The issue that I would like to work on is the issue of poverty. Poverty is a global issue affecting millions of people around the world. It has been the cause of concern for many people because poverty leads to other dangerous issues that may affect humanity, human lives and human values. Poverty is prevalent all over the world because of the poor economic structure of countries, poor resources and also because of illiteracy. The other reason for poverty is simple laziness of people because they do not want to work, or they may not have skills to earn money to make a living for themselves. It is a potentially dangerous issue and it need to be solved. Poverty matters a lot in today’s world because poverty leads to other issues, such as increase of crimes, malnourishment in children, early deaths of children, terrorism, social conflicts and tensions among people. Poverty also can lead to another main issue of homelessness. It matters a lot for everyone, people who are poor and people who are not so poor, and countries that are poorly developed and countries that are well-developed because poverty may also lead to increase in immigration and this immigration may become a world issue. Poverty also creates a burden on the economy of the country. The healthcare field may be affected because poor people may suffer from many diseases and they would need treatment. They may not be able to pay for their treatment and the overall burden of healthcare would come on the government healthcare institutions. Poverty is not a problem of a single individual, but it is a problem of a community and a problem of the nation. People may think that poverty is a chosen “problem,” but this is not the case. Sometimes the economic situations in a country and the prevalent corruption and unemployment may become the cause of poverty. The best solution to the problem would be globalization and global help. The poor countries have to be helped by the richer countries. The solutions should not be like donating money and feeding for a day, but the root causes have to be identified and they have to be dealt with to deal with the issue of poverty right from its roots. Poverty is a global issue and there are many causes behind poverty, and at the same time there are serious consequences because of poverty so some solutions are essential and the help from the richer and developed countries is a welcome thought and a necessary one. This essay argues that poverty is the problem of countries and communities, and therefore the root causes of this problem have to be identified to eradicate it completely. Second Issue The issue I would like to work on is the issue of homelessness. The problem of homelessness is an important social and communal problem because it can lead to different other problems of increase in crime, poor humanistic values and a total downfall of humanity. People who are homeless may suffer f ...

1. The issue that I would like to work on is the issue of poverty.
Poverty is a global issue affecting millions of people around the
world. It has been the cause of
concern for many people because poverty leads to other
dangerous issues that may affect
humanity, human lives and human values. Poverty is prevalent
all over the world because of the
poor economic structure of countries, poor resources and also
because of illiteracy. The other
reason for poverty is simple laziness of people because they do
not want to work, or they may
not have skills to earn money to make a living for themselves. It
is a potentially dangerous issue
and it need to be solved.
Poverty matters a lot in today’s world because poverty leads to
other issues, such as increase of
crimes, malnourishment in children, early deaths of children,
terrorism, social conflicts and
tensions among people. Poverty also can lead to another main
issue of homelessness. It matters a
lot for everyone, people who are poor and people who are not so

2. poor, and countries that are
poorly developed and countries that are well-developed because
poverty may also lead to
increase in immigration and this immigration may become a
world issue.
Poverty also creates a burden on the economy of the country.
The healthcare field may be
affected because poor people may suffer from many diseases
and they would need treatment.
They may not be able to pay for their treatment and the overall
burden of healthcare would come
on the government healthcare institutions. Poverty is not a
problem of a single individual, but it
is a problem of a community and a problem of the nation.
People may think that poverty is a
chosen “problem,” but this is not the case. Sometimes the
economic situations in a country and
the prevalent corruption and unemployment may become the
cause of poverty.
The best solution to the problem would be globalization and
global help. The poor countries have
to be helped by the richer countries. The solutions should not be
like donating money and

3. feeding for a day, but the root causes have to be identified and
they have to be dealt with to deal
with the issue of poverty right from its roots.
Poverty is a global issue and there are many causes behind
poverty, and at the same time there
are serious consequences because of poverty so some solutions
are essential and the help from
the richer and developed countries is a welcome thought and a
necessary one. This essay argues
that poverty is the problem of countries and communities, and
therefore the root causes of this
problem have to be identified to eradicate it completely.
Second Issue
The issue I would like to work on is the issue of homelessness.
The problem of homelessness is an important social and
communal problem because it can lead
to different other problems of increase in crime, poor
humanistic values and a total downfall of
humanity. People who are homeless may suffer from
psychological problems, and may harm
themselves and others around them. Homeless people may also
suffer from diseases due to lack

4. of the essential amenities of life. Many people may think that
homelessness is because of the
individuals and not because of the community or country, but I
would say that homelessness is
indeed a problem of the community and country and they have
to take a combined blame for the
same.
My stance is that homelessness can be eradicated and people
living without homes can be given
a chance of decent living. The best solution to the problem is
that the governments should create
jobs and residential hostels for the homeless. The jobs can be
everyday jobs, such as printing,
cooking foods, and even ironing and washing clothes. These
mundane jobs also generate big
money, and this would help the homeless to earn for themselves
and also get a permanent shelter
over their heads.
Homelessness is a severe issue, and it is essential that it be
considered as a global issue and
appropriate measures should be taken by the governments to
deal with the problem of

5. homelessness and strike it out right from our world’s history. It
will not be easier to deal with
homelessness, but it will not be impossible. The people with
homes and luxuries should come
forward philanthropically to help the homeless and provide
them with shelter and the other
necessities of life and give them a chance to live a normal and
happy life.
Midterm part 2
Poverty
I) The issue is poverty and how it must be eradicated.
II) My stance is that richer nations need to help and simple
charity is not good enough. In my
humble opinion, poverty should not be seen as a problem
specific to a country or area. It should
be treated as a collective problem. The globalization and global
help is the best way to deal the
issue of poverty.
III) Poverty is menace that exists today not just in
underdeveloped and developing countries but
has been steadily increasing in the developed parts of the world.
But due to the severity of
poverty and lack of resources is poorer countries of the world,
where HDI is too low, it is
important to embrace the culture of globalization and the
resources must be mobilized so that
poorer and weaker sections of the society can too become self
reliant and dependent.
IV) The countries like India, China, two of the most populated

6. countries of the world, were
extremely poor till the last decade of twentieth century, but
after these countries adopted trade
and business policies of liberalization, the countries witnessed
massive economic growth and
rapid business explosion. The liberalization policies are the first
step towards globalization as it
allows free flow of goods, capital and resources; the
quintessential feature of globalization.
V) Foreign aid to poorer countries can never eradicate poverty
completely, it is wise investment
in fundamental aspects of life like education, health care and
change of attitude can bring those
unfortunate souls out of poverty. This is achievable through
globalization as setting up a business
or industry creates an entire ecosystem of various other
ancillary services and activities, thus it
leads to facelift of an entire area caused by the ripple effect of
establishing business.
VI) The opposite stance of mine is that globalization can create
a new set of problems and issues
in the developed parts of the world. As the work is getting
increasingly outsourced to such
regions where the human labor is low, the people in developed
economies are experiencing
shortfall in the employment opportunities. Thus, globalization
can result in poverty and
homelessness in developed parts of the world.
Homelessness
I) The issue is homelessness and how to eradicate it from the
society.
II) My stance is that homelessness should certainly be treated
as a serious issue and the issue
must be solved on a collective basis, as society should come
forward and take adequate steps to
come with remedial solutions to combat homelessness.

7. III) People who are homeless are at a higher risk of developing
psychological disorders as well
physical health issues due to their unclean and unhygienic state
of their body and their
surroundings. Such people are can easily succumb to their
irrational part of thinking and can
indulge in unethical activities and serious crimes like theft,
robbery, sexual harassment, murder
etc. Thus, the common citizens of the society are also at greater
risk of experiencing violent
incidents like such.
IV) Incidences of Homelessness can be avoided or mitigated if
government takes adequate steps
to provide affordable housing for all; something akin to
‘Obamacare’ that aimed at providing
medical assistance to all. By employing them even in mundane
activities like cooking, cleaning
or printing, they would be preoccupied with work, that would
not only make them financially
sound to some extent, but they can start thinking about
possibilities of their future, Often it is
seen that homeless people live without any purpose and concern
about their future, but giving
them an opportunity to think so, can actually pull them out from
the state of homelessness.
V) Another solution to keep homelessness is at bay is by
sharing accommodation and co-living,
that has emerged as a new concept. Many people work at night
and need a place to rest in the
morning and on the other hand, some people work during day
but need a shelter at night, hence,
housing (viewed as a resource) can be pooled to minimize cost
and maximize utility from the

8. same space/shelter.
VI). The opposite stance of mine is that by picking up a
collective approach, there society would
have to handle additional burden. The hard earned money that
members of the society pay as tax,
would get heavily allocated towards providing shelter and
assistance to homeless people. This
would create an additional pressure on the federal annual budget
allocation, thus eventually the
tax burden on common tax-paying citizen would rise.
Furthermore, the concept of shared
accommodation would lead to invasion of privacy and at times,
can become intrusive in nature.
CRAAP Criteria for Evaluating Research
Currency: Is the information properly current?
● When was the information published, posted, gathered, or
created?
● Has the information been revised or updated?
● Does your topic require current information, or will older
sources work?
● Are any web-links functional?
Relevance: Is the information specifically valuable to your
needs?
● Does the information closely relate to your topic or answer
your question?
● Who is the intended audience?
● Is the information presented at an appropriate level?

9. ● Have you looked at a variety of sources before deciding on
this one?
● Does it seem appropriate to cite this source?
Authority: Does the information come from proper expertise?
● Who is the author, publisher, source, or sponsor?
● What are the the author’s, authors’, or organization’s
credentials?
● What affiliations does the source have?
● Is the author qualified regarding this topic?
● Is there sufficient contact information available from the
research?
● What do any URLs indicate? (.edu, .gov, .org, .com)
Accuracy: Is the information reliable, truthful, correct?
● Where does it come from?
● Is the information supported by evidence?
● Has the information been reviewed or refereed?
● Can you verify any of the information in another source or
from personal knowledge?
● Is the information presented in way that is free of fallacies,
rhetoric, bias, emotion, etc.?
● Are there compositional errors in the writing?
Purpose: Why does the information exist in the first place?
● Is the purpose to inform, teach, sell, entertain, persuade, etc.?
● Do the authors or sponsors make their intentions clear?
● Is the information fact, opinion, propaganda, etc.?
● Does the point of view appear objective and impartial?
● Are there political, institutional, ideological, cultural, or

10. personal biases?
-When do we accept a claim as true? What conditions
need to be met? It is specific to disciplines and the claim
itself (what it is about and the best methods for
approaching that 'what'); other disciplines should be
focusing on what makes true claims true regarding their
object of analysis; critical thinking is more interested in
reasoning in general (as a feature of being a psychological
and sociological human in this world) and the proper form
of argumentation (logic).
-Add these basic principles/rules to the list:
1.) If a claim conflicts with other claims we already have
good reason to believe, then we have one good reason to
doubt or reject that initial claim.
2.) If a claim conflicts with our background information,
then we have one good reason to doubt or reject that
initial claim.
3.) Personal/Direct experience can reasonably stand as
evidence, but only if there is no good reason to doubt its
accuracy or legitimacy.
4.) If a claim conflicts with expert claims, then we have
one good reason to doubt that initial claim.

11. -We can say some general things about reasons to
believe, regardless of the 'what'. From the most basic
vantage point, there are some common sources of
justification worth brining up: personal/direct experience,
memory, and others.
-Personal/Direct experience involves sensation, memory,
and judgments. Each of these are completely flawed, so
experience can only go so far as a source of justification.
First, our experiences--even if accurate--are terribly
limited, so there is a pretty small range of justification from
this source. Second, our personal experiences aren't
immediate sources of objectivity. Third, our intuitions, gut
reactions, and common sense are not only fallible, but
incredibly complex products of centuries or more of
tradition. We experience things more simply than they are.
-Sensation and perception are themselves limited and
imperfect. Perception requires the proper conditions,
requiring a kind of Goldilocks zone of input. It is also easily
swayed by our ideas (in interpretation) and the power of
suggestion. Sensation is unreliable as a source of
knowledge when the following impairments are in place:
illness, fatigue, injury, stress, excitement, distraction,
disorientation.
-Our minds, in interpreting sensations, easily make
mistakes based on our expectations, innumeracy, and
biases to resist contrary evidence, look for confirming

12. evidence, and prefer available evidence. Recall all the the
problems referred to in our discussions of barriers to
critical thinking.
-Memory itself is based on imperfect experiences, and can
only intensify those imperfections rather than improve on
them. Memory is not a replica of an objective sensation,
but an imperfect copy (a construction, even) of an
imperfect interpretation of a maybe legitimate sensation of
some thing out there in the word. There's a great deal that
can go wrong here; assuming otherwise is not critical
thinking. False memory syndrome is prevalent and studies
increasingly show its regular effect in normal life. We can
fall to false memory syndrome by our own lack of
self-analysis, our biases, language and tradition (car crash
words), and the suggestion of others (the hammer
suggestion). Memories change.
-Other people are obviously a major source of information
to us. It is essential that we have some tools to tell when
that information is reliable and when it isn't without
guessing or resting on biases. Hearsay and anecdotal
evidence are to be disregarded generally. Neither has a
history of success. Hearsay degrades with each repetition,
and is based on an already unreliable personal
experience. Anecdotal evidence has all of the problems
referred to above. Studies show that eyewitness testimony
of identifications of suspects are correct about 50% of the
time.
-The safest way to deal with claims that come from other

13. people is to determine who is an expert and who is not.
For any given claim, there should be a group of experts
regarding the type of thinking, observing, and
understanding that the claim operates in. Define expertise
broadly: an expert is one who is more knowledgeable in a
given field than the average person. This low bar
importantly disqualifies below average and average from
consideration. From here, it is a matter of determining the
kind of expert one would require in order to
confirm/disconfirm the given claim, which will vary based
on the specifics of the claim. Experts have an advantage
over others for two reasons: they have access to more
information and they know how to judge that information
better than others. Experts are an essential feature of
human civilization. The division of labor allows us to make
advancements we otherwise would not have been able to
make. Specialized knowledge disseminates to average
understanding with time, which benefits all.
-Making sure we don't fall for appeal to authority fallacies
is crucial. Don't take people who occupy positions of
power to be experts for that reason. Don't allow experts in
one field to be taken as experts in other fields. This is very
difficult, since we are in a naturally vulnerable position
regarding experts: we need them, but cannot easily
determine whether their claims are true or false in the way
they can. Since we cannot simply verify their claims in a
straightforward way, and we should not be satisfied with
guessing or going off of intuitions, we need criteria to
determine an expert from a non-expert in a non-arbitrary
way, but also a way that everyone can use regardless of
their expertise.

14. -Experts are experts because they meet the following four
criteria of expertise in satisfying ways. Generally, more is
better on these criteria. The more fully a person meets
these criteria in a given field, the more of an expert they
are. Context matters here.
1.) Education or training from a reputable, relevant
institution.
2.) Experience in making reliable judgments in their field.
3.) Positive reputation among peers (other experts in that
field).
4.) Professional accomplishments in the field.
Since we don't have the specialized knowledge and skills
required to tell if an expert is a proper expert or not, we
must use these criteria as evidence of expertise itself.
When determining whether we should accept the claim of
a person, the question is whether they are an expert in
that field or not. The first reason to accept the claim is that
they are an expert. The second reason that justifies the
first is the evidence that they meet these criteria. If I ask,
"Why are you taking that supposed expert's claims to be
true?" the only acceptable answer is providing evidence of
their meeting these four criteria as much as possible. This
is a non-expert's argument for using the claims of
expertise, without appealing to biases, fallacies, or
intuitions.

15. -When it comes to expert claims, proportion belief to the
evidence. If experts disagree regarding a claim, proportion
belief accordingly. If the disagreement is proportionally
equal, remain skeptical and take no hard stance until the
matter is resolved.
Writing Assignment 7 Prompt
Description:
First, this assignment is designed to exercise students’ ability to
discern expertise. Using
the four criteria of expertise, students will assess given cases
where a person’s expertise
must be determined so that students are able to meaningfully
tell experts from
non-experts. Students will also use the criteria of expertise to
develop a profile of
expertise for a given discipline so that students are experienced
in understanding what an
ideal expert is for a given field.
Second, This assignment is designed to furnish students with
the tools required to do
research meaningfully and successfully, regardless of topic or
proficiency. Using the
CRAAP model of criteria for evaluating research sources
(Blackboard), students will
examine one source of information relating to their final project
issue to determine the
quality of that information in a research setting. Students will
consider what kind of

16. information is best for their topic, find an initially appropriate
source, then apply the
criteria to understand the quality of information better. In this
way, students will gain the
ability to justify why using certain information as research is
advisable, the strengths and
weaknesses of particular information.
Directions:
1. For the following three cases, use the criteria of expertise to
determine whether
the given person is an expert or not in the given field in which
the claim is being
made. Each assessment should use all four criteria in a detailed
way, and be at
least one paragraph long. These are real people and situations,
and looking online
for information is advised.
a. Dr. Mehmet Oz has firmly claimed that faith-healing is a
powerful means
to cure a variety of diseases. Given his world-wide recognition,
his
appearance on television as an expert, his books and products,
his standing
as a medical doctor (MD from University of Pennsylvania) and
professor
of surgery and cardiology at Columbia, we should accept his
claim that
faith-healing is a legitimate medical practice.
b. Cited by Donald Trump for evidence of the dangers of
unchecked
immigration, Fox News expert, Nils Bildt, a Swedish defense

17. and national
security advisor, claimed that crime rates in Sweden have gone
up
proportionally with relaxed immigration policy. Bildt’s standing
as a
security expert is verified by broadcast experts at the news
organization,
who only allowed him on after having verified his credentials.
c. Newly awarded Nobel Prize Economist Richard Thaler
recently claimed
on PBS that we should be wary of investing in the stock market
since it’s
not totally clear what is making the market go up, and, hence,
unclear
what it will do next. His assertion is that it would be wiser to
save money
rather than risk it, especially for those who have little
expendable income
to invest or save. Thaler made these claims as an expert in
economics,
holding a professorship at the University of Chicago, a PhD in
economics
from Rochester, and a variety of important, leading publications
in his
field.
2. For the following two fields of knowledge, professions, or
disciplines, choose,
one, then use the criteria of expertise to hypothetically develop
of profile of what
characteristics an expert in the chosen field should have in
order to be a legitimate
expert in that field. I am providing a broad field, and then

18. possibilities of specific
positions in that field for your to choose one from. The profile
should use all four
criteria in a detailed way, and be at least one paragraph long.
a. Journalism/Journalist: a column writer on education policy, a
news
anchor, a war correspondent.
b. Sciences/Scientist: a professor of astronomy, a researcher on
vaccines, a
climatologist.
3. Consider your final project issue (pick one of the two issues
for this) and what
kind of information is produced regarding that issue. Things
like books, news
articles, media reports, expert analysis, scholarly journal
entries, scientific studies,
government studies, textbooks, legal cases and rulings, laws,
etc., should all be
taken into consideration. Locate (library, internet, media, etc.)
one item of
information which you initially believe to be relevant to your
issue. Whether or
not the item supports your stance is irrelevant. What matters is
that your
assessment is accurate and fruitful, not whether the source, after
assessment, is
perfect or imperfect. Using the CRAAP model of criteria, assess
your chosen
source of information. In one paragraph, describe the results.
Would you say that
the source is good or bad, according to which criteria?