Mathew Chan
CPSG 200
In the video, “Throwing Shade: Heat Islands, Public Health, and Clean Water”, the following questions were asked about the topic. The first question that the topic presented was what the bill introduced was intended to address. Another question is what the effects of heat island are. The final question is what the solution is for reducing urban heat island. The answer to the first question is that the bill at hand made it the responsibility for the developer to take account and replace lost habitat like trees and replant them, restoring more drainage in order to reduce the footprint that the building generated, at least more than they already do. To answer the second question, urban heat island that is caused by impervious surfaces not only causes increased temperature in an area but also is an indication of more destroyed habitat, reduced livability of the community from temperatures and a lack of amenities that are usually associated with the massive amounts of impervious infrastructure present in said area. The answer to the final question is that the main solution to the problem should be city-scale projects. City scale projects not only reduce the urban heat island itself but can completely reverse any externalities with benefits that come with nature and the interaction it has with the many people that live in cities.
In the video, “Confirmation Bias and Other Ways to Be Wrong (Andrew E. Love)”, the questions in the video were of the following. The first question was towards the quote from Mark Twain, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” The second one was more of a debunking of misinformation of who wrote 2 quotes first, and that it was John Billings who wrote the misinformation. The quotes are, “I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain’t so” and “Wisdum don’t consist in knowing more that iz new, but in knowing less that iz false”. The final question is whether the Twain version of these quotes are false or not. To answer the first question, the person who said this quote was actually not Mark Twain but instead Benjamin Franklin. This shows confirmation bias that because when another says something, they a person can for sure think that Mark Twain said the quote but if people passively act and don’t correct, they will feel better about being “right”. For the second question, John Billings actually the person to quote it. The problem is that Twain is often cited as the first person to write that and not Billings who actually wrote it. For the third question, the misattribution of Twain is common because of the fact that Twain is so much more well known as a writer that can come up with clever phrases. This means that the famous that are not known to have made the quote or those that aren’t known at all are much less likely to actually be credited for the quote and because everyone believes something to be “true”, it is now in a way actually true.
Links:
Throwing Shade: Heat Islands, Public Health, and Clean Water https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28KmGyZFT0U
Confirmation Bias and Other Ways to Be Wrong (Andrew E. Love) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_R4eG-b4Tg