (or at least supplement, since sometimes they’re just too good to pass up!) the LJ Writer’s Block prompts with GRE sample Issue and Argument writing prompts as my semi-daily LJ rant, lol.
Issue Task: “Important truths begin as outrageous, or at least uncomfortable, attacks upon the accepted wisdom of the time."
I can immediately think of many examples that support this argument. For instance, some of the greatest scientific advances of all time were rejected or outright condemned by contemporary institutions and culture, such as Galileo’s claim that the earth revolves around the sun. Certainly many now-established truths shook up the once-established status quo. However, I do not believe that this argument holds in all cases; it is my opinion that important truths often begin as outrageous attacks on contemporary conventions, but not every shocking assertion is truth and not every truth causes a fuss.
First of all, this assertion ignores that many new ideas enter society without causing a ruckus. Oftentimes what we call “common sense” is grounded in truth, even if the science behind the truth is not well understood. For example, when advances in nutritional science showed that fresh vegetables supply valuable vitamins and minerals that regulate organ function and support immunity, a few people may have felt guilty for leaving greens off their plates but no one’s world was turned upside-down. Humans had eaten vegetables for millennia, and while for most of that time we were ignorant of the specific science behind their health properties, the truth that vegetables are healthy was not shocking. The specific claim was both new and true, but the status quo was not disrupted.
Furthermore, the superiority of controversy over subtlety implied in the quote also does not hold up. Truth may shock, but not all that shocks is truth. For example, in the aftermath of both great tragedy, like the Holocaust, or unprecedented scientific accomplishment like the 1969 lunar landing, it is typical for small groups of people to cry “conspiracy!” and suggest that nations and governments have staged fake scenarios and lied to them in order to promote an agenda. “The lunar landing footage,” they claim, “was filmed on a Hollywood sound stage to intimidate the Russians into believing we’d won the space race!” And as for the Holocaust, the millions of missing persons recorded must have disappeared in some less brutal fashion-- or they just never existed in the first place. These are shocking and upsetting assertions indeed, but even the most convincing “evidence” presented by conspiracy theorists does not hold up against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including firsthand accounts of witnesses and survivors.
Great truths and revolutionary ideas are not mutually inclusive categories. Sometimes a conspiracy theory turns out to be conspiracy fact, as with Watergate-- but sometimes it really is as crazy as it sounds. Sometimes a new finding shakes the foundations of an entire culture’s way of life; sometimes it is met with a shrug and “Well, that makes sense.” However, new truths come packaged in offensive wrapping often enough that we would be wise to temper our instinctive panic in order to calmly and logically evaluate new ideas before rejecting them outright. Controversy does not determine the viability of a new theory. The truth of a claim lies in its proof, not the response it garners from society.
Yeah, that one took me way more than 45 minutes. (And obviously I don't even know how good it is according to their scale. But it's about the length of the sample 6-score responses, and it uses transitions and examples?). But that's why we practice, eh?
Edit (6:52): I've no idea if anyone is even curious, but if you want to read a really interesting article on the intentions and flaws of JET and English education in Japan, this article has been posted all over Facebook by fellow ALTs and it's (perhaps painfully) accurate.
Issue Task: “Important truths begin as outrageous, or at least uncomfortable, attacks upon the accepted wisdom of the time."
I can immediately think of many examples that support this argument. For instance, some of the greatest scientific advances of all time were rejected or outright condemned by contemporary institutions and culture, such as Galileo’s claim that the earth revolves around the sun. Certainly many now-established truths shook up the once-established status quo. However, I do not believe that this argument holds in all cases; it is my opinion that important truths often begin as outrageous attacks on contemporary conventions, but not every shocking assertion is truth and not every truth causes a fuss.
First of all, this assertion ignores that many new ideas enter society without causing a ruckus. Oftentimes what we call “common sense” is grounded in truth, even if the science behind the truth is not well understood. For example, when advances in nutritional science showed that fresh vegetables supply valuable vitamins and minerals that regulate organ function and support immunity, a few people may have felt guilty for leaving greens off their plates but no one’s world was turned upside-down. Humans had eaten vegetables for millennia, and while for most of that time we were ignorant of the specific science behind their health properties, the truth that vegetables are healthy was not shocking. The specific claim was both new and true, but the status quo was not disrupted.
Furthermore, the superiority of controversy over subtlety implied in the quote also does not hold up. Truth may shock, but not all that shocks is truth. For example, in the aftermath of both great tragedy, like the Holocaust, or unprecedented scientific accomplishment like the 1969 lunar landing, it is typical for small groups of people to cry “conspiracy!” and suggest that nations and governments have staged fake scenarios and lied to them in order to promote an agenda. “The lunar landing footage,” they claim, “was filmed on a Hollywood sound stage to intimidate the Russians into believing we’d won the space race!” And as for the Holocaust, the millions of missing persons recorded must have disappeared in some less brutal fashion-- or they just never existed in the first place. These are shocking and upsetting assertions indeed, but even the most convincing “evidence” presented by conspiracy theorists does not hold up against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including firsthand accounts of witnesses and survivors.
Great truths and revolutionary ideas are not mutually inclusive categories. Sometimes a conspiracy theory turns out to be conspiracy fact, as with Watergate-- but sometimes it really is as crazy as it sounds. Sometimes a new finding shakes the foundations of an entire culture’s way of life; sometimes it is met with a shrug and “Well, that makes sense.” However, new truths come packaged in offensive wrapping often enough that we would be wise to temper our instinctive panic in order to calmly and logically evaluate new ideas before rejecting them outright. Controversy does not determine the viability of a new theory. The truth of a claim lies in its proof, not the response it garners from society.
Yeah, that one took me way more than 45 minutes. (And obviously I don't even know how good it is according to their scale. But it's about the length of the sample 6-score responses, and it uses transitions and examples?). But that's why we practice, eh?
Edit (6:52): I've no idea if anyone is even curious, but if you want to read a really interesting article on the intentions and flaws of JET and English education in Japan, this article has been posted all over Facebook by fellow ALTs and it's (perhaps painfully) accurate.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 11:08 am (UTC)And common sense is frequently questionable. I know people who have gotten lost because they used "common sense" instead of following the directions.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 11:30 am (UTC)But, yes, the oftentimes qualifier is definitely there for a reason! If we relied only on common sense and what could be perceived by our limited senses alone, we'd likely know little of astronomy and be completely ridden with disease. I know everyone loves Occam's Razor, but things are not always as simple and straightforward as we might initially think they are.
Schopenhauer
Date: 2010-09-09 11:34 pm (UTC)First it is ridiculed,
Then it is opposed,
and finally it is regarded as self-evident."
It's funny, isn't it, how often the greatest scientific breakthroughs deal with extreme obviousnesses? It always amazes me how something as complex as our system of science always seems to return faithfully to Occam's Razor.
To fully understand something, it's important to understand its polarities. The "conspiracies", sometimes not and sometimes so, aren't just useful in determining truth. It's important to know these opposing dualities, even if never knowing what actually happened, because the truth of one specific "idea" is the seed of a million other truths regarding a million other ideas.
That's the hardest thing in the world to explain to someone. How something can be both true and untrue, half-truths and non-truths and fragments of a label that attempts to define something that is always more than just itself.
Even the senses are just as much lies as they are truths, but when it comes to truth, I will always stake my bet on Love.
The truth of a claim lies in its proof, not the response it garners from society.
This is an important sentence. Is this really true?
Can something that measures, made by fallible men, ever measure a truth except that we have labeled it so and built the tools to support and convince? Can the distance to your monitor from your face really be measured in inches, or is that just our best current approximation to understand and calculate what we can about the world we live in?
Peace&Love,
JC
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 11:37 pm (UTC)But, you have to get lost to really discover something about a person or a place.
Re: Schopenhauer
Date: 2010-09-10 06:09 am (UTC)I'm in debate mode, where I can pick a side and argue it while ignoring/rebuffing everything about the other point. I used to do it during Lincoln Douglass debate in high school. It was such an interesting event, because all of us prepared both sides and only a coin toss determined which side we had to argue, which we did with as much passion and force as if we really did believe it, even if we had argued the opposite 20 minutes previous. Good mental exercise.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-12 10:58 am (UTC)