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"Stay inside the lines."
There was a great TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson on this. I truly believe adults squelch childhood creativity way too early in life. We are programmed not to take risks. Imagine all the wonderful things that would be possible if we were never afraid to fail.
Edit: Found the video.
Bill Gates did a TED talk on this, here's some key snips:
> Next, would be nuclear. It also has three big problems. Cost, particularly in highly regulated countries, is high. The issue of the safety, really feeling good about nothing could go wrong, that, even though you have these human operators, that the fuel doesn't get used for weapons. And then what do you do with the waste? And, although it's not very large, there are a lot of concerns about that. People need to feel good about it. So three very tough problems that might be solvable, and so, should be worked on.
...
> The idea of Terrapower is that, instead of burning a part of uranium, the one percent, which is the U235, we decided, let's burn the 99 percent, the U238. It is kind of a crazy idea. In fact, people had talked about it for a long time, but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not, and so it's through the advent of modern supercomputers that now you can simulate and see that, yes, with the right material's approach, this looks like it would work.
...
>In terms of fuel, this really solves the problem. I've got a picture here of a place in Kentucky. This is the left over, the 99 percent, where they've taken out the part they burn now, so it's called depleted uranium. That would power the U.S. for hundreds of years. And, simply by filtering sea water in an inexpensive process, you'd have enough fuel for the entire lifetime of the rest of the planet.
... And he ends with something the German government should pay attention to: ...
>So, what do we have to do? What am I appealing to you to step forward and drive? We need to go for more research funding. When countries get together in places like Copenhagen,they shouldn't just discuss the CO2. They should discuss this innovation agenda, and you'd be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending on these innovative approaches.
Alan Kay criticises that video in his TED talk: [link]
> "As a former molecular biologist, I didn't like that at all. Not because it wasn't beautiful or anything, but because it misses the thing most students fail to understand about molecular biology, and that -- is why is there any probability at all of two complex shapes finding each other just the right way so they [can] combine together and be catalyzed. And what we saw yesterday was every reaction was fortuitous -- they just swooped in there and bound, and something happened.
> But in fact, those molecules are spinning at the rate of about a million revolutions per second. They're agitating back and forth their size every two nanoseconds. They're completely crowded together, they're jammed, they're bashing up against each other. And if you don't understand that in your mental model of this stuff, what happens inside of a cell seems completely mysterious and fortuitous, and I think that's exactly the wrong image for when you're trying to teach science." (source)
I spotted some other problems too with this animation, but over all it's the best I've seen trying to describe DNA and RNA handling in a cell.
Yes, hugs!
This is hard, miscarriages are one of the big taboos of our society (covered really well in this TED talk).
It's not your fault. As a geneticist I know non-viable mutations (abnormalities) are very common in gametes (eggs or sperm). I haven't tried to be pregnant myself, but all of my very close friends and both my grandmothers had miscarriages along the way to making their families. I assume my other friends did as well, but we are not close enough to talk about such a taboo subject.
I hope there are women here who can break the silence and commiserate with you. It's so great that you are talking about it here, I think it will help both you and others.
Sending lots of good vibes.
"Check-ups of 1,003 Michigan sixth-graders in a school-based health program showed children who are obese were more likely to consume school lunch instead of a packed lunch from home." Hm. Perhaps we should improve the school lunches then. More on that here.
Reminds me of a TED Talk I saw the other day by Deb Roy: The birth of a word.
"MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn."
"American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest." - Richard Dawkins
According to this TED talk, you'll need at least 4 areca palms, 6-8 mother-in-law tongues, and 1 (maybe more? he didn't specify) money plant per person.
[link] The link is a Ted Talk about the Khan Academy. Khan Academy sounds like a company that is changing the world for the better. I can see why Resig would want to work there instead of a high profile tech company.
In that vein:
TL;DR awesome Sherwin Nuland talk "When psychological illness becomes overwhelming...say "aw, fuck it.""
While this may not answer your question, here's an interesting video about one man's attempt to build a toaster from scratch.
Yeah, it's pretty poor form linking to this press release when the video isn't available yet.
This same guy gave a talk at TEDMED in 2009 on the same subject. The organ-printing is shown as a video clip, not a live demonstration.
Dan Ariely did some research on this, here's a TED talk where he mentions it
As it turns out countries that have a checkbox that opts you out have a FAR higher participation rate than vice versa. People are just too lazy to check the box either way and just accept the default.
Also anyone who is against organ donations... what the heck do you need them for once you die?
I am not the performing arts type so I think I would have had the same reaction if I hadn't already seen this TED talk on visual music. As a visual musician he's playing a new kind of instrument and writing his own score. Suspend your belief and recapture your original reaction because you would give him that same courtesy if he were a musician playing a guitar; you wouldn't feel sad if you found out that the guitarist was playing an ordinary series of chords.
A good comment from ted.com:
Dec 11 2010: Reactions here are interesting in that few show skepticism. Skepticism is healthy, & the filter concept has flaws. - Ceramic filters aren't new. There's nothing special about Lifesaver vs other products except aggressive marketing & access to TED followers. - The humanitarian community hasn't embraced them because, among other things, they aren't cost effective. - The system isn't sustainable to users. Lifesaver's website says 1 bottle costs $90 to donate. Replacement filters are $100 ea. Using his data, a family of 5 could use 1 filter for 80 days (15 ltr/day/person per SHPERE standards). That's $400/yr just for filters--more than the avg annual income in much of the world. - Pre-existing technologies are far, far, far more cost effective & sustainable. 1 gallon of chlorine bleach costs less than $1 & rids >15,000 ltr of water of bacteria & viruses. Chlorine is already very accessible everywhere in the world. Out of space, but just scratched the surface
Edit: TL;DR The technology has only one advantage: marketing.
Because our brains are split into complementary left and right hemispheres, people experiencing strokes (which most often affect only one side of the brain) do indeed know there is something going wrong, but cannot figure out how to communicate it. If she's recovered without medical intervention it could have been a TIA (transient ischemic attack) or something. It definitely wasn't a dyslexic moment; you can see she's having issues moving the left side of her face (right side of the video).
There was a TED talk featuring a neurologist who had a stroke that might give you more insight into what it's like: [link]
Society and our brains' natural mode of thought has implanted this false belief that those not 100% whole in body don't have 100% of their potential at their disposal. Reality and a deeper exercise in reasoning shows otherwise time and time again. Just because you currently feel like everything that defined your life so far has been shattered, doesn't mean that you can't piece those shards back together into something more beautiful than the original.
This is a presentation given by Aimee Mullins, a (edit) double-amputee who has totally redefined what it means to be disabled. [link]
Keep your spirits up, and best wishes to you.
For the 2 or 3 of you interested in the subject, William Li gave an insightful lecture at TED regarding angiogenesis and treating tumors.
He mostly talked about altering one's diet for desired results.
>Anyone else think this trend is frightening and needs more public awareness? (self.environment)
Yes, the international scientific community.
It's a huge issue, and we've already seen huge global damage to our reefs occur because of it.
I recommended this TED talk about it.
Bill Gates is financing a massive project to develop a new kind of Nuclear Reactor which uses the spent fuel primarily. Basically you load in all the waste into a massive container and let it burn like a candle. It's called a Travelling Wave Reactor, really game changing stuff if they can get it to work.
Aren't they one and the same...
Every other board is simply an used as an excuse to have /b/, it makes it seem slightly less sleazy :)
Edit: Oh snap... been downvoted... you guys do realize that /b/ gets the more traffic than all the other boards combined right... just sayin'.
Edit: Sorry, I was corrected is it 1/3 of traffic but to quote moot: "/b/ is the first board we started with and in many ways the beating heart of the website" source
True, the L/R confusion is actually more a Japanese phenomenon.
In Japanese, they have a sound something between the English L and R. Sometimes it sounds closer to one or the other depending on the speaker and the word.
Japanese people listening to English must train their ears to listen for the distinction, which can be hard because our brains are hardwired for our native language very soon in our lives.
> We lived in a place called Snitterfield, just outside Stratford, which is where Shakespeare's father was born. Were you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being 7? I never thought of it. I mean, he was 7 at some point; he was in somebody's English class, wasn't he? How annoying would that be? "Must try harder." Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now," to William Shakespeare, "and put the pencil down. And stop speaking like that. It's confusing everybody."
Wow, that was absolutely fantastic. If you haven't seen it already, you should check out "Born to Run," a very fascinating talk. [link]
There is a fantastic ted talk that suggests if a group has to think of something everyone likes, the average satisfaction is 6 out of 10. However, if the group is split into smaller groups, and each group chooses, satisfaction goes to 7.5 out of ten.
Related: Ted Talk
Hi, mainly just posting to say I'm a fan of your reviews and agree with you 90% of the time.
Here's a question if you feel like tackling it:
What do you think about the people out there who are looking to assign big important roles to video games? From the tired "building hand-eye coordination" arguments, to Steven Johnson's assertion that they make children smarter, to Jane McGonigal-types who want to employ MMO-inspired reward systems in real life, people have a lot of high hopes for games.
Do you have any thoughts on these sorts of social/cultural roles that people argue for? (Or arguments of your own, of course.)
The Toaster Project is a better example of this because he goes to some length to extract the iron ore and makes a toaster that sells for £3.99 from scratch.
This process was actually mentioned by someone at a TED talk. I can't remember his name, might be able to find the link. He was designing this test to be cheap and accessible to people in Africa as far as I remember.
Edit: Found the TED talk video: [link]
That's due to mirror neurons. You're feeling the embarrassment of the subject. There's an amazing TED talk on them.
In an interview Julian actually talks a bit about what they do to try and verify information. Yes they do try to verify and organize information before distributing it.
From Mike Rowe's TED talk (shortly after 7 minutes and 20 seconds):
Yes we have! First of all we wondered if there might be water on Mars - after all it's quite similar to Earth so why shouldn't it? Also, we think water is essential for life, so it's worth looking for evidence of water on other planets.
Then we sent probes (small un-manned spaceships) to fly past Mars and send us pictures back and we saw some very detailed photos of the surface of Mars, which showed things that looked like dried-up river beds. That was hugely exciting because it hinted that there had once been flowing water on Mars. So we sent more probes out to take better pictures, and got more and more geological evidence of water - valleys and rivers and lakes and all kinds of dried-up marks on the land which looked like they could have been caused by water.
Then when we got the pictures back from a probe called Viking 2, we actually saw Martian ice - you can see it here!
This was incredible because previously all we could conclude from the photos was that Mars once upon a time had something which caused effects like those caused by water, but now having seen actual frost (and taken various samples and tests and so on) we can tell not only that those things are hugely likely to in fact have been caused by water, but also that there's still water there!
That opens up a huge range of possibilities. If there's enough water on Mars, we could have spacestations which used Martian water instead of having to carry or create our own supplies, we can perhaps introduce some seeds to Mars to see if they grow. Maybe one day we could create a luscious environment on Mars with plants and animals. Now I'm veering off into science fiction, but why not watch this scientist talk about Life in Biosphere Two for an amazing perspective on what mankinds future in space might be like.
/layman.
LOL. While "lazy tool" might be an apt description for some grad students I have known, I try to treat my students and postdocs as adult human beings. Ultimately, that's the only way to run a successful lab, I believe.
Even though we pay students and postdocs in the natural sciences, pay is generally low. We also usually cannot offer particularly good job security. (I might have money for you this year, but can't promise you anything for next year.) So my job is to convince my lab members to work hard and perform well without being able to offer them big financial rewards. The only way to achieve that is to offer them job satisfaction, and that means treating them well. I also try to find out what makes each student tick and let them work on projects that they are excited about.
There is a good talk on motivation that covers many of these ideas: [link]
This is perfectly legal and some herald it as a positive quality of the fashion industry. There's a TED talk about it:
In the first thirty seconds alone, she starts questioning the audience on their cheers. Asking people to cheer for a music style she likes, in a TED talk?
Compare it to this one by Willie Smits. He does a groundbreaking thing to help the orangutans, and scolds the audience for cheering because the symptoms of the problem were still there. He explains how it was the only thing he could do at the time.
Jump to the four minute mark of the Courtney Martin video, and watch 4:00-4:30. She emphasizes phrases to make her sound as awesome as possible in order to get applause. Then at 7-8, she talks about how she was all 'woe is me', and her mother responded basically with 'screw that' as a normal response. She tries to make her mother some sort of Gandhi, without giving real proof.
In short, she's going 'Feminism is huge today and I'm a part of it!' She has a lot of pauses with 'You know.' In the end, she doesn't say one unique thing.
I haven't listened to this for a long time but he makes the claim that chess players will burn up to 6,000 calories in the middle of a tournament...during which obviously they are simply sitting down thinking.
Minus the blogspam: [link]
With that out of the way, yes, this talk is particularly awesome. The whole "distributed industrial production" concept - whether the DIY open source aspect or through 3D printing - seems key when considering true 21st century solutions to socioeconomic problems; the essence of TED, I feel.
David Byrne of the Talking Heads has a TED talk about how architecture influences music production and actually uses U2 as an example: [link]
From the description on TED's site: As his career grew, David Byrne went from playing CBGB to Carnegie Hall. He asks: Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation.
"...to which millions of americans responded, 'why didn't we think of that?'" - mr_pedantic
"I am okay with this". - Adventure_time
I am absolutely shocked and abhorred by how willing some of these so called liberal thinking people are to strip away another man's right when their view contradicts their own.
What you are demonstrating are very dangerous behaviors. The only difference you have with those religious extremists is that you stand on the other side of the issue. But you are equally intolerant and ignorant as them.
I recommend you this video from Ted: [link]
I return again and again to Jonathan Haidt's talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives. He's got charts with how liberals and conservatives rate similarly with other liberals and conservatives, regardless of culture. It has helped me get a better grip on the differences and gives me better understanding, more patience.
Yes. When we send free stuff, we put the locals who work providing stuff out of business.
Jacqueline Novogratz has been taking the right approach for years: [link]
Bill Gates has already spoken out on his preference for Nuclear alternatives, and it seems he is continuing to do so even after the Fukushima events (and Germany rejecting nuclear power).
I'm of the opinion that Solar and Wind should be pursued, and that Nuclear alternatives could be used as stopgap measures until we reach the technological point that Solar and Wind can be effectively implemented and transmitted.
Microsoft has, but they really need Bill Gates. Despite what people think about the man and certain decisions, he was a visionary in a sense. That is to say, he had a grasp of the future as Ballmer does not. I attribute his decade long reign of stupidity as why good devs are leaving the xbox team en masse.
If you've seen Bill's Ted Talks, it's clear he is a thoughtful person. From what I understand from a few people that used to work at Microsoft, he's also the type of guy in private to say things are just fucking stupid.
Not sure if this is completely relevant but this talk seems to show that we tend to favor the decisions that we make. So i'd imagine it's similar for people who have gotten tattoos.
Khan Academy is an AWESOME tool for any educator, student, or casual learner! Everyone should watch the TED talk video about this by its founder Salman Khan!
If you define "legitimate" complaints as complaints of things that were better before: There are few, if any.
One would be threat of nuclear terrorism, but that might have been higher before.
Pollution was way higher fifty years ago, although we have a CO2 problem now that might eclipse anything earlier as far as long term consequences goes.
Obesity/lack of physical activity is one, if it can really be said to be something to complain about (I doubt you would be able to convince people a hundred years ago of that, at least). But even this is on it's way down (AFAIK) because of knowledge about dieting and fitness spreading.
People tend to forget that only 150 years ago famine was still quite common in Europe and the US if you had a bad season. We've moved steadily and quickly upwards on all thinkable statistics the past 200 years. Why? Well, there are of course several theories, but I like this TED talk on it: [link]
That said, the only way we got so far was by seeing what was wrong with our current implementation and fixing it. So yay for complaining!
>11- How did blind chemistry create altruism and morality?
This is VERY much science. Scientist could for example show that altruism and morality have evolutionary advantages. Benevolence towards one's siblings helps your genetic code survive. Benevolence towards your species has the same effect just on a more general scale.
Relevant ted lecture: [link]
Also you seem to be using strawman very liberally.
> 9- Seems like a decent question. Do evolutionists actually expect we should be finding more fossils than we are? Couldn't that make you hesitate if you couldn't answer this?
> 10- Seems like an easy question to answer, but I don't see how it commits a logical fallacy.
Also a great TED talk by Eli Pariser also argues that online 'filter bubbles' trap us and we "don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview."
Really fascinating talk if you have ten minutes.
As I understand it, both of these things actually stem from the same problem: objectification of women. Tony Porter explains it really well at the end of his TED talk.
I don't know if I can explain it as well as he, but if you can't watch the video (I highly recommend that you do if you can), here's the basic logic:
Men are socialized to view women as sexual objects. This happens in a number of ways, through the media and personal interaction. One of the effects of this socialization is that whenever a man or a boy sees a woman or a girl, he will almost immediately assess her attractiveness. That's why pictures of pretty girls, especially pretty girl redditors, get huge upvotes.
This view of women tends towards treating them as objects, or even property. This causes whoever is doing the objectification to forget that as a human being, every woman has inherent value. Devaluing women, treating them as property, and objectification all lead towards violence (or at least hatred) against women.
The way it works is actually pretty simple: If women are considered to be less valuable then men, then it's easier to justify taking out anger on them. If women are treated as property, then it's easier to justify raping them.
(Note: I'm not saying that violence against women or rape are in any way defensible actions, I'm just trying to explain the unconscious thought processes that lead to them being thought of as justifiable by the person committing them.)
6 terrorists were killed by freedom fighters.
Just offering some perspective. Try to look at this from the "insurgents" point of view. Remember that George Washington was a terrorist to the British and a freedom fighter to the US.
Alright, as with any fear, lets evaluate it against the data and see if it is a rational fear.
Lets try some very rough numbers:
During 2009 there were 3,447 cases of police misconduct in the US. You allege you don't care about property crime, so lets take violent crime as a reasonably bad alternative which is about 1/10 as prevalent. There were 1.4 million violent crimes committed in 2008.
If you take a look at those police misconduct statistics they are all really serious, so lets say they under-represent the true value a hundred fold. (remember that both statistics will under-represent the true rate, so that 100 fold factor will be for how much MORE underreported police crime is than others).
So by these very rough numbers you are 4 times more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than of police misconduct at its arbitrarily inflated value. That rises to 40 times more likely to be a victim of any crime, and 40,000 times more likely if you don't artificially inflate the numbers against police misconduct.
There are many reasons why people's feelings about security don't line up with the reality, but shouldn't be the basis of decision (see: iraq war). Your post - while cathartic and likely good karma bait - does not add much to the discussion of the real and serious problems with how to enforce a system of law without abuse by those vested with the power of enforcing them.
There are a lot of good videos in this thread, but if you want the cream of the crop of videos that will make you think, you'll have to go through the archives of TED.com and the RSA. There are so many insightful presentations that we're pretty much talking mind-porn here. Really gives you hope for the future of humanity.
Bruce explains security is a trade-off better than I ever could.
Here is a short article about social hacks. My google-fu fails me but I read an interesting article about how a company hired a consulting firm to evaluate their security. They responded they'd give the company a report on their level of security in a few days. The next day the consulting firm had someone impersonate the fire marshal and gain access to their servers internally.
Debit or credit comes from my own experience developing software for credit card readers. All readers have an offline mode. If the reader cannot connect to the financial institution, the data and pin are stored inside the reader until it can connect at a later time. Often the data is stored either in plaintext or uses two way encryption with the key stored on the device. It is not difficult to extract thousands of credit card and pin numbers from most readers.
Credit fraud is insured by the FDIC, but if they get your PIN for your bank account, it's up to your bank account and their policies. Usually they blame you for a compromised pin number.
People aren't outraged because they see this as exactly what we've come to expect from politicians. "Just another crook" they say. It's not that everyone is apathetic, it's that the whole system is organized to make us feel like we cannot affect the outcome no matter what we try. See this ted talk on apathy
Once again, dinosaurs fail to understand progress:
John Philip Sousa in 1906:
These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.
See Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity
*edit: fixed the link
This isn't the first time he's done this, okay, it is the first time he has done it on stage but! But! But! Last year when he was at TED he demonstrated on video and through time lapse pictures of this exact same process. I think he did it on stage this year to prove that he wasn't a warlock.
Relevant video:
Meh. I didn't read the whole thing- just the first half of it or so. He's arguing that human-level AI will never happen because we are a product of biological evolution, and also because there are ethical problems. I don't consider either of those to be a deathblow to the possibility of the Singularity. Just because an AI is not likely to evolve as human does, doesn't mean that there aren't other paths to human-level AI. Why can't we just model the human brain within an electronic substrate? It's already being done.
Edit: Edited for clarity.
Something to note is that as cultures become more modernized, their population growth plateaus.
This is mostly due to the fact that higher living standards improve life expectancy and the amount of children per family decreases.
Hans Rosling does a great TED talk on this: [link]
Edit: Check out his other talks as well.
![[link]](http://www.webinapage.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/500x_aimeemullinsbeachshot.jpg){kind=link}
There was an amazing TED talk where a guy told a story where he and some other kids in the neighborhood were invited by some dude to have sex with some girl. He didn't want to but it would have been a big hit on his manhood to say no.
When it was his turn, he walked into the room and realized the girl was basically mentally retarded. He waited a few minutes in the room, unzipped his pants then walked out, zipping up as he came out to make it seem like he did his business. There was a line of guys waiting for their turn. Gut wrenching story.
Most memorable quote of the talk was where he mentioned a time when he asked a boy what it would be like if he was called a girl and the boy expressed utmost disgust and he said something along the lines of if that's a boy's feelings of being called a girl, what are we teaching boys about girls.
Here's the talk.
Mary Roach's talk on orgasms is a classic, as is Dawkins' plead for militant atheism.
I guess my favourites are "Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives" and Sherwin Nuland's talk on depression and electroshock therapy. The first is very intellectually challenging, the second very personal and powerful.
EDIT: and of course, I managed to forget "Garrett Lisi on his theory of everything". I don't claim to really understand it though...
I like my iPhone.
If no one knew I had one, I couldn't give a shit.
Apple's focus is on the user-experience and I don't think anyone matches that. But you don't have to take my word for it...
Edit: according to this guy, beauty is a byproduct of evolution. Something shiny (resembling a pristine lake, for instance) would've been a good thing for early man to come across. So when I look at the smooth, shiny surface of my phone, I subconciously feel a positive evolutionary emotional response.
If a craftsman 100 thousand years ago could make something symmetrical, they possessed good traits (can keep a hand steady, attention to detail), not to mention they'd have an increased likelihood of access to expensive/rare tools, both of which would be impressive to mating partners.
If some people buy an iPhone because the industrial design seems "beautiful," it shouldn't be a surprise, we evolved to seek it out.
How about linking directly to the TED Talk instead of shitty blog spam? Oh because you're the blog spammer.
Though not quite as basic an explanation as you're looking for, Brian Greene's TED talk on string theory might still be a good way to be introduced to the subject--especially as it's less than 20 minutes long:
>You may think you're the captain of your own destiny, but personalisation can lead you down a road to a kind of informational determinism in which what you've clicked on in the past determines what you see next – a web history you're doomed to repeat. You can get stuck in a static, ever- narrowing version of yourself – an endless you-loop.
So this is why I keep coming to reddit
Edit: here is the TED talk on this subject from the author of the book
Maybe the human economy doesn't appear to be zero-sum, but the world ecology is looking more and more like it; the American system is geared towards using a free-market dynamic to solve problems like a genetic algorithm, but the reality is that it is undermining its own foundation by growing beyond control.
Jared Diamond outlines a number of factors in this speech that contribute towards the collapse of a society that aren't looking too good for America: relations to friendly societies, climate change and internal societal factors such as ability to change modes of government and the insulation of decision-makers from the consequences of their actions.
Unless America gets a grip on its culture of materialistic overconsumption and starts emphasizing sustainability, the outlook is bleak.
I liked it. His writing is easy to understand and as someone interested in second language acquisition, I like his idea of "mentalese."
If you enjoyed the book then you should check out his TED talks, they're pretty good.
In this talk. Deb Roy shows how the seemingly random "ga ga" slowly evolves into the word "water" (it's quite beautiful, the transition). I wonder if babies are able to interpret each others "ga ga"s and have conversations.
Are you sure it's not the advent of zero tolerance policies, gender stereotyping, lower social capital, and access to grants?
Edit: TED talk on video games
I hope this doesn't get buried, but anyway this filtering system is awesome and in the long run probably cheaper than buying tons of Brita filters.
I'm not so worried about "turn people off" or "don't get" or "don't care". What I'm worried about is that we humans evaluate risks based on statistical occurrences in our daily lives. We were pretty good at it when it was just the regular world happening around us before print news and, especially, TV and internet news. But, by definition, news represents rare events and we see it daily. This skews our assessment of risks.
It doesn't matter how "scary" you present it, although that can make it worse. The fundamental problem is that it doesn't come with caveats of rarity.
Essentially, news gets to decide what people worry about. It's not the things that actually give us risks, but rare events. And that costs many lives, ruins lives, and causes economic harms.
In fact there was a great TED talk about IP law and how it doesn't apply to fashion. You simply cannot copyright a dress or a handbag. This is precisely why these designers plaster their logo on everything. A knockoff handbag is completely legal to make, it's only when they put a fake logo on it that it becomes something the original designer can sue over. I'll post the link if I can find it.
edit : link [link]
It's funny, while I agree most of the talks by women on TED concern mainly feminist issues... one of my favorite talks directly contradicts one of your assertions.
>There is no balance, no crazy smart scientists (female) doing crazy things with science/technology.
Andrea Ghez: Super Massive Black Holes
There was also a good Fora talk by a female biologist about using observed marine biology to combat aids and other diseases. I don't have a link.
Personally don't like 1st world modern feminism. /disclaimer.
[Edit]
Even having seen it many times before, I ended up watching the entire Ghez talk... sigh.
sorry but you are incorrect "Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen"
I don't need 20 reasons
just 1, the internet
easily the most disruptive thing since the renaissance
Yes, I have seen that. And I am perfectly happy as a person. I can also recognize poor design when I see it, despite being happy as a person.
Here's another video for you:
Couldn't you just keep the magnetic field active during the whole process, slowly raise the temperature and you can thaw the object without ice formation.
The trick for actually managing to survive the process is interesting, but there's some serious talk of cold induced suspended animation (there's a TED talk somewhere). Just put the person into suspended animation and then rapidly lower them below freezing.
When you want to wake them just quickly thaw them, I wonder if you would be required to be resuscitated? I think the TED talk was going as far as saying it might be possible to just wake up and shake it off (correct me if I'm wrong).
Effectively there'd be a period where you could be defined as dead but if the freezing and thawing was fast enough you might just come out alive, pretty much the cold (combined with anoxia) prevents your body from being able to actually die :D.
Suspended animation combined with something reminiscent of supercooling cryogenics might just damned work!
First, watch this: Steven Pinker on The Myth of the Noble Savange
Yes, they are now exposed to microbes which severely affect them (like malaria), but they have also moved into the world of antibiotics and medicine to extend their lifespan, an introduction to a rational-legal judicial system based on a refined concept of ethics and rights, and the accumulated wisdom of human history.
I think their children have the opportunity to be much better off in the modern world.
Or, to rephrase your comment:
"Women are perfectly justified in ignoring their privilege, but men have to acknowledge and renounce male privilege, because they're not hurt as much."
I'm sorry, but this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. You're telling men to "shut up and take it," for whatever reason, ignoring the fact that:
- being told to 'shut up and take it' is part of what damages men in the first place
- being told that your pain isn't worthy of attention damages any sympathy that you might have for anyone else
- and, most importantly, it is unnecessary and counter productive
Completely independent of any analogy to feet and how they can never get too far from each other (and how equal rights among men supported and lead to more equal rights between men & women), humanity is one whole. Women do not exist in a vacuum, nor do men, nor any other sex/gender/ethnicity/[insert division here].
We are all humans, we are all family, and what people on both sides always seem to forget is that there are always unintended consequences. Even if you believe that men are better off than women, working on women's problems to the exclusion of men's, or vice versa, is, quite simply, treating the symptom while ignoring the cause. The trauma of the damage done to each of us feeds back into damage done to others.
What you're advocating is asking for all the pain to flow one way. You're advocating unilateral disarmament. If the goal is total disarmament, the rational response to being out-gunned 2:1 and being told "Your turn" is not "No, keep going," but "Ok. *drops a weapon* Now two more from you."
Your way will never end the standoff. Please, help us with ours.
yes. he is the main person whose emotion determines the feel of the piece. and different conductors have wildly varying styles. another thing is he's the person dictating the time. in a small band, you don't need to have a dedicated person that everyone always syncs to, but in a group of 50, it helps.
Like I said, I have been vegan for 5 years. I have cooked my fair share of tofu, beans, rice, and corn. I would like to limit my soy intake though, and achieving athletic levels of protein can quickly become expensive without the massive carb load that comes with beans and rice.
this ted talk is a good place to start
As far as the ethics go, few people are eating 100% organic pesticide-free food. How is this less vegan in any way?
I hate the "don't tractors kill mice in soy fields" argument that omnivores bring up just as much as the next vegan. I am also not saying that if you can't cause no harm, you are best off with a steak. I am merely exploring the possibility that veganism may not be the end-all of minimal impact eating.
Honestly, you'll kill a hundred insects on your next road trip.
Also: thank you for responding, have an upvote
The alternative concept to the one you have in your head is this:
Possibly plenty of Somalis have tried to publicize environmental damage, but it is not in the (your country) media's interest to pass that along to you...
Also, "where their next meal is coming from" IS actually the ocean that has been ruined by the actions described in the original story. Hmmm, the pieces fit together pretty well.
I am not there, so I can't tell you for certain that Somali piracy owes much to pollution protest... BUT... neither are you there, and your notion that these primitive people probably can't even get their heads around this issue is condescending and insulting.
>Firstly, the notion that the abstract concepts such as logic and creativity would be physically separated inside the brain seems a bit simplistic.
You should really check out some studies on people who have had strokes in different parts of the brain, or listen to Jill Taylor's talk.
Yes, our brains are interconnected, and it's those connections between those different regions that determine intelligence.
>To me that seems like the equivalent of saying "which side of the computer controls the internet?"
Consider though that there is some server farm that controls wikipedia, and another that controls google. Our brains evolved slowly over time and we can identify certain areas of the brain with animals we evolved "from" (so to speak), just like areas of the rest of our body.
>I almost went to Art College before I decided to study maths
Obviously there are also different degrees of dominance and separation between the two talents (creativity & logic) depending on the individual. I studied mechanical engineering and I met many students who could do all the math you asked them to but completely failed at making a working prototype of anything, and others who could piece together a working machine without knowing how to do the math that proves it would work, and I also met people who could do both (and the few people who could do neither generally didn't continue their pursuit of engineering). I'm sure if you had pursued the arts you would have met plenty of people who would struggle with basic maths but could run circles around you in some other area of their talents.
Sounds like you got it about right, according to this TED Talk, Barry Schwartz on The Paradox of Choice. Apparently, to be happiest with the outcome, we like to have some choice, but too much choice will actually decrease our satisfaction.
On a related topic, I warmly recommend Dan Gilbert's Ted Talk on happiness.
If this submission title is making you think "yeah, right", you really ought to watch the Ted talk. It's worth it, I promise.
This guy's TED talk supports your reasoning that you shouldn't think about "salaries or getting your work noticed."
Studies he cites concluded that groups motivated directly by cash to accomplish creative tasks (more specifically, ones that require overcoming "functional fixedness") perform much less effectively than those not getting a direct payout for completion of work.
The best way to be creative is to ride your intrinsic motivation as far as it will take you and not let extrinsic motivators get in your way.
I'll be honest, I don't think I've seen any of your movies, but I've enjoyed you AMA and I will be checking out your work. Good luck with future endeavors.
Hans Rosling has some great TED talks. He's presents everything as though it's the most exciting topic he's ever encountered. His presentations are mostly about global health.
Seconded. I fell in love with the idea that evolution theory isn't actually a model of living things so much as it describes systems of self-replicators under such and such conditions. I'd really recommend checking out 5:15 in this TED-talk, where Saul Griffith demonstrates the ability of completely inorganic materials to replicate themselves if the conditions are right.
(If you watch 5:15 in the video, wait for the bit on the airhockey table. It blows my mind that given fortunate preconditions, chance alone is enough for this information to replicate.)
Guys, this link works for me, it does take about 20 seconds to load, though.
or
C/P
The one in the OP worked for a bit now. Not sure what's going on with GS.
EDIT: This isn't working for me anymore now. I can now only seem to get to it via a link in my favorites. Really not sure what's going on. For those who can't get to it, one row looks something like this:
Title URL Score Engagement Tweets Google Buzz Mentions Delicious Bookmarks Facebook Posts Google Reader Shares Reddit Comments Reddit Votes▼ Digg Votes Digg Comments Diigo Bookmarks Friendfeed Comments Friendfeed Likes Identica MySpace Bookmarks MySpace Comments MySpace Notes
1 Lies, damned lies and statistics (about TEDTalks) [link] 10 14122 297 44 71 40 30 151 1803 7 0 7 2 4 3 0 0 2
Really sorry about the horrible formatting.
Is that the mathmagician guy? If so, he is pretty awesome.
Having a professor (or uncle) like that would be a really good thing.
Hans Rosling has a nice TED talk on population growth, and child mortality fits into it. It also helps to consider nepharis' comment, that is, consider child mortality as a general measure of health, like life expectancy.
Edit: Why would anyone downvote parent? Don't downvote requests for clarifications, citations or sources, people!
> you have to give them a comfortable lifestyle. And we don't have enough energy to give everyone a western lifestyle.
Define 'western lifestyle'. (If you think in terms of "the west and the rest", please watch some Hans Rosling videos.) I don't want to see a spread of the use-and-throw-away mentality (in fact I'd like to see it reduced even here where I live, and the amount of crap produced reduced, but that's another discussion), but it's possible to get an increase in comfort without becoming a horrible glutton. Comfort isn't a binary thing where you either live in abject poverty or an incredible mansion. The increased amount of people wanting to live a more comfortable life do present a reason to invest in fuel efficient technology, though
> If you lower child mortality without the comfort
As nepharis, rz2000, and others point out, child mortality isn't some isolated variable. It doesn't even mean bigger families, since there's a correlation between good child survival and smaller family sizes. (I.e. if you've got the medical system necessary to make sure your children survive, you've probably also got condoms and other contraceptives available---unless you got the health system via the Catholic church or something.)
The Paradox of Choice is a book by Barry Schwartz. He also gave a speech about it in a TED convention. He goes into an idea of maximizers, those that need to maximize the utility they gain from every choice. I don't want to butcher the ideas, so I do suggest giving his lecture a view.
Here's a pretty interesting Malcolm Gladwell TED talk discussing this technique and the market research that led to it's discovery:
[link]
I loved this TED talk about "muses". It's also about negative thinking paralyzing you from success. If you're using religion like this, it's really one of the best things you can do.
Just the way people work. I'm not saying it's logical, but its easier to give a positive yet superficial remark than it is to be truthful. It sucks, but you can't always go by what people say, because people aren't always honest, even to themselves.
Try it yourself sometime. Next time you find yourself in a situation where you didn't really enjoy yourself, take note of what you say. You're likely to say something vacuous like "had a great time, thanks", and then wonder to yourself "why did I just say that?"
Instead of getting down on how much people suck, I'll try to cheer things up by pointing out how this happens with everything, including people that lie to themselves about what kind of pasta sauce they like. Malcolm Gladwell gave a fascinating TED talk, and it includes examples of how people say they like one kind of pasta sauce or coffee, yet really prefer another.
> If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years. Why? [proceeds — very compellingly — to tell us what we're missing out]
Agreed. While environmentalism is obviously important, we may have to concede that some things we just can't do much about. We should do what we can, making small changes, but it's not worth a trillion dollars now so a man's house is flooded in 2104 rather than 2100.
Very relevant, very awesome:
People work for money because money is necessary to survive, but more often than not people who are really good at what they do are motiveated by personal mastery - being really good at something.
Dan Pink's TED talk on people's motivation lays it out much better than I ever could, but examples of people working hard just to create can be found often in IT. Some of the best examples are:
- Linux
- The wealth of free (no strings attached) apps for Apple/Android
- Open Office (and other Open Source/FLOSS/FOSS)
- Wikipedia