Recent Comments Talks

Talk: Bill Strickland makes change with a slide show – November 21, 2008

Bill Strickland has an amazing life story. Check out my lens to learn more about his work:

squidoo.com/bill-strickland

Talk: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives – November 21, 2008

I think Evan proves the fairness of Haidt: Nobody ever obliged you to bring your 13 years old daughter to visit an art gallery where a crucifix is in a jar of piss.
If I wouldn't force you in it, why would you oblige me out of it?

Talk: Matthieu Ricard on the habits of happiness – November 21, 2008

This is interesting. I wonder how the world or society will be like if people can obtain happiness through mind training.

Say, theoretically, everyone in every countries except one are able to achieve happiness without relying on materialistic needs. But the people in one country need to rely on materials to achieve happiness. Driven by their materialistic desire, they produce far more than other countries. As a result, they obtain much higher technologies and weapons. Given their endless desire for more materials, sooner or later they will find that their own resources will not be able to fulfill their endless needs. Given this scenario, won't all of the other non-materialistic countries or people be ... screwed?

Of course, even given this case, it won't matter to the spiritually enlighten ones, because even if they are being dominated or taken advantage of, they will still feel happy inside, right?

It is highly unlikely for everyone, 100% of them, to achieve happiness through non-materialistic means. If we push towards this direction, there will always still be that 0.001% group of people who are driven by materials. So, as a society, is this really what we want to shoot for? Given the likelihood of above scenario that will play out?

History of Tibet vs China, anyone?


Just something to think about...

Talk: Stewart Brand on the Long Now – November 21, 2008

I think a lot of you are missing the point. The point of creating the Clock of the Long Now isn't to end up with a clock that lasts 10,000 years. The point is to inspire thinking in people about how to build something that lasts 10,000 years. Engineers tend to think about the materials, or how it's constructed. Businessmen think about the total cost of maintaining it. Artists think about how it will tell people the time two or even three thousand years in the future. Some people even challenge the entire concept, like Peter Gabriel did, suggesting a different approach, building the clock out of a garden, with flowers and trees counting the years. Take a moment to think about it yourself - what challenges do you see?

I myself think that building it in a remote location and counting on pilgrimage is a terrible idea. Civilizations will forget about it in 10,000 years. It'll fall into disrepair and wear down, just as Stonehenge did, another place where people journeyed to on pilgrimages. They should think more about the way that Ise Shrine in Tokyo does it. They rebuild the shrine every twenty years, with each generation passing on the lessons of how to rebuild and repair the shrine, so that they will remain forever new and forever ancient. The Ise Shrine should last at least as long as the Japanese do, and perhaps even as long as Shinto does. But even then - how long has Shinto been around, really?

That's what the clock is about - making people think.

Talk: Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice – November 21, 2008

i agree with many of your points-life is getting more complicated as a result of choice. But good luck getting people to give up their conveniences or electronically operated devices!

Talk: George Smoot on the design of the universe – November 21, 2008

@ Dean

if a tree falls in the woods it does certainly make high and low pressure waves of the type that our ears and brains recognize as sound. BUT... it's not information, it's not data unless there is someone there to make sense of it. It's just a phenomenon of air pressure.

another example... i have a thumbnail drive on which I have my senior thesis saved. if aliens abducted my thumbnail drive and looked at the information on it, all they would see are ones and zeros... they would not see my case study unless they knew how to decode .wpd formats. it would just be a pattern, but no data... even though in the hands of my laptop is is both.

It is possible that the universe is intelligent. But it is also possible that my pants are intelligent. There's nothing else you could say about it unless you could posit a mechanism by which it could receive input and give output, a mechanism by which it could take the patterns that abound in the natural world... and organize them in some meaningful way.

Talk: Philip Zimbardo shows how people become monsters ... or heroes – November 21, 2008

anat arad said, ". . . i'm good or bad depending on the situation."

I'm not sure that Philip Zimbardo's presentation was meant to support a "situational ethics" argument more so than it was meant to point out how institutionalized power can adversely influence personal ethical choice. Is there a difference? I'd like to think so; yet I wonder whether or not that be true.

In any event, I imagine that few would dispute the idea it's time all societies reconsidered the study of personal ethics as an integral part of any complete education.

In conclusion, it is this sharing of information and viewpoints that shall, I believe, give us a new and better way. In an age when conversation joins peers from across the globe, what can governments do to remain individually relevant except to listen to the growing tide of all our voices?

It is a good thing. Keep it up.

Talk: George Smoot on the design of the universe – November 21, 2008

Here's what I don't understand: a) universe is expanding, b) seeing faraway light is like looking back in time, c) therefore, the structure we see today is, as you get further away from our eyes, increasingly inaccurate? a galaxy that is x number of lightyears away (visibly) should actually be x lightyears times the rate of expansion away, right? Or am i missing/forgetting something?

Talk: George Smoot on the design of the universe – November 21, 2008

ahhh...excellent presentation...another "bow" in "knotting up" up the "string theory" as fact. The idea of laminating universe tectonics in the genesis of our own, into the "big Bang" is fascinating. And would offer a genetic insight into what seems to be a common pattern in randomness from sub-atomics to sup.-universal ( note to Erin Mckean) "filaments", traits and components.
Provocative, awesome, and...humbling, yet, hope inspiring and craving "Planck" input and analysis...Thank you George...looking forward to your 2010 lecture...well done.

Talk: Kenichi Ebina's magic moves – November 21, 2008

I'm torn on my feelings of this video, though it has less to do with Kenichi Ebina's performance and more to do with the significance of the performance in the context of TED. Certainly Ebina's skills are in rare form and his performance -- including the well synchronized sounds/music -- is a particularly powerful representation of the styles he is representing. Nevertheless, after nearly a decade in one form or another of the rave/club scene, I can attest to hundreds, if not thousands, of breakers and battle dancers with similar skills and great isolation techniques. I'm surprised to see tricks like the photons (led lights), but I realize that ravers may simply take those things for granted.

It is in this last realization that I wonder how many people have seen this performance and loved it, having in the past demonized rave and hip hop culture. If you knew that the power to transform and inspire was inherent in dance-based culture, would you have still hated or tried to maintain your ignorance? I wonder if Kenichi Ebina understood his role as an ambassador from one culture to the next in demonstration of these styles.

I wonder if people outside of the rave/hiphop scenes understand his role, either.

Here's to being inspired to help transmit culture across the boundaries of ignorance and disdain.

Talk: Tim Brown on creativity and play – November 21, 2008

Not only do we find (in schools) that creativity and exploration isn't encouraged, we so often find that it is actively discouraged. "No, not like that...like this." "No, that's not what you're supposed to do with that." etc.
Thanks to Tim Brown, I now have some fun little activities in mind for Christmas games!

Talk: Jill Bolte Taylor's powerful stroke of insight – November 21, 2008

It sounds great.

Talk: Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth – November 21, 2008

It is an amazing stuff. I love it.
http://www.fotocommunity.com/pc/account/myprofile/842948

Talk: Susan Blackmore on memes and "temes" – November 21, 2008

After hearing Blackmore talk I would highly endorse a prize for Richard Dawkins: The selfish genius award!

Talk: Charles Elachi on the Mars Rovers – November 21, 2008

Amazing and insightful. love the quote also. "do not go where the path may lead- go instead where there is no path and leave a trail"

thought invoking and massively refreshing. there is intellegent life on mars (o:

Talk: Steven Pinker chalks it up to the blank slate – November 21, 2008

I think Pinker is the only person still arguing Nature vs. Nurture? maybe he missed the memo...He simply takes one narrow metaphor and reverses it "the blank slate theory" and repackages it:"not blank slate theory." This isn't exactly a new argument. The twin studies?Please! First those studies are so, so old! Second, patterns in gray matter do not directly correlate to personality traits. Third, NYer cartoon...ugh! lame!...Plus, of all people you are going to take on, Steven Jay Gould? I think "the blank slate" isn't necessarily the best way to describe the human brain at birth, but it really just a way of dispelling a social darwinism. If you are going to try to interrogate important thinkers, at least have the balls to choose the core argument, such as, "the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups races, classes, or sexes are innately inferior and deserve their status." (Mismeasure of Man, 1981(?)) He spends more time framing himself as the victim and making snarky comments. The problem is that these are not new ideas. nor is using the practice of using pseudoscience to support them. Maybe "Blank Slate" is the best metaphor, but how's this from Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D. from Harvard Center on the Developing Child: "Brains are built over time, neural circuits are wired in a bottom-up sequence, and the capacity for change decreases with age...The interaction of genes and experience shapes the architecture of the developing brain, and the active agent is the serve and return nature of childrens relationships with the important adults in their lives" Nature AND Nurture. Sorry, to be rough, but this isn't just a harmless idea. This quack theory put people in insane asylums, slums, bad schools, forced sterilization, slavery, jail and worse

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – November 21, 2008

Does science have the right to dictate morally accepted ideas of percieved knowledge?

Scientist make a construct of ideas literally and do not realise that socially accepted ideas evolved from previous ideas and stand more for a symbollic meaning than a percieved truth.

Put evolution to a vote in my schools and I will vote for it but what I will not do is shun someones beliefs and instead try to persuade peoples beliefs.

Most americans by defintion are not religious, they beleive in ID, but do not go to church. The problem with science is the same problem with religion, it is either you are with us or agianst us.

The fact is it was religious leaders who came up with the oldest idea of scientific method(medical journals obtained in egypt thousands of years ago by religous relics contained all the common procedures of modern scientific method) and until the religion and science can either agree to respectfully disagree or find ways to benifit each other, the arguement will continue.

Also, if people of science go through life believing that all people that believe in ID are ignorant or stupid they will fall face first on the arguement everytime. The idea that this is a call to arms for atheist represents a lack of moral deversity among atheist ingeneral. It creates a team function within itself and when you understand the psychology of teams, you will understand that true openess to arguements stop. If you think that being disrespectful is a way to get your views spread than you are trapped within your own moral universe and deserve to have your arguement cast to the fire.

The main problem I have agianst the atheist/theocratic arguement is the idea of openess to bickering. One is arguing a moral symbol percieved to be true, and one is arguing a hypothesis generation traits between animals over time that is socially accepted to be truth.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

Talk: Stewart Brand on the Long Now – November 21, 2008

This is just sad. I can think of a million better ways to spend the millions they are investing in this silly idea. I think one could use motion graphics or stories from evolution to more effectively convey the scale of thousands of years to people--it would reach a lot more people and cost a lot less money.

Sorry, but an MIT-engineered variation on a Victorian-era mechanical clock just doesn't inspire awe like a work by a great artist. It feels too contrived, too obvious and lacks any sense of wonder. I think they are building this thing simply for themselves. They enjoy the design challenges and maybe it's the ultimate tombstone for their egos--something they hope will persist as a record that they were here.

They should just spend their millions to conserve an ecological hot-spot like a rain forest instead. I'd be more proud to preserve a habitat for a dozen species of birds, insects and fungus for 10,000 years than in leaving a mechanical clock buried in a hole.

Talk: Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks – November 20, 2008

Some may argue that this puts a choke hold on innovation but in reality the companies that create the hardware continue to make a profit because very few individuals would purchase the hardware with the sole intent to hack the software and infringe on the technology....especially when the hardware manufacturers never intended for the hardware to operate in this capacity.

Talk: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity – November 20, 2008

Fascinating! I believe he is right. Sad, though, that we spend so much time, energy, and resources to educate our children to be something other than creative. He's right that we teach our children for university with a special emphasis on the math and sciences and little or no emphasis on the arts. Sure makes me think!

Maybe it affected me more than most, because I was that little gr. seven student fidgeting in his seat and tapping his toes to a rhythm in his head only to have the teacher scold him and tell him to sit quietly and listen. Everything in me wanted to move drum out a beat with my hands or feet, yet it was never encouraged or recognized by any teachers.