Mitt Romney announced his economic plan 392 days ago—yet his running mate says it’d take too long to explain the math. It’s time to admit they’re dodging the question because the middle class won’t like the answer.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand”. (Albert Einstein) Do you agree?
I chose this topic because it looks interesting to me. Unlike other topics this attracted my mind. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Imagination is similar to dreaming. We should all give importance to imagination/Dreams. “Dream, dream, dream; Dreams transform into thoughts
and thoughts result in action” by Dr. A P J Abdul kalam (Former President of India). I think this has clear connection with my topic. Imaginations guide as to a good future. According to my opinion, a person can’t achieve anything without imagining it. Usually we imagine things all day long even during our sleeps. But during sleeps we imagine things with the help of our dreams. I totally agree with Albert Einstein’s quote “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand”. How much knowledge does a common man achieve? According to my opinion his knowledge will be limited. But are there any limitations to his imagination? The answer would be ‘no’. We can imagine about whatever we want; you don’t have to pay for it. Imagination, however, is not just the recombination of stored experiences. We imagine new things which we never thought of doing. Do I have the knowledge to become the CEO of a company? The answer would be ‘no’ because right now my knowledge is limited but I could imagine of becoming a CEO in future. Here, we can see knowledge vs. imagination. The main difference between these two is knowledge is limited while imagination is not at all limited.
Does imagination always helps to achieve things? This would be a knowledge issue. According to my opinion knowledge guides as towards imagination and also we can consider this as vice versa, imagination guides as towards knowledge. Both of them will work because I have personal examples for this. I will try to explain all that in my extended essay. I hope I will get more knowledge issues and examples with this topic. I’m really excited to write this essay because unlike other subjects TOK makes me feel relaxed and happy. That’s the only reason why I love this class.
Ajin Abraham Thought log #4
IB TOK 5/6/12
Reasoning and Mistakes
Reason can reduce mistakes. But does reason always reduce mistakes? I don’t think so. I believe that it all depends according to the situation. Sometimes reason can worsen your mistake. For example, in our class Mr. Sokoloff showed us an example of how reasons reduce mistake. Here is his example, 1. All teachers have students 2. Dr. Meier has students 3. Therefore, Dr. Meier is a teacher. This example created many arguments in the class. But Mr. Sokoloff never gave up. He still thinks this is the right way of presenting this example. Actually this is correct but the way he presented this made problems. But according to me and my other classmates it should be like this. 1. All teachers have students 2. Dr. Meier is teacher 3. Therefore, Dr. Meier has students. The example makes more sense in this way. Let’s analyze this example. Here Soko’s reasons made more problems than his mistakes. From this we can conclude that reason cannot always reduce mistakes but it always depends upon the situation.
Reason, logic, and facts can be used to minimize mistakes when you’re preparing an official speech. But in daily life communication, it is hard to use reason, logic, and facts to reduce mistakes. Because most of them time we actually don’t care about what we talk. But in the case Barrack Obama he will use reason, logic, and facts to reduce his mistakes during his speech because he’s the President of United States and everybody listens to his words. So what I’m saying is that, a public figure always uses reason, logic, and facts to reduce mistakes. But common people like us usually don’t use reason, logic, and facts.
Reason can be used to bring certainty. The costs and trade-offs for trying to know knowledge claims this way is that we move away from people. We don’t believe in other people anymore. Basically, we won’t be expressing ourselves. We will try to hide everything with our reasoning. As I mentioned earlier, Soko tried to hide his mistakes by reasoning. He didn’t believe other people opinions and he just tried to argue with us. But for an extent we had to believe in him because he is our teacher. Reason can be used to bring certainty but at the same time it will reduce the amount of open minded people in our society.
Past few weeks had been really interesting. We discussed more about reasoning and mistakes. We learned about arguments and logic. The main points that we learned are understanding arguments, logical validity and soundness, necessary and sufficient conditions, possibility and necessity also we analyzed more examples about how reasoning can reduce mistakes. We also had homework this past week on how to create a valid argument. I created an argument for that. 1. A good President supports equal pay for equal work. 2. Obama supports equal pay for equal work. 3. Therefore, Obama is a good President. We discussed other people’s examples and we checked how valid they are.
Ajin Abraham Thought log #3
IB TOK 4/13/12
Perception and Mistakes
Perception is the state of being or process of becoming aware of something in such a way. Basically we can say that perception is awareness. Do perceptions hinder mistakes? Or it prevents mistakes?? According to my opinion it hinders and prevents mistakes. For example, in a kindergarten text book it says “Mary had a a little lamb”. At first we all read this as “Mary had a little lamb” because we are familiar with this song. But a kindergarten student is not familiar with this. So he/she will read “Mary had a a little lamb”. Actually they study this mistake. After printing out 10000 copies the printing company knew that they made a mistake in this, but do they rectify it. Probably they will just hinder it because they don’t want to waste their money in this. They are aware that they made a mistake but they are hindering it. But when they print out the next copy they will be aware of this mistake and they will try to rectify it. So this awareness helps them to prevent mistakes. So basically perception hinders mistakes also prevents mistakes from being made. But first of all in order to prevent mistakes from being made, we should accept that we made the mistake and we should take the responsibility of that. But in this case the printing company probably would have hindered their mistake because if anyone knows about it, that would affect the reputation of the company. We do the same thing. If I made a mistake in class, I would not accept that in front of everyone because then everyone in the class going to laugh at me and embarrass me. Almost everyone do this even the teachers. In this case we are cheating on our awareness/perception, we are hindering our mistakes just like the printing company.
This chapter gave me a lot of information about mistakes Concluding thoughts from this chapter are: 1.) What we experience is not simply the “world out there” as it “is”. 2.) Human experience is the product of the external world, the constructed environment, the structure of our sense organs and our brain, the social, cultural and personal filters we have acquired over the course of our lives. 3.) We may never fully know the “world out there” as it actually is in itself. This chapter helped me to understand the mistakes that I made in the past and also helped me to rectify them.
Ajin Abraham Thought log #2
IB TOK 3/25/12
This American Life and mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes but does everyone rectify it? The answer would be ‘no’. Is it hard to rectify a mistake? Frankly speaking it is hard to rectify a mistake. But still people keep on doing mistakes. Some people do it purposefully others don’t. This American life found that Mike daisy’s apple factory story is false and they retracted it. According to me the first mistake was made by Mike daisy and then it was made by This American life. Because the American life didn’t clearly investigate the story and they aired a false story. But they rectified their mistake by retracting the whole story. So this American life rectified their mistake but did mike daisy rectify his mistake? According to me the biggest mistake was made by Mike.
Mike Daisy’s story consists of workers in Apple factory who are exposed to n-hexane. Basically it explained the dangerous working conditions of the workers. But his story was not true. It was fabricated. In our class we discussed a lot about this subject. Everyone came up with different views and ideas according to their perspective. Some of them thought that Daisy’s interpreter made the mistake by translating wrong information but some other people think that Daisy did all these. According to me daisy made all these mistakes. He did all this to become famous. So we can assume that he did this mistake purposefully. Mike Daisy said that “My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it’s not journalism. It’s theater.” From this we can assume that Mike Daisy made the mistake to just become famous. He admits his mistake but he never tried to rectify it.
I researched on this subject a little bit. And I found some interesting information that supports Mike Daisy’s observation. There was an explosion in apple’s FoxConn plant last year in which 2 killed and 16 were injured. From this we can assume that the workers are having a horrible condition in apple’s factory. So who’s correct? Mike Daisy?? I don’t think so because he accepted his mistake. Also he says that he does is “not journalism”. This supports my assumption. At first I thought TAL made the biggest mistake but after researching on this subject more I concluded that Mike made the biggest mistake which he didn’t rectify still today. I think Mike exaggerated the story. Maybe some of his observations were true but he just exaggerated it by adding more controversial stuff into it. From our class discussion the major mistakes that Mike made can be shortened to this: 1.) Mis- represented/blurred/mixed facts with fiction 2.) Highly exaggerated 3.) Didn’t follow up with translator 4.) Assumed Daisy used his testimony. These all explains that Daisy did all these to become famous.
As I mentioned earlier Mike didn’t rectify his mistake. What all ways he can use to rectify this mistake? He can use WoK to rectify his mistake; mainly language. Mike can explain the whole situation by explaining it. He can also tell to the world that what made him to do this mistake. Thus language helps him to rectify his part. Everyone makes mistakes but the one who rectify it is the true champion. I hope to learn more about mistakes as we move forward with this lesson.
TOK Project
1. I learned more about the influence of TOK in our society. I also learned more about editing videos and other things with uploading.
2. I am fully satisfied with our final product. We worked diligently for the past couple of weeks to make this project successful.
3. If I do this project all over again, I will do the same thing. But I will try to add more lines to our rap so that it makes the entire project more entertaining.
4. I enjoyed this project. Because it was a new experience for me. I never did projects like this especially with videos. Also this project helped me to spend some amazing time with my friends.
5. My main suggestion is that you should explain the EQ question more because most of my friends had a hard time with it.
Tok project is really interesting. We are half way done with it. Now we are trying to record our rap and after that we gonna edit it. Other members in my group are Sam, Jack and Yuhao. This coming up week is a stressful week for us because of PSSA, but we are trying to stay after school to finish this project. I hope everything works well.
Our Philosophy Teacher Mr.Sokoloff gave us a new project on the topic “who I am as a knower.” The question for this project is “How can taking TOK course in the IB diploma program help develop a greater understanding of the world- how does it help us know, believe and think about the world?”. All students are working in groups of 3 to 4. I have 4 members in my group, we are planning to do a rap which answers the question.
Ajin Abraham Thought log #1
IB TOK 2/20/12
What kind of a knower am I?
What kind of a knower am I? Frankly speaking there is no answer for this. I am still a little kid who is staring at the wide range of knowledge around me. I am a curious knower. I am eager to learn and gain knowledge. But what is considered as knowledge? That will be a confusing question. Knowledge is not only acquired through education. But education plays a key role in it.
I am an unsatisfied knower. I want to know more and more. I want to earn more and more knowledge until my death. Everything that we know is not true. About 500 years ago our ancestors thought that the earth is flat. But later we learned that it was a misconception. Now we all know that the earth is round/spherical. But after 200 years our grandchildren’s will learn something else. Because discoveries is still continuing. Basically, everything that we know is not true. It will change as time moves on. New inventions increase our knowledge. Nobody is a perfect knower. Knowledge is also based upon our past experiences. Experience plays a crucial role in this. We discussed different types of maps in class. Mercator projection, vector projection and peter’s projection. Do these maps give as new knowledge? Or does it check our existing knowledge? We learned something from these maps. But before that we all drew our own world maps. This helped us to check our existing knowledge. Even though many of them were failures, it still reminded as about world maps which most of us studied in middle school. Rehearsal will always help to store knowledge. Now it will be easier for us to draw a map because we rehearsed it in class. I am a knower and the things surrounding me are the perceptions of knowledge. We don’t need books to gain knowledge. But books help us to gain knowledge. Something that we learn in class is not only considered as knowledge. Knowledge is everywhere. Every day we learn something new.
I believe in what I think. For example I believe in my existence. Existence has been variously defined by sources. Existence is the world we are aware of through our senses and that persists independently without them. Others define it as everything that is. But what is clearly existence? No specific answer. But I believe I exist because I can think, feel and express my emotions. Then another question will rise? Does every animal can think? If they don’t, that means they don’t exist. This is so complicated. For some questions we don’t have any answers. This is such a question. Anyway I believe in my existence. This is my justified true belief. I know I have them because I always believe in them. We feel our existence, we don’t see our existence. But we can see the existence of other people. Another controversial question will be the existence of God. It’s a controversial subject throughout the world. Is this belief justified? Is there any fact to back up this? Some people say yes and some people say no. Who is correct? I think either one of them. They believe in what they think right.
I gain new knowledge every day. Thus can say I’m a knower who still needs more knowledge. As each day passes my account for knowledge will always increase.
Ajin Molethu 