Metanoia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Metanoia - Essay Example The notion â€Å"metanoia† literally means â€Å"change of mind† (Branch 55) and most widely is presented in the way that a person has a certain way of thinking and consideration of the phenomenon of the world and then something changes the way of thinking for good. This notion mostly concerns religious change of thinking. From the very beginning of a person’s religious path some acts can be called metanoic, for instance, it can be conversion into religion from atheistic point of view, or from another religion. The point is that metanoia requires a person to change one’s way of life according to the new understanding the person acquired from the act of metanoia (Clarkson 225). It is very important to divide different types of the notion â€Å"mind† considering metanoia. Dealing with spiritual realm we find that mind has certain gradation which is following. â€Å"Mind† as both intelligence and consciousness don’t really deal with metan oia in religious aspect. But â€Å"Mind† as spiritual intelligence (SQ) means the need of every human being to feel this life as something filled with meaning and spiritual power that rule everything (Powell n.pag.) and this kind of mind actually changes through the metanoic process. This means that metanoia works in changing of spirit which makes it totally existential even though some researches try to describe it as ethical process when a person realizes that one’s previous way of life was in some way unethical and decides to change it into a decent one (Friesen and Guhr 724). The difference between ethical and existential change (metanoic one) can be described through the famous biblical example from the Gospel of St. Mark, 10: 17-27. When a rich guy came to Jesus asking how he can reach the salvation, Jesus answered him that firstly he had to follow the God’s commandments and secondly he had to sell all his

The Therac-25 and Its Accident Investigation Case Study - 1

The Therac-25 and Its Accident Investigation - Case Study Example When u fix an old bug, it is highly likely that anew bug will develop. After fixing a bug, there is only a fifty per cent chance that the particular program will function over a similar length of time before failing, the same way it did before the bug was rectified. This means that the manufacturer’s claims that the machine’s safety was improved after it was fixed were totally unfounded. The manufacturer’s claim that the machine could never break down, even after getting and rectifying numerous problems was groundless. So long as the manufacturer had the conviction that the machine could never cause an overdose of radiation, they would not notice any deficiencies in their machine. As much as many people would love to point fingers at the manufacturer as the cause of the Therac-25 accidents, the technicians and operators who operated the machine also made some mistakes which caused the accident. For instance, it was somehow strange that the operators of the machin e got comfortable running the machine despite the regular error notices it issued. The machine normally issued forty error notices in a single day. This was bad since the cost of the Therac-25’s failure may possibly be death and it was the operator’s responsibility to insist for a properly functioning machine without faults. They could also have demanded a clear documentation that showed the machine’s errors and their possible causes. They also over relied on the safety statistics of the machine which were inflated as stated by the manufacturer. This made them not to investigate any overdoses possible hence putting the lives of the patients in danger. The federal government had a fair share of blame in the accidents because they knew that the manufacturer’s engineering practices were poor but still allowed the use of Therac-25. They seemingly had too much faith in the safety statistics that were posted by the manufacturer and therefore never took a keen i nterest in the safety precautions. The accidents were caused by institutional and engineering mistakes which could have led to even bigger disasters had the machine’s operation not been suspended. The manufacturer never had an independent review on the software code and therefore had not followed the right procedure. They never considered the software’s design when assessing the machine’s ability to produce the expected results and if there were any failure modes in its operation. The machine never explained any error codes so the operators just overrode the warning signs since they could not tell if there was an error or just a false alarm. The manufacturer never believed any complaints since there were overconfident that the machine would never fail, to make it worse, the hardware and software combination was never tested until after its assembly at the hospital. On the engineering side, the machine failed only when a non standard keystroke was entered on term inal VT-100. This machine never had hardware interlocks which could prevent the beam from running in high energy mode when the target was not in position. The programming engineer used software from an old model. The old models used hardware to cover their faults but could not report the faults hence leaving the machine to operate with the