1/3 Done

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Today I had my 2nd tutorial of 6. I can't believe that I'm already one third of the way done with my program! This second paper was a little less fun, but still manageable. I'm looking forward to this week's topic, the Knightly Orders (the Templars and the Hospitallers). It probably won't be quite as interesting as a Dan Brown novel, but the historical facts should be cool. Also coming up is a trip to Cambridge tomorrow and some "punting." From what I gather, punting is a style of boating. We'll see how that goes and we'll hope that no one falls in!

This past week has had some eventful days. Some of Sunday was spent putting the finishing touches on my first paper, but it was mostly spent relaxing. In the evening, the house next door had a game night. The game we played was called Werewolf and is similar to "Mafia" and other role based guessing games. There were a lot of roles and it took a couple tries to get it, but I enjoyed it and was on the winning side the last three times! Monday morning I had my first class, called a "tutorial." It went well, but we covered the information that I was going to write about for my second paper so we changed the topic. This was a little unfortunate because I had already begun preparing for my second paper. But, as I am here writing this now, I survived. From Tuesday to Thursday I read an additional 1.5 books and some online sources to write the paper. I did leave myself time for some fun things! Tuesday evening I went with a couple of my housemates to try a local fish and chips place. It was pretty good, and very fresh. Wednesday again had the open air markets, I didn't get lost this week nor did it rain, so an improvement on the prior week! I did try something different to get my groceries home. I rode my bike out to the market with my bag and some string to tie other bags to the bag. I was successful but I don't think I'll be doing that again and I have a new appreciation for people who carry lots of things whilst riding bikes. Also on Wednesday, the Oxford Union hosted a pair of guests from IBM, one was a robot with a Watson technology 'brain.' It was a particularly cool talk because they mentioned a new technology that I was previously aware of, so I geeked out a bit. Thursday again was debate night, I can't say enough how much I enjoy these debates! I made an effort to finish my paper before the debate. I ended up having to write my conclusion afterwards, but it was good to have it mostly done. So back to the debates and why I like them, I really appreciate experts in a field coming together to have a high level discussion about problems and decisions we face. This week's topic was Human DNA Manipulation and whether or not it is an "ethical necessity" to do so. The nuance of ethical good vs ethical necessity was key in this debate and the House ruled that it is NOT an ethical necessity to manipulate human DNA. It still leaves open the option to, and there is room for more debate. I think that both of these conversations, about Watson/AI and DNA manipulation/cloning have ethical overlap. On the frontier of AI, we have cognitive "learning" in machines, so every machine that has the same base turns out entirely different, based on its exposure. Even if we were able to clone a person, they would have their own identity and experiences, their own autonomous existence that isn't predetermined by the person they were "modeled after." Granted this is only a small part of DNA manipulation and wasn't really a part of Thursday's discussion but was a rabbit hole my thoughts travelled down a bit.

Today, well, Friday, was another slow-ish day. I had my second tutorial in the morning and then I helped make brunch. I made French toast in mugs, it turned out fairly well! Then I spent a little time looking at resources for my next paper before deciding to read a leisure book I brought with me (a surprise to no one who knows me!)

It's going to be an early morning to get out to Cambridge (I'll take pictures!) so for now I'll say good night!

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Comments

[Will]

Good night! :-)