Lillian Wu's Blog

     If all of the criteria for personhood are not met, that does not mean the person or thing in question is not a person.  The criteria for personhood, with characteristics such as sentience, emotion, and reasoning is based on human characteristics and is thus a biased perspective. It is difficult to hold other animals to the same standards as humans. In addition, a person legally is something or someone who has rights, whether that be a human, non-human organism or non-living thing. Credit. zh.wikipedia.org     The rights of persons outweigh the rights of non-persons if it comes to a conflict. However, as stated before the definition of "person" is difficult to judge. A key part of the classification is the sentience of persons, which corresponds to the way in which questions related to their rights affect them.  Credit: ThoughtCo      I would count humans, comatose humans, rocks, trees and the earth as persons. Although they do not n...

 https://utk.instructuremedia.com/embed/5dc6395e-cff0-4bcf-8fd2-33f76d7c21dc      In this video, a pitbull is licking a baby cottontail rabbit. The rabbit is cleaning itself while this is happening. Credit: Reader's Digest     I interpret the pitbull's behavior in the video as affectionate. It seems to me that the pitbull sees the bunny as a fellow animal to take care of through cleaning, a common way of showing affection for animal as mothers do to their children. I base this interpretation on my past experiences of seeing videos of animals cleaning each other, especially dogs doing so to other animals, as well as stories I have heard of dogs licking animals that they are close with such as their owners .     Value-judgment and perspective could come into play in biased ways. For example, I like to look at things positively and thus tend to see positive reasoning for things that I do not have much background information about. My value of previou...

     I previously have only seen 3D printers and 3D printed objects. From looking at 3D printed objects up close, I could see the details and layering that the printer made. I knew that programs such as TinkerCad could be used to create 3D designs. However, I didn't know many details of the process and I haven't 3D printed something before.     I chose to use TinkerCad because of its simplicity, and I chose to design the logo for the popular rhythm video game osu!, which is my favorite video game. The dimensions are all less than two inches. My design of the osu! logo The original osu! logo- Credit: Wikipedia      I learned about a lot of different details and rules of 3D printing that I didn't know before. For example, overhangs shouldn't be over 45 degrees, and sharp points can be deformed without time to cool. This helps result in more successful when 3D printing. I learned about what CAD actually means- Computer-Aided Design, and its role in 3...

    My previous experience with coding was limited to middle school STEM (using applications such as Scratch and Tinkercad) and AP Computer Science Principles, where we used Scratch and the course's pseudocode. This summer, I have been learning  Java through websites and Youtube videos. I used the Codecademy website because I have never learned Python before and am a beginner to coding.     I learned that Python has a syntax that is in some ways simpler than Java, but both languages overall have a similar structure as high-level languages. There are noticeable differences, for example to switch lines you use triple quotes instead of adding -ln. I completed the first 14 exercises and moved on to the 16-exercise section.      In the ChatGPT exercise, I learned that ChatGPT is often biased against females and minority groups, especially African-Americans, who often have less representation in the fields of technology and AI. For example, in job hirin...

 Group Members: Haley Patel, Qiqi Wang, Lillian Wu, James Overall, Zhendi Wang     SETI is an organization that aims to determine whether extraterrestrial life exists. Individually and as a group, we classified SETI as science.      SETI also takes advantage of scientific tools such as telescopes, radio, and satellite technology, and is supported by scientific authority, such as NASA. Projects such as COSMIC aiming to detect foreign technosignatures rely on these technologies. They have a clear hypothesis- that intelligent life capable of emitting electromagnetic radiation exists elsewhere in the universe. Arecibo Telescope used by SETI- Credit: wordlesstech.com     Just because temporarily the existence of intelligence elsewhere in the universe seems unfalsifiable, that is only because we don't have the means of technology to verify it, not because it's something like an opinion that cannot be proven true or false.  It's normal for scientifi...

The Engineering Design Process is a cyclical series of steps used by engineers when solving problems. Step 1: Define the problem- what are you trying to solve or improve, and what is your goal? Our goal is to make a moving device that is sturdy and can move without a force acting on it. Step 2: Research the problem. What is the problem, and what have others done? What are the constraints/criteria?      We researched the problem, and others have built models or vehicles using these kinds of parts. Some designs have additional features and details such as catapults. The criteria are that the device moves on its own. Our material constraints are four wheels and limited parts for building the frame. For our time constraints, we have 10 minutes of planning time and 10 minutes of building time. Step 3: Brainstorm possible solutions and ideas.      We could make a very simple four-wheeled vehicle for the most stability and a good weight distribution. Ideally, it c...

  The self-driving car dilemma is a test of ethics in their relation to technology. When large boxes fall from a truck ahead of a self-driving car, of which the instructions can be manually overwritten, there is the choice of swerving left to hit an SUV, keep going and risk the life of the driver, or swerve right and hit a motorcyclist. I choose the option of programming to hit the SUV.     My choice is to program the self-driving car to swerve left and hit the SUV because this option would minimize the more certain danger to people, avoiding the more likely events of killing the driver of the self-driving car or the motorcyclist upon taking those paths. Considering this, those choices could be argued to be premeditated murder despite not intending to hurt anyone in the emergency situation. Although the issue is highly subjective as all three choices cause harm, I believe ethically it is best to minimize the amount of harm caused. Credit: industrywired.com     T...