Essay Sharing/Commenting Post

<p>you are a failure as a student, an applicant, and as a human being. your chances of getting into chicago are about as likely as the hussein/bin Laden ticket carrying the 2008 republican nomination. you might as well withdraw your app and just end everything right now since your life is pretty much ruined after an essay like that anyway.</p>

<p>Magellan I just don't see the interest in your writing. There seems to be no logical flow in the piece which I think is really necessary in these sorts of writing essays.</p>

<p>Not A great essay. It's kind of confusing (an understatement):</p>

<p>Essay Option 4:
Over the past several decades with increased knowledge of genetics, humans have increasingly become aware of the possibility of creating clones and potential problems this creates. With this movement, the questions asked about individuality and the soul have become all the more important. The issue has even become an object of popular culture. For example, during the infamous Clone Saga, Spider-Man has to deal with a clone who shares his memories. Another example is the movie The 6th Day where a clone believes himself to be the original person. While these examples show different perspectives, they reach a similar conclusion.</p>

<p>The person created at the very instant the Teleclone Mark IV finished assembling the copy would be the same exact me as the me who entered the Teleclone Mark IV at the instant the blue plan was made. However, once time passed, this me would not be the same person as the one on Mars. I would have new experiences, I would have aged, and my molecules would be rearranged and moving. While this new me would have some relation to the me who entered the Teleclone Mark IV, we would be different people. The point is that new is the same as different. This relationship would be like comparing me as a 5 year-old with me as a 17 year-old. While we are related much more closely than any two people can ever be because the 17 year-old me would share the same memories as the 5 year-old me, we are clearly not the same people. However, the 17 year-old me is still entitled to the “life” of my 5 year-old self, or even the person I was 15 minutes ago. Just because an instant has passed and I am not the same person as I was the instant before does not mean I'm not entitled to the same possessions, family and friends, job, etc. Similarly the new me from the Teleclone Mark IV would be entitled to the life of the person on the blueprint. The me who entered the Teleclone machine arrived at a fork in the road of life. One path led to a stranded existence on Mars and a possible dead end while the other led to a return home. The Teleclone Mark IV would essentially act as a transporter.
The Teleclone Mark V problem is more addressed by popular media than the Teleclone Mark IV problem although the principle is similar. In this case, I'm able to travel both paths at once. The me whose molecular structure is recorded in the blueprint is the same exact person as the me at the instant the machine is finished assembling. However, if this process were not instantaneous, the persons at the instant in time when the process is complete are not the same. Time has passed for the me on Mars, and therefore, I am a new person with new memories while the me on Earth has not witnessed time pass. Once time has passed, we're both different from each other. </p>

<p>However, a new question is raised: which me is entitled to the possessions and “life” of the me who entered the Teleclone Mark V? The 17 year-old me still keeps the life, family, and possessions of my younger selves. However, with the Teleclone Mark V, there are 2 of me who are equally entitled to my “life.” There are two possible solutions to this problem. We can either share my life thereby radically changing it for both of us, or we could engage in a struggle against each other for that life. It's this problem that the Clone Saga of Spider-man and 6th day pose although the authors never accepts the idea that the clones are as equally entitled to this life. In both stories, there's a struggle between two people (clones), who share the same memories, for the “life” of the cloned person. In Spider-Man, Peter Parker battles his clone and wins, therefore keeping his “life.” While at first Peter Parker attempts to find out whether he is the clone or not after the victory, he realizes that he is entitled to the life of Peter Parker whether he is the copy or not and doesn't check the results of the DNA tests. He realizes that he is Peter Parker (the name represents Parker's life). The person who loses the struggle and is incidentally is the clone becomes Ben Reilly. However, if the clone had won (in the Teleclone problem, the two persons are exactly the same and there is no test to tell the difference between them), he would be just as entitled to Peter Parker's life. </p>

<p>However, what would I do? Unlike Peter Parker and Adam from The 6th Day, a copy of me would be made out of my own free will. I would have to enter the Teleclone Mark V machine out of my own free will knowing the consequences. I would have to enter the machine knowing that I was surrendering my “life” to the me on Earth. So there would be no real struggle in this case. If the me on Mars were to survive and return to Earth, he still wouldn't be able to return to my life because time would have passed on and the other me would have lived it for him particularly with family and friends. However, if the me on Mars and the me on Earth never crossed paths, they would both be continuations of the Teleclone me. The me on would live as if I had returned to Earth and the Martian me would live as if he had lost his friends, family, and possessions. It would be as if I were able to take both paths at a fork in the road of life.</p>

<p>Sorry, I didn't finnish reading your essay because if I didn't get exicited 1/3 of the way done, I doubt I would by the end. Again, I am just a student like you. Your opinion should count more than mine. </p>

<p>I was quite negative in my last three reviews. But there were some good ones I commented on before. But writing is so subjective. I read news a lot and some articles just interest me more than others.</p>

<p>I couldnt get through the essay either. I thought the pop culture relevance was faked and very transperent though.</p>

<p>well, I've read the spider-man cloning saga. and I own sixth day. I read comics (I was even in the comics club last year at my school). It's just me showing off me.</p>

<p>I'm surprised you got that far unless you're talking about the reference in the first paragraph.</p>

<p>Yeah, anyways, the only reason I posted it on here was that I'm sure nobody would bother to steal it.</p>

<p>RejectedRyan wrote "you are a failure as a student, an applicant, and as a human being. your chances of getting into chicago are about as likely as the hussein/bin Laden ticket carrying the 2008 republican nomination. you might as well withdraw your app and just end everything right now since your life is pretty much ruined after an essay like that anyway."</p>

<p>HAHAHHA! Cant.... stop....laughing!</p>

<p>But yeah, Magellan, I think your interpretation of Hume is pretty on-point at the begginning, but your application at the end is pretty sketchy. Plus, lauding rationality, logic, and problem-solving in a Humean thesis is kind of contradictory. Hope the admins aren't philosophy majors.</p>

<p>the funniest part is that i have no idea who Hume is and i have no idea how you guys know heard about him and i didn't. i guess i read too many finance books.</p>

<p>yeah that is wierd. i mean... how the hell could people possibly know something you didn't? its so strange that you don't know everything about every author ever, or that someone might know more about a certain topic than you! how bizzare is that? there must be some conspiracy or cult that entrusts a select few with guarding the knowledge of Hume! how else could YOU have been left out? this is almost as surprising as that time oprah wasn't fat! i can't even continue being sarcastic because the shock from you not knowing something that OTHER PEOPLE KNOW has sent me into a coma!</p>

<p>I was happier with this essay back when I sent it. I'm not as excited about it now, and some parts of it ("Congressional Medal of Commodity Honor"---***?) I hate. Obviously, it's a response to the first prompt. Please feel free to tear it as many new ones as you see fit.</p>

<p>"Mustard Manifesto"</p>

<p>Marx foresaw giant mustard.</p>

<p>Not exactly, I’ll grant you—unless I’m not quite at that part of Capital—but he saw it coming.</p>

<p>His term for giant mustard was commodity fetishism. In market societies, he observed, commodities are imparted with powers far beyond their basic, bland, everyday use-values. Thus, mustard is not a delicious spice fit for flavoring hot dogs. No, mustard is a badge of honor. He who possesses mustard has the right to say: “I have the wealth and power required to eat foods with many flavors at once: I taste a hot dog, a bun, and mustard.”</p>

<p>And giant mustard may as well be the Congressional Medal of Commodity Honor. Because one who owns giant mustard is not merely a consumer, with the power to buy and sell spices at will, but a Crafty Consumer. He can invite friends for a barbecue, mustard at the ready, and casually explain when asked, “Oh, the mustard? I picked it up at Costco. It was a real bargain, a good find. It’ll probably last till Labor Day.”</p>

<p>Gargantuan mustard is the natural outgrowth of commodity fetishism. In Money and Class in America, Lewis H. Lapham writes: “The definition of money as the sublime good. . . results in the depreciation of values that do not pay. What is moral is what returns a profit and satisfies the judgment of the bottom line.” And although he was specifically discussing the most wealthy and powerful members of the haute bourgeoisie, their empty obsession with money (unlike, say, their money itself) trickles down to the rest of society. The haute bourgeois accrue bigger, flashier, and better Porsches, Jaguars, and Hummers; everyone else accrues bigger, flashier, and better mustard.</p>

<p>Suddenly, mustard becomes the only means of attaining happiness. The emotional emptiness created by the free market can only be filled by more and more and more mustard, first in bigger squeeze bottles, then in bigger jars, then in bigger vats. In a culture that cannot provide it, consumers desperately seeking self-actualization find happiness in their immense tubs of yellow spice. “Keeping up with the Joneses” becomes ever more important: should the neighbors’ mustard be a foot higher than ours, they’ll automatically become better people.</p>

<p>Each new purchase brings sudden elation. The buyer relishes his newfound power: he knows that this tub of mustard, this magic-endowed commodity, will finally make him happy. (After all, the commercials say so.) And when it turns out that the commercials were lying and his happiness is an illusion, he doesn’t blame the infallible market. Because he can continue to acquire mustard, he’s sure that the market is just. And he doesn’t see how he can change the economy, as the miracle of reification has made it into an immutable object in his mind. So he blames the specific commodity: this particular tub of mustard was too small, too big, too dijon, too deli, too anything. He continues to acquire greater and greater volumes of mustard in stranger and stranger varieties, always counting on the next purchase to bring him Utopia. But although it never comes, he never learns why.</p>

<p>Marx understood the market economy better than anyone before or since, but he may well have been wrong on one count: Mustard, in fact, is the opiate of the masses.</p>

<p>mcole- Yes, that is a consideration that i took into account. What I was trying to do with this essay was show that higher understanding is possible, but only if we learn to avoid the cognitive pitfalls against which Hume warned. But I do not agree with Hume that metaphysics is impossible. It is possible, but only if we properly train our minds. So, I guess I used Hume as a jumping off point for my own philosophical ideas about education. Perhaps I should have clarified that distinction. But it probably would have been even worse if I had agreed with Hume that higher level understanding is impossible, considering that I am applying to an institution dedicated to seeking higher level understanding.</p>

<p>I would argue some more, but I'm not even sure what you just said. Could your response be any more vague and meaningless? But I mean... he's really talking about causality not satisfaction or "higher education"- w.t.f. I dont think Hume ever said that higher education is impossible - but whatever, people bastardize philosophers all the time, its not like you're doing anything new.</p>

<p>Magellan: Where do you get the idea that the nature of the human mind to believe in cause and effect would make us think that mustard causes hot dogs? Cause and effect are events not objects. Unless every time I see jar of mustard, a hot dog flew out of my ass(which hopefully is never the case), I think your reading of Hume's assault on the causal nexus is what I like to call "dead wrong." Otherwise, even under Hume's epistemological standards, we really don't have a reason to believe that hot dogs and mustards are necesarrialy associated, unless you happen to live in Magellan world where mustard and hot dogs are events. </p>

<p>So if you're talking about people buying mustard because they believe it will taste good on hot dogs, you're spot on. However, attacking a causal relationship between mustard and hot dogs that, unless you're two yours old or have less intelligence than a chimp with Down's Syndrome (can chimps get Down's Syndrome? Their genetic makeup is pretty similar...but I digress), most people would never, ever, infer, is a pretty pointless endeavor if you're trying to make a Hume-like epistemic argument.</p>

<p>At any rate, you were probably just looking for a way to tie your shallow reading of the A Treatise of Human Nature (or dare I say, Cliff Note's shallow reading?) into an essay topic that, while open to interpretation, is pretty nonsensical. Almost anything could be legitimatley inspired by mustard, but you still managed to make yourself look pretty dumb. </p>

<p>On another note, why do you subject your essay to criticism after you submitted it? Isnt' that going to make you feel even less confident about getting in?</p>

<p>This thread was for constructive criticism, buddy. A large part of your post was not constructive at all. Instead, it was asinine.</p>

<p>Oh and on the note of down's syndrome. It's caused when you have an extra chromosome in your genetic make up (I can't remember which one or which parent it comes from if it's even restricted to happening in a certain gender). It happens during Cytokenesis I believe when one of the chromatids does not split.</p>

<p>danielsh..your essay rocked. i liked it. a good combo of analysis and humor..and babumohan, i second your post.</p>

<p>I was fairly snarky, but you have to admit I was more constructive(but far less hilarious) than </p>

<p>Originally posted by RejectedRyan
"you are a failure as a student, an applicant, and as a human being. your chances of getting into chicago are about as likely as the hussein/bin Laden ticket carrying the 2008 republican nomination. you might as well withdraw your app and just end everything right now since your life is pretty much ruined after an essay like that anyway."</p>

<p>As far as Down's Syndrome goes, I know it happens when you have a third 21st chromosome, so I imagine a chimp could get something like it, if not the same disorder, right? (<em>Pauses and realizes he's discussing chimps with Down's Syndrome</em>) Hahahaha.</p>

<p>is that a teardrop i see on magellan's keyboard? </p>

<p>brings to mind an old beatles' tune: "Mean Mr. Mustard sleeps in the park shaves in the dark...."</p>

<p>Chimps have 2 more chromosomes than us I believe.</p>

<p>It's basically one of our large ones split up (or vice versa if you think about it evolutionary terms. Unless chimps evolved from an ancestor we're closer too.)</p>

<p>:-) Thanks, wondrlst! That makes me feel better... it'll be easier to sit here and wait for the freakin' mail.</p>

<p>beautiful ending. I loved your conclusion.</p>