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June 6: Pseudoscience

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Although most fields can be easily defined as a science or a pseudoscience, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is an interesting case. Today in STEM in Society class we discussed pseudoscience. Despite the wide range of pseudosciences, they all have common properties: they seem like science with a systematic theory they claim to be science unscientific in a fundamental way Next, we split into groups to discuss an interesting case: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). My team included Luke K, Samuel K,  Derek Ahn, and Yejoon Ham. This exercise taught me how to work more effectively as a team. We used the following websites: A Primer on SETI at the SETI Institute New Model Predicts That We're Probably the Only Advanced Civilization in the Observable Universe - Universe Today SETI scientists begin huge new hunt for intelligent aliens | Space Technosignatures and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence | News | Astrobiology (nasa.gov) My team concluded...
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My Gov School Experience

Hello, my name is Luke Akers. I am a rising senior from Memphis University School. At school I am involved in many clubs and play clarinet in the band. In my free time I like to hang out with friends, listen to music, and play video games. My favorite school subject is math which led me to Governers school. I have always been good at math and enjoy it. It is like a difficult puzzle you have to solve. I have some background in the subjects taught at the math program such as matrices; however, I hope to gain a deeper understanding of these concepts. I also hope it can help me for Advanced Topics, a challenging math class I am taking at my school next year. I hope GSSE can help me improve my STEM skills and meet like-minded people. I also hope it can help me narrow down a career choice and gain exposure to the college lifestyle. 
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Self Driving Cars

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A dilemma about how to program a self-driving car showed me how interdisciplinary some problems can be. Today was my first STEM Skills and STEM in Society class. The class started with a TED-Ed video that raised an interesting question: If you were programming a self-driving car and a box fell out of a truck, would you program the car to let the box hit, swerve into an SUV, or hit a motorcycle. Here is the link to the video. Here's a picture of the situation: This is a hard dilemma to answer. If I were the programmer, I would research each situation and find or calculate the average number of deaths for each situation. Then I would choose the one with the least number of average deaths. This method allows the choice to be made purely on empirical data and not affected by human biases. For example, if the program had a bad experience with a motorcyclist, he would likely choose the motorcycle. Our biases affect us whether we are conscious of it or not. This problem is interesting to...
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