Category: Passions

My overall topic of this infographic was how much agriculture affects the environment. My goal of this infographic was to find out how the environment would be affected if everyone in the world became vegan. I also wanted to learn more about GHG emissions and land use agriculture uses, and how livestock and fisheries make up a large part of this.

To create my infographic, I used Canva. I learned how to use Canva very easily. It is very user friendly and simple to learn. I have learned how to use their designs and templates, as well as inserting graphs and elements.  While creating my infographic, I learned how to arrange images, graphs and graphics to create a professional looking design. I also used a variety of sites, such as NASA, Open Data Canada and Open Data BC. I also used Our world in Data for the raw data, which I downloaded into an Excel sheet.

I have learned that using technology for data collection and research is much easier than it used to be. Now, we can use the internet to find the information we need, instead of researching in books. I have also learned that we can check the reliability of a site through researching the source or fact checking sites like snopes.com. This can be helpful because we can verify a site is credible, as it is much easier to do that then before. Using technology can change the world because we can share and obtain information quicker.

Does free will exist or is it just an illusion?
First, let’s define what free will is. Free will let’s define what free will is. Free will is the ability to make our own decisions, acting without the constraint of fate or natural laws, or the influence of the environment or genetics. Free will allows us to choose what we want to do.
Some people believe that we have free will, but that might only be because we can comprehend our thoughts, actions and outcomes of our actions. We feel free because we feel like we make many decisions in our life. But how much does the outside world influence our decisions and thoughts? Are our thoughts free?
In contrast, there is determinism. Determinism is the belief that all events or actions are caused by previous events. For example, if I walk forward three steps, I stub my toe. And if I stub my toe, I will cry out in pain. This can be applied to other actions or our choices. Our choices can be caused by our thoughts, which stem from our subconscious mind, and outside factors.
This also means that someone could not have done anything other than what they did. A common argument against determinism is that they could have chosen the other option, that it was possible they could have decided to eat a banana instead of eating an apple today. And I agree with that.
But the thing is, you didn’t choose the other option, due to reasons like outside factors, and your subconscious mind. All of these little things count and made you decide not to go with the other option. When we make decisions, there is a feeling of freedom that we can understand. We are given a wide range of choices we can make and actions we can do at random. I can throw my phone across the room, yet I choose not to. This is because our actions have many invisible causes in our subconscious brains.
To conclude, I believe that free will exists, but not a lot of it. We are influenced by our experiences and our environment so much that even though we can choose whatever we want, it does not change too many things.

Determinism. (2016). In J. L. Longe (Ed.), The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology (3rd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 311-313). Gale. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3631000216/GPS?u=43dcbs&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=286e0352

Reeve, D. (2013, Summer). Free will: fact or fiction? Humanist Perspectives, (185), 6+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A338416156/GPS?u=43dcbs&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=4c9006ad 

Osborne, T. M., Jr. (2005). Free will, Determinism, and Predestination. In M. C. Horowitz (Ed.), New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Vol. 2, pp. 841-844). Charles Scribner’s Sons. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3424300291/GVRL?u=43dcbs&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=745b1007 

I looked online for an article, and one article caught my attention. It was about Elon Musk wanting to test his company’s brain chips (Neuralink). The brain chips would allow the person to interact with technology using their thoughts. They want to start testing in 6 months. I wanted to see if this article was real or fake.

The first step I took was to verify the source. I know that it is actually Global News that published the article because the news article was on their website.

Then, I searched up Global News on Wikipedia. WIkipedia says that Global News is the news and current affairs division of Global TV. They have made very little errors and are pretty reliable and trustworthy.

I went onto snopes.com to see if the article was true, but I could not find anything.

Since I could not find anything on Snopes.com, I went onto media smarts custom search engine. When I searched up keywords, I found that what the article said had been correct.

Next, I did a google search for other sources. I went on the news tab, and found many similar news articles saying similar things. They were also published by pretty reliable news sites.

In conclusion, I would say that this article is true. Many articles have written about it and they are all trustworthy. I also think it is true because Global News is a pretty reliable news source and I use it all the time in Social studies. Because of their credibility, I believe the article is true.