Application 1 soc242 PDF

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Soc Application 1 What does the speaker mean by saying that he hopes the audience will leave the talk dumber? He hopes that we realize the thoughts and ideas we have previously and always held onto about what real issues and solutions are, are actually not what we thought they were the whole time. D...

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Soc242 Application 1 1. What does the speaker mean by saying that he hopes the audience will leave the talk dumber? He hopes that we realize the thoughts and ideas we have previously and always held onto about what real issues and solutions are, are actually not what we thought they were the whole time.

2. Did you feel dumber, given the definition of dumber by the speaker, after listening to his talk? Why or why not? I 100% feel dumber. I had to go back and re-watch the whole talk about 2 or 3 times and even the gas mileage concept makes me feel dumb. What I have been told matters actually doesn’t how I thought it did. To make more sense, the idea that we think more miles to the gallon is great, the reverse should actually matter more to us if we care about being efficient: the number of gallons being used per mile. My mind was blown to say the least.

3. What was infant mortality in 1960 in India and what is it today? In 1960, the infant mortality in India was 24%. Today, it is 6.5% which is still extremely significant since there is a perfectly good solution - yet so many deaths.

4. What technological solution to the diarrhea problem was made available? Was the problem solved completely by the solution? The technological solution to this problem were oral rehydration salts that were able to be mixed with some water that would hydrate the child and they would retain it. It reduced the mortality rate by nearly 20%, but not there are still 400,000 infant deaths a year from this.

5. What does the author mean by the "last mile" problem? He means that we were able to pave the way to a solution for pretty much the entire length of the problem, but there is that last section of people that we have basically dropped the ball on. There was basically a perfect solution to this issue, but there are other elements and inconsistencies within individuals such as a lack of education that have prevented them from acquiring the pill to help their infants. There is a HUMAN problem, not a technology/solution problem that researchers need to understand.

6. What do mental models of people have to do with the last mile problem? Individuals have their own mental model of ideas and constructions that have given them their own perspectives and solutions to problems in their lives. Scientists are always concerned about finding solutions to problem after problem, but when it is in the hands of the people they “drop

the ball” and don’t use all of the resources available to them, or they just don’t think that is the solution to their problem. Humans have complex minds and they don’t always follow the decision-making sequence that one may think they will.

7. What faulty mental model does the author say contributes to there still being infant deaths due to diarrhea in India? Why do some people use this mental model? For example, the women in India that said they would reduce fluid intake for their children with Diarrhea weren’t necessarily wrong -less fluids will stop it- but they weren’t in the right situation for this to be the correct solution. Their minds are framed in a totally different way because of their own backgrounds and also because of the lack of information being communicated to them. You can never truly predict the actions of someone else. The phenomena he used was the “leaky bucket” idea that people will use a model that they know will work in most situations, just definitely not this diarrhea situation. They’re using this mental model because it’s all they can compare past experiences with as well as their own complex intuition....