This week was a short week due to fall break. We did a CSS tutorial and talked about our Verification Quests. I have a lot to say about the Quest.
CSS
We watched a LinkedIn tutorial on CSS, and it covered a lot of information I was unaware of. I had been experimenting with the basics on my own, but that tutorial showed me there is a lot of complexity in it that can give you more power. The biggest thing I learned from the CSS guide was the cascading system, or the order of operations. I knew that there was an order to how it worked, I just didn’t know what that order was. The order is based on importance and specificity and a few other things, and that specificity really highlights how CSS can get complex. There are certain codes that are more important than others, and you need to know when to use which ones to do the job you want. The guide also covered Flexbox and Grids. I am looking forward to using Grids, but the Flexbox was confusing to me.
Verification Quest
This part is what I really wanted to talk about. One thing Dr. Detweiler said that struck me was the unfalsifiable beliefs. I encountered this early this year and during last year pretty heavily. That conspiracy rabbit hole got me, and I saw wayyyyy too many coincidences that lead me to not only believe in the conspiracies but to also doubt what anyone in power said, even if it was the truth. Kind of goes along with the info cynicism and trust compression. Even to the point I believed the Earth was flat. Yes, you heard me, I believed the Earth was flat. Not anymore though. I had a conversation with my friend about it that lead to him asking me a question about why I believed a certain aspect of it. My response was with an unfalsifiable belief. I had no evidence; it was just what I believed. It was not exactly based on the lack of evidence, but I did believe with a lack of evidence. Dr. Detweiler specifically said that the lack of evidence is the evidence with that situation, so it is not EXACTLY what I was dealing with. However, the fact that I have gotten close to being that type of person made me uncomfortable. That motivated me to not only reevaluate what I believe but to also really ponder on why I believe the things I believe.
This Verification Quest is a chance for me to do just that. I found a topic, weather modification, that I truly feel strongly about. Those feelings will pose issues when I actually start working. I will have to take a step back and take myself out of the picture and really think about what the facts are with zero bias. That is a very difficult thing to do, but it is necessary. I am looking forward to the challenge.
Funny enough, if we did not talk about unfalsifiable beliefs, I would have potentially used that as evidence in my project. I mentioned finding a PDF in class that talked about weather modification, and upon further inspection I found that the pages covering the seeding agents used are missing. The report to Congress mentions “seeding agent” in the table of contents, but the report is missing three pages! I would have been tempted to use that as partial evidence that they are hiding something and are using chemicals, but I will now have to go in and find real evidence on either side that harmful chemicals aren’t being used. This project is a challenge, but an extremely valuable one. It is valuable to us just as much as it is to others. My pastor said to us, “Know what you believe and why you believe it, don’t just take my word for it. Go back, study for yourself, and decide what you believe, even if it differs from what I said up here.” Outside of a religious context, that is exactly what this project is having us do and I appreciate that we are doing it very much.
Comments
2 responses to “Week 8 Post – The Conspiracy Quest and CSS”
It sounds like this week gave all of us a lot to think about. On the CSS side, it’s great that you’re diving deeper into concepts like Flexbox and Grids! Specificity can feel overwhelming at first, but you’re absolutely right; understanding the order of operations in CSS is a game changer for making everything work as intended.
As for the Verification Quest, it’s awesome to see you reflecting on past beliefs and embracing critical thinking. It’s difficult but so valuable to separate strong emotions from evidence when researching a topic, especially one as loaded as weather modification. Plus, the insight from your pastor really resonates—it’s empowering to develop your own beliefs based on research and understanding rather than just taking others’ word for it. Best of luck with your research!
It seems like you have been putting a lot into Verification Quest. I would like to add some more input onto the topic of Unverifiable beliefs. The thing with them is that it’s true if the statement is true but also true if it isn’t. If there is no evidence, then that’s the evidence. The other thing I recommend you to look out for that shares a similar idea is circular logic. This is when an argument is self-referential, If A is true then B is true, if B is true then A is true. Aliens exist because UFOs exist. UFOs exist because aliens make them. This logic is circular, which does not work. I imagine when you go investigating, you might walk into arguments that say “The government is modifying the weather. This is because the weather hits parts of the country the government wants.” This is a fallacy. One more piece of warning about circular reasoning, it often is a lot longer. I always recommend tracking claims and seeing if they all justify one another because then you have circular reasoning!