week8/week8-crux-feedback.html

banner

Week 8 Crux Questions Feedback

 

General Comments:

This week, I called out each of the parts of the questions. In general people wrote answers that were very well constructed.

See examples of good answers below.

 

Q1. Worldviews can lead to very different projections on environmental issues.

  • Compare the hierachist and egalitarian worldview for how they each would deal with some environmental issue such as water shortage.
  • What are some key assumptions that each worldview holds?
  • What happens if one of these crucial assumptions turns out to be wrong?

 

a. Identify differences in hierarchist and egalitarian such as rules vs. cooperation or efficiency vs. preservation and apply these to water resources.

b. Key assumptions are about the sensitivity of natural systems to human impact.

c. dystopian outcome, identify worst case scenarios

a weakness in the hierarchist is that if you specify all the rules you won't get any creativity or alternate solutions

 

Q2. Creating scenarios is a good mechanism to explore possible future outcomes for environmental projects.

  • How can you use narratives to construct worldviews that represent different worldviews?
  • Why is building trust a key aspect of the process of scenarios?
  • How does this overall process help avoid traps or surprises?

 

bringing in multiple viewpoints from all sorts of media and representations

trust is important for people to buy into the process and treat the discussion honestly

people are more like to trust scenarios that have some familiarity

No one stated this - but you don't want people to "game" the scenario process by providing false information to create scenarios that favor their agenda.

brining in multiple viewpoints will reduce the chance that some relationship was missed, it won't eliminate surprises or traps entirely.

 

 

Here is an example from a student of a really good answer to Q1. It hits all the points and explains how the world views would be different.

The Hierachist and Egalitarian worldviews are contradictory to one another. A hierachist world view assumes that nature is strong and healthy – They believe that with structured regulations nature will be robust and consistent. This view instills a general sense of security within the way things are. The egalitarian worldview assumes that nature is fragile and believes that prevention and percussion must be present at all times to maintain nature's strength. This belief believes works the opposite way to create a sense of discomfort with the current conditions.

The Heirachist are comfortable with the way things are because they believe nature is strong, while the Egalitarian are uneasy because they view nature as fragile – These two very different fundamental beliefs would have a strong influence on the way a situation would be handled. In the event of a water shortage, the Hierachist may feel that there is no need to take action because nature will heal itself, thus eventually restoring the supply of water. The Egalitarian would immediately explore ways to find alternative sources of water because they feel that nature can be broken unless they are able to prevent it.  

In the given example, if the Hierachists are wrong and overestimate nature's strength ability to restore itself, they could end up in a drought. The Egalitarians, underestimating nature's strength, may have wasted an enormous amount of time and resources preparing for something that nature fixed on its own.