Web search strategies video

Here’s a short video from the very clever folks at Common Craft on the topic of web search strategies:

There are many other good search strategies. Here’s a video of Patrick Norton interviewing Google Engineer Matt Cuts, who describes various Google search strategies.

Truth in Knowledge

A topic that we keep dancing with in ToK is the definition of knowledge. I’ve said a few times that knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). We’re all pretty much agreed that justification and belief are two necessary elements but there continues to be some discussion about truth. So here’s another way to think about it:

If I claim to know something, I must be justified (we all agree on this point) and I must believe it. By believing, I mean that I could not see any other possible proposition. If I know that I have never been to Disneyland, then there’s no way I could believe its opposite – that I have been to Disneyland. Or I could state that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. As soon as someone shows me otherwise, however, I would say that I did believe that heavier objects fall faster than light ones but now I know that they fall at the same rate. I may have believed things in the past that I now know are not true.

Here’s a demonstration of that principle, by the way.

That brings up the whole problem of truth. There’s a different problem, but for now let’s just say that something is true when we believe it without any reasonable doubt. There are some other details that are worth noting when we talk about truth, but that’s a good enough understanding of it for now.

That cleared things up, right?

Natural selection simulation

 

Peppered Moth

 

 

Here’s a great game to simulate the peppered moth observations as a demonstration of natural selection.

Peppered Moth Simulation

Photo by David Anderson, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ujelang/928721034/