April Entry 1 - All 13 'Wild Boars' rescued from Thai cave on third day of operation

 TOK Analysis

Article:-

All 13 'Wild Boars' rescued from Thai cave on third day of operation! Given tranquilizers?

All 12 boys from the "Wild Boar" football team and their coach were rescued on Tuesday evening (Jul 10) from a flooded Thai cave complex where they had been trapped for more than two weeks.

In a day of high drama, the remaining five boys emerged in groups as evening approached, guided out by international divers and the SEALs, who have played an integral role throughout an unprecedented rescue mission. Eight of the boys were brought out on stretchers over the first two days - four on Sunday and four on Monday. Officials were not immediately available to comment on who had been brought out, and it was not clear what condition they were in.

The head of the operation, Narongsak Osottanakorn, said earlier the final operation would be "more challenging" because one more survivor would be brought out, along with three Navy SEALs who have been accompanying them. The rescuers have been learning from experience and were two hours faster in bringing the second batch of survivors out on Monday. However, scattered monsoon rains continued to risk percolating through the limestone cave walls to flood the tunnels with fast-flowing water. A crack team of foreign divers and Thai Navy SEALS has been guiding the boys out through nearly 4km of sometimes submerged, pitch-dark channels. Technology billionaire Elon Musk went into the cave on Monday and left the rescue team with a "kid-sized" submarine his company SpaceX had built, Thailand's interior Minister Anupong Paochinda said.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who visited the cave on Monday, denied on Tuesday that the young footballers were tranquillized before being rescued, but admitted that they took anxiolytic to relieve anxiety. There had been speculation that since all of the 13 survivors had no diving experience and most could not swim, and that diving out of the cave could be a frightening experience, they might have to be given tranquillizers before embarking on the high-risk journey.

Speaking after the weekly Cabinet meeting in Bangkok, Gen Prayut dismissed the speculation but admitted that the so-called Wild Boars soccer team members were given anxiolytic to reduce their anxiety. Now they are out, concerns are set to focus on the physical and mental toll of the ordeal. Experts warned that drinking contaminated water or otherwise being exposed to bird or bat droppings in the cave could lead to dangerous infections. They also said counselling would be needed to deal with the psychological trauma of spending so long not knowing whether they were going to survive.

 Analysis:-

TOK Relation:-

This article above is an article on the topic of rescue mission. 13 kids had gotten stuck in an underwater cave. These 13 kids were part of a football team. They had gone to celebrate their victory and were spending time on a beach. They had decided to go explore a cave along with their coach. Unfortunately after going in the tide rapidly started to rise and so the cave slowly filled with water. The kids and their coach had gotten stuck in the cave with no way out. Here during their experience they had gone through many phases where we can analyze and relate to TOK and its ways of knowing.

The first point I would like to address is that the kids and coach once trapped inside the cave did not panic. They had been calm and tried to find alternate ways out. Here they had used inductive reasoning. They had not been sure of the conclusion or what would happen to them but they still stayed calm, looked at their surroundings and tried to think logically on what they could do to get out. They had also tried to shift rocks on the back to make another exit. Here they are using their personal knowledge and also enhancing their thinking skills, to help them get out.

Another thing is they had used the subjective thinking when thinking of ways to get out because they are using their own brains to come up with something and not relying on anything around them as they are surrounded by water. Many things can affect their ways of thinking. Their emotions may be one. Most of the children, even though having parents, they were not very scared because they had a strong sense of belief, reassurance and strength given by motivational words of the coach. The coach clearly has experience in motivation during football so the children trust him. Here the coach uses his personal knowledge and relation to the children to calm them down.

Here people offered their full support in this operation and people contributed to help them by thinking of different ways. Here you can see a clear display of the presence of shared knowledge. But the public had also tried to come up with false information. One particular article stood out to me. It had stated that the children were under tranquilizers as they were to scared. So putting them to sleep might have been the best option. But no. That statement was proven wrong after the tests were run on the children once they were free. 

This particular thing is what we call false dichotomy. A false dilemma (sometimes also referred to as a false dichotomy) is a logical fallacy, which occurs when a limited number of options are incorrectly presented as being mutually exclusive to one another or as being the only options that exist, in a situation where that isn't the case. These are some of the ways that TOK is related to this particular situation.

Knowledge Issue:-

Here the knowledge is the public assuming that the children were under tranquilizers while trapped in the cave.