The Toulmin Method

     The Toulmin method can be used for all sorts of situations in the online landscape! Today, I will be talking about how it can be used for online debates. Specifically, an online debate that we are all very familiar with that occurred several years back. The dress.

    Does this bring back memories for anyone? It does for me! I remember we even had a whole debate in my classroom over what color it was.

    The grounds for either side would be that there is a dress, and it is either gold and white or blue and black. The warrant would simply be because that's what each individual sees. Therefore, they would make the claim of which colors they believe it to be.

    The backing for the claim would be that many other people agree with them and see the same thing. It was about 50-50 I believe. So unless half of the population is colorblind, it would make sense that the dress is a certain color.

    However, we can't say that half of the people who see the dress as a certain color are colorblind, because that doesn't really match statistics. We can, however, say that the opposing side is seeing the dress differently due to the lighting. 

    My classroom discussion got very heated over this debate. And I'm certain it did online as well, even though I was less active on social media during this period. The problem is that people got emotional over this silly debate, blaming others, saying they couldn't see clearly, and so on. I'm sure people were even more... passionate... online. I also believe echo chambers could be created where people would agree with each other, saying they saw a certain color, so the other side must be wrong because how could they be right when so many people saw it the same way?

    This is a very silly example, however, there are certainly more serious and life-impacting examples that the Toulmin Method could be applied to, as well as more dangerous echo chambers and emotional outbursts. But I hope you enjoyed this lighthearted throwback to 2015!

Example of Toulmin Method from Purdue

Podcasts

Ah yes, podcasts. The links to the sites for this assignment didn't work for me, so I turned to Spotify. Which, aside from music, also has its fair share of podcasts.

The podcast I chose relates to the AI project assignment quite a lot. It talks about AI and its threats to higher education. There's many points made, such as the fact that we do not know the capabilities of AI, meaning we don't know how far it could go. Another point is that it will likely take over education sectors and replace teachers. It also points out that higher education is not currently prepared to handle these challenges and to deal with the emerging AI landscape that young people will be living in.

These are some pretty big concerns! The first one being frightening because we know that AI is the future and that it will go far and become a routine part of life. However, we don't know how radically our lives could change because of that. We don't know all the implications of AI because we can't predict the future and we can't know how far it will be able to develop.

The second is another concern because teachers will be losing their jobs and students will be taught by robots. While I can see how this would be beneficial, as AI has greater access to information that a teacher, it puts a lot of people out of jobs. Additionally, it prevents students from developing those interpersonal, human relationships that would occur between a mentor and student.

Finally, the US higher education system is not prepared to face the crisis that will be caused by AI. It's scary that so many students are spending incredible amounts of money of education, yet will likely struggle to get out of debt due to the job crisis likely to be caused by AI.

New Books Network. (n.d.). Global Media & Communication. Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/show/4byiaFGNiTpb8gfAz1VkhF?si=d0ce0e306a6945f0

Lynch, S. (2017a, March 11). Andrew Ng: Why ai is the new electricity. Stanford Graduate School of Business. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/andrew-ng-why-ai-new-electricity

Online Opinions

Opinions can easily be shared through the online landscape. Almost everyone has access to this method! Public opinion has greatly shifted through online communication. For example, now everyone has access to various sources of information and can see different opinions on different issues. So long as someone is string within their own morals while maintaining an open mind, seeing different opinions can help people formulate their own, especially when factual information is used to accompany that.

However, there are also some issues. One being the algorithm. The algorithm pushes certain things onto certain audiences and this can lead them to only seeing one opinion on an issue. This will likely lead them to believing this outlook on things since it is the only thing they are exposed to. If other opinions cannot be observed due to the algorithm and lack of outside opinions, it is likely for individuals to become deeply rooted in beliefs that might not have even originally been their own.

Additionally, I personally believe in mass hysteria, which is an underresearched mass mental health crisis. Though this isn't well researched, it is when the general public falls into a certain line of beliefs that may be unhealthy in order to cope with their own struggles. This generally happens during turmulous times. Here's a link to a video on this topic:

Personally, I believe this to be especially true with "political" issues that shouldn't be political, where people are fed a certain idea that they begin to believe and become so deeply rooted in. But I'm not really in the mood to be discussing such topics due to, well, you know, the election. However, I think that many exteremists on both sides become this way due to what they see on the internet.

Those in generations prior to mine say that in the past, politics weren't so full of hate and extreme measures, with people with different beliefs unable to find common ground. Maybe they are misremembering or maybe it's because the internet wasn't used as a political weapon back then. Or, maybe those who did hold such beliefs just didn't have the platform to express them.

Who knows. I'm tired. A lot of you probably are too. Good luck out there.

Photo // Djalma Paiva Armelin (Pexels)