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Are somethings unknowable

Sensory limitations

These are the things that humans can't directly sense, For example we can't see the light outside of the band of the wave lengths in the visible spectrum. It is possible that our senses are completely unaware of something such that we haven't developed, electronic sensors to detect such information. It is possible that is beyond our technological capabilities to build such sensors

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Prompt-What role do experts play in influencing our consumption or acquisition of knowledge?
The government of India played a major role in determining of our knowledge of the number of covid cases in India

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In what ways do our values affect our acquisition of knowledge?  (Sumer Gupta)

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In what ways do our values affect our acquisition of knowledge?  (Sumer Gupta)

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Values can be religious or cultural. The knowledge of science that was researched and confirmed by ancient Hindus, their acquisition of knowledge was heavily influenced by their Religion. They integrated their religion into their scientific research.

Ayurveda is an alternative form of medicine, influenced by vedic values and has it's own philosophy. Ayurveda is still used in Hindu majority countries like India and Nepal a majority of people have had Ayurvedic treatment. It was Sushruta (father of surgery) wrote that Dhanvantari, (god of Ayurveda), incarnated himself as a king of Varanasi and taught medicine to a group of physicians, including him.

practitioners of Ayurveda have gained and received all their knowledge based on religion and mythology. Ayurvedic practitioners regard physical existence, mental existence, and personality as their own unique units, with each element being able to influence the others. It uses this philosophy to diagnose and cure people.

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Are some things unknowable?

Death. What happens after death. While this is more faith-based, it still is debated over. This is because we have no evidence over this. Do we go to heaven/hell? Do we just dissapear, turn off? Do we get reborn as someone else? Do we have an afterlife? Do we roam the earth as a spirit? There are many assumptions about death. Death is something everyone will eventually face, and while that is unfortunate, it is amusing that we know little to nothing about it. And it is highly likely we may never know about it. To know what happens after death, one would have to encounter death. But in doing so, there is no way to communicate the aftermath to living people.

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Who's That Pokemon? - YouTube

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It is known that spirituality has scientific research that supports it such as,  wavelengths and frequencies but on the other hand, it also depends on belief, values, faith, and experiences. A large dimension of spirituality that exists beyond the 'physically known' universe remains largely unknown.
The bridge between physical sciences and spiritual sciences is simply because physical sciences attempt to prove a hypothesis with evidence and uncover the spiritual truths using the outer eyes. Whereas, spiritual sciences resort to a belief system and finding the cause to a scientific fact using the inner eyes.

object 2-
More than 80 percent of our ocean is undiscovered, unknown, and unexplored. Scientists have successfully photographed a black hole, landed rovers on Mars, and sent spacecraft to the dark side of the moon. Yet, we don't know 80% of what covers 71% of our planet. The intense pressure deep in the ocean makes it next to impossible to explore, therefore it is much easier to send people into space than it is to send them to explore the oceans. Although scientists have made a lot of progress in inventions and technology, there are many more areas and ideologies regarding the ocean undiscovered and unknowable to date. For example, the milky sea phenomenon, giant squid, and the Bermuda triangle are just a few of the mysteries that no one has answers to.

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This builds on my previous point for object 1.

The above object depicts a blue toy for dogs.

The color blue is significant here, it is one of the few colors that dogs can see (along with yellow and some shades of grey).

All of their vision is a mix of these colours. They simply do not see other colours. If you showed them a red object, it would appear greyish.

This highlights an important quality of not just dogs but living beings in general -- our understanding of the world is limited by our biology.

Humans, for example, see colours between violet and red, anything beyond these (ultraviolent and infrared) are wavelengths of light that we simply do not register. We are oblivious to them, whereas other living beings can in fact see other wavelengths of light.

Further, dogs can hear frequencies of sound that humans don't.

Knowledge that is objective, unbiased requires an understanding of the full picture. Humans, by definition, do not have the full picture. We are limited by our biology. Any knowledge we produce is limited by our biology. It is inherently subjective as we create it through the subjective lens of the human understanding of reality.

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Is bias inevitable in the production of knowledge?

The object above is a World War 2 bomber, one of the many which were part of a data collection effort to determine how to reinforce such planes.

Humans are pattern-seeking beings - it is one of the reasons why we have survived as a species.

It might seem that the regions of the bomber plane which are damaged the most must be the regions that need reinforcing. However, this observation (as a result of this pattern-seeking that is in-built within humans) is incorrect. Rather, this observation (and therefore knowledge of where the planes need reinforcing) is subject to survivorship bias.

The damage and holes in the returning aircraft were in fact the areas that needed no extra armor, as they had returned safely and survived. However, the areas where the returning aircraft had no damage were the most vulnerable. The most vulnerable parts, fuel tanks, etc. were located there and when hit those planes never returned. Therefore, these incidents were never in the data set and painted a false picture.

This is an inherent mental bias and cognitive limitation within humans. After all, we are subjective beings, no? Subjectivity is inherently biased. Therefore, knowledge will always have some form of bias, but we can always try our best to avoid it.

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Sumer - To what extent has art had an affect on History?

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Sumer - To what extent has art had an affect on History?

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The painting is named after the town of Guernica which was heavily bombed by the Nationalist Spain in the Spanish Civil War. Picasso's painting shows the horror of the bombing and showed people the ruthlessness of Nationalist Spain

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Karuna-What role does imagination play in producing knowledge about the world?

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Karuna-What role does imagination play in producing knowledge about the world?

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Leonardo da vinci's painting of a helicopter. It was painted between-1452 and 1519.
So the first helicopter was designed in 1907 by Paul Cornu inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's painting.

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- Andromeda galaxy- 2.537 million light years away. A light year is a term used to describe the distance which light can cover in a year. Just for comparison, the time light takes to get to Earth from the Sun, distance is more than 150 million km, is just 8 minutes.

This means that light takes 1 year to travel a distance of 9 trillion kilometers. The fastest vehicle on earth, the Thrust SSC, will take 863 thousand years to travel that distance. Just 1 light year! The distance, again, from Andromeda Galaxy to Earth is 2.537 million light years. Definitely, our abilities of reaching the speed of light are lacking. We have not come anywhere near close to the speed of light, which makes this endeavor already unachievable. Even if we were able to reach speeds hundred times that of light, it would take us 25 thousand years to reach Andromeda Galaxy, far beyond the average human lifespan.

- Mariana trench
- time travel

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Prompt: Is bias inevitable in the creation of knowledge?

Object: International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK)

Bias is by definition, prejudice or favor of one thing more than the other. Mathematically, it refers to a systematic, repeated deviation from a true value (which in itself is a paradoxical idea), whatever that may be.

My chosen object is the International Prototype of the Kilogram, an object that was used to define the value of a kilogram for well over a century, from 1889 to 2019. That is, its weight was exactly 1 kilogram. It was periodically used to make important measurements that required immense precision.

However, during those 130 years or so, the IPK steadily lost mass, systematically deviating from what 1 kilogram actually was. Several reasons were posited, hydrogen absorption, particle deterioration, etc. None of them were conclusive.

Consider the fact that every single weighing device is in some way, be it direct or indirect, calibrate with the IPK, irrespective of unit (as even certain imperial units are defined in terms of kg), the steady loss of mass means that there has been a systematic deviation, a bias, in every measurement ever taken while the IPK was used as the standard for the kilogram.

That is, every scientific theory, every law, model, that relied on the kilogram in any way is ever so slightly biased as a result of the imperfections of the IPK. Any knowledge ever created from these is minutely biased.

This fundamentally boils down to the fact that both humans and the Universe are imperfect. The Universe is in constant flux, and nothing is ever constant. And humans, well, we are by definition imperfect. Every conclusion, every iota of knowledge, is fallible. For, as the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius once said: "where is the infallible man?".

Simply put, knowledge builds upon the knowledge, and it is futile to claim that the knowledge of yesterday is perfect and unbiased. After all, regularly, we hear about a certain scientific theory is being debunked or a law we considered unbreakable being broken. Therefore, if all knowledge is in some way biased, imperfect, so would any new knowledge that builds upon it.

For these very reasons, the IPK does a terrific job at highlighting this inevitability. Biased knowledge was produced from prior biased knowledge regarding the value of a kilogram.

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culture and identity
Culture varies from one person to another. it is what we have been learning from our families and surroundings and it keeps on changing but at the end it's our own believes.
identity- someone's representation of themselves

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Explored the significance of perception and societal conformity on how we as individuals react to the world around us. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, for example, evokes negative reactions as a result of moral dilemmas. That is, morals from the society we exist in (and as a result are coerced into conforming to) not aligning with the morals of another (Islamic Sharia Law, in this case).

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What I learned most in all my TOK lessons was about how we can view things. How objective reality might be subjective and how different things are viewed by different people and how those view differ with each other. The concepts sound very post-modern but it helps understand the world and its people.

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culture and identity- most people's behavior depend on the environment and culture they have been raised in. Which also takes a role in forming their identity.
power and authority- some individuals have power and authority over others because of their status and achievements.

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Tolerance- good

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Culture- Anything that a vast majority believes in and is followed by them or being passed down.
Identity- Something evident and descriptive about someone or something. Something that defines them.

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evidence- always necessary while backing up an argument.
justification - each perspective/opinion must have a reasoning behind it.

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Random image from google of a seemingly endless road, but each number you cross is a year completed, and the numbers ahead are the the future.

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Are some things unknowable?

Object 1: The image (The future.) Object one is an image which clearly depicts an endless road and each road is a new year. The further you go, the more years are completed, however one may not know what all obstacles are up ahead, if the road is bumpy, etc. This is symbolic of our future because we don't know what the future holds and if the future will be a bumpy ride (with problems and conflicts) or if its going to be a smooth sail with no problems at all.

Object 2: Speed of light.

Information can't be broadcasted/transferred faster than the speed of light. "Expansion of the Universe" states that it is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. A study from NASA has stated that distant parts of the universe are expanding away from us at a speed faster than that of light. This means that a message sent from these places would never reach us as the distance the message needs to travel increases faster than the message can move. Therefore, the messages sent to us from these parts of the universe would never reach us, and hence be unknown to humanity.