Blog #2

We were assigned to reread and annotate the article about the Effective Altruists. I think I approached the second reading differently than the first because I already had an opinion of the group and therefore was not willing to consider siding with the EAs. The majority of my reactions to different parts of the text were identical to the previous time reading it. In fact, I had to stop myself from writing the exact same thing in the margin a few times. I do think that I realized a few more things in the text then before. The second time, I read less to understand what was being said and instead focused more on the word choice, grammar, and details. This allowed me to create a more vivid image of the Effective Altruists while reading. I think seeing the website also made me feel differently about the EAs. The website had a clean, informative look to it that made it seem more intriguing then the article was. Under the resources tab, there was ample information in a variety of modes. I ended up watching a TED Talk that the website showcased. I think hearing about the group from someone in the group was a different experience then from the author because she was biased toward the EAs and therefore painted it in a better light then Southan, who is not part of the group, did. We were also tasked to look up the words we did not already know during the second time through the reading. I do this regularly, so it did not change my point of view on the article, all of the unknown words had been looked up. Two of the main ones, though, were “coalescing” and “subversive” which mean to come together and to intend to overthrow, respectively. I think that knowing what these words mean allow me to not have to guess what the author is meaning and instead have a definite answer for this. For these words, I simply looked them up on Merriam Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subversive) (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coalescing). I think that in the future, I am going to continue annotating how I have been because this allows me to have greater memory retention of the text, not have questions over what I read, and form greater opinions on the text.