What Do You All Think Of TED...?

[MajikVixen Lorefield]

8 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Like many videos out there, some of the TED talks are interesting and full of useful information, and some of them are simply someone trying to get their 10 minutes of fame.

That may be true.  But I'm also finding lots of TED videos that are just cartoons of math or logic problems.

[MajikVixen Lorefield]

8 hours ago, Fionalein said:

First time I ever hear about this TED thing...

 

Well, yay!  ...What do you think so far?

[MajikVixen Lorefield]

Well, ok... if anyone here could do their own TED talk, what would it be on?

[Rolig Loon]

I spent a long career in college classrooms and professional meetings before I moved on. As much as I enjoyed all those years, it's a relief not to give talks these days. I'm having fun listening.

[MajikVixen Lorefield]

9 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

I spent a long career in college classrooms and professional meetings before I moved on. As much as I enjoyed all those years, it's a relief not to give talks these days. I'm having fun listening.

Oh, yeah.  Good point.  I have fun listening too.  Although there was a time when I had a speech class, and that was pretty fun.  Although, I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified enough to give a great 20-minute speech on life or anything profound.

[Rolig Loon]

I remember taking a couple of required speech classes as an undergraduate too (Persuasion and Argumentation, I believe). They were challenging, and I enjoyed them.  I was disappointed to find, many years later, that the basic speech class at the campus where I was at the time required little more than watered-down "What I Did Last Summer" presentations.  We voted to delete it from the required list.  Different campus, different time.  I did feel that the students deserved better.

[Syo Emerald]

12 hours ago, BlueVioletVixen Lorefield said:

Well, ok... if anyone here could do their own TED talk, what would it be on?

I would probably panic, because I wouldn't be able to come up with a topic interesting enough and in which I could provide well spoken, new insights.

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

I remember taking a couple of required speech classes as an undergraduate too (Persuasion and Argumentation, I believe). They were challenging, and I enjoyed them.  I was disappointed to find, many years later, that the basic speech class at the campus where I was at the time required little more than watered-down "What I Did Last Summer" presentations.  We voted to delete it from the required list.  Different campus, different time.  I did feel that the students deserved better.

I also had to take a public speaking course, and it was offered by the engineering school rather than the encompassing university. I think that was to provide a different perspective on the use of metaphor and analogy. In a liberal arts setting, there would be significant emphasis on those as tools of persuasion. In the sciences, evidence is supposed to do the persuading and there's greater emphasis on assuring that metaphors and analogies don't hamper deeper understanding later on.

I just looked at 2019 class schedule and see that there is no longer such a class offered within the college of engineering.

:-(.

[Madelaine McMasters]

13 hours ago, BlueVioletVixen Lorefield said:

Well, ok... if anyone here could do their own TED talk, what would it be on?

I might tell the story of how I've convinced numerous people that I have supernatural powers, and how at least two of them refused to accept my eventual debunking of that with a perfectly natural explanation. That story evolved over more than three decades, culminating in my realization that people have a deep need to believe in things, will do so on the flimsiest pretense, and will reject compelling evidence if it conflicts. I have long felt that my conscious self is riding on a subconscious creature that reveals itself sparingly, but can be coaxed into the light through various mental tricks. There's nothing supernatural about the world, but it feels good to believe otherwise.

Subject matter is fairly irrelevant, I think. It's the speaker's ability to tell a story that lifts them above the fray. I spent a few years in a local community theater group, and greatly enjoyed watching and participating in the process of putting ideas and emotions into other people's heads, hopefully as intended.

The Moth is an organization dedicated to the art of storytelling. They have chapters around the US and I suspect there are similar groups around the world. People from the audience get up on stage for five minutes or so and tell a story. Seek out such a place in your RL neighborhood and give a listen... or a talk. I've been attending Moth "story slams" for years and have never been disappointed. There are compelling stories told by mediocre storytellers and mediocre stories told by compelling storytellers. It's all good, and often wonderful.

Edited January 2, 2019 by Madelaine McMasters

[Luna Bliss]

26 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

There's nothing supernatural about the world, but it feels good to believe otherwise.

I would tell a story about how anthropocentric people mistakingly believe the measurements they have devised are the only way to understand the world.

[Rolig Loon]

13 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Subject matter is fairly irrelevant, I think. It's the speaker's ability to tell a story that lifts them above the fray.

I make no claims to being a mater storyteller, but I can recall presentations where the magic seemed to come out of nowhere, and I was as surprised as the audience.  I wish I could predict when that was going to happen.

The all-time classic occasion for me was over 40 years ago, when I accompanied my mother to a meeting of a local historical society in Vermont. As I recall, we had written to the society's president to ask if we could visit and search for some records of our own family's history in the area.  She had, in reply, invited us to their dinner meeting.  We made the two hour drive, then had a wonderful afternoon and then a filling dinner, and then the president opened the meeting by saying how much everyone was looking forward to the talk by their special guest .... me.  I had maybe five minutes to gather my thoughts and take a deep breath.  I swear to this day that nobody had ever mentioned that I was expected to talk. 

It turned out to be one of those magical times.  I spoke for a half hour about population movement from New England to the west after the Revolutionary War, surprising myself (and my mother) by how much I knew about the subject and how much I could say without the benefit of notes or a slide presentation (these were the days before PowerPoint). I dodged a bullet that night somehow, and it taught me to never again be unprepared to talk, even if the occasion is extemporaneous. As you say, Maddy, the subject matter is irrelevant. There's always something that each of us can say that will be new to other people.  The trick is to be able to tell the story when the opportunity arises.  

[Madelaine McMasters]

9 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

35 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

There's nothing supernatural about the world, but it feels good to believe otherwise.

I would tell a story about how anthropocentric people mistakingly believe the measurements they have devised are the only way to understand the world.

Well there ya go. We could get up on stage together and use each other to prove our points.

[Luna Bliss]

* was laughing with you (feeI must clarify this due to another thread)...

I'm watching Rupert Sheldrake's almost TED talk that was banned @ TED this very moment   (relating to Science vs what you call the "supernatural")

 

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

* was laughing with you (feeI must clarify this due to another thread)...

I'm watching Rupert Sheldrake's almost TED talk that was banned @ TED this very moment   (relating to Science vs what you call the "supernatural")

 

My guru used to talk about Sheldrake a lot.

[Madelaine McMasters]

12 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

* was laughing with you (feeI must clarify this due to another thread)...

I'm watching Rupert Sheldrake's almost TED talk that was banned @ TED this very moment   (relating to Science vs what you call the "supernatural")

 

Gonna ramble...

Dunno why TED singled out Sheldrake's pseudoscience for removal, they've presented a lot of other stuff of similar caliber. That's why I qualified my endorsement of TED in my first post in this thread. Sheldrake's removal from the TED library potentially makes him more compelling to the lay public, playing into the anti-intellectual conspiracy theory that educated people are trying to hide the truth from we ignorant masses. Never mind that we're well equipped to do that all by ourselves. We need no help.

In the talk, Sheldrake says stuff that's not true. He'd have you believe that he's the only person who's questioned the constancy of the speed of light. Einstein proposed variability in 1911, Dicke in 1957 and others since then. It's an accepted aspect of quantum mechanics (though only at the quantum level). Cosmologists have been on the lookout for evidence of light speed variability for decades and have found candidates (white dwarf stars) for measurement when technology advances sufficiently to allow it. There's a Nobel Prize waiting for anyone who brings proof, so it's not like the science community is trying to suppress the idea.

Sheldrake's basement archive discovery that the speed of light had "changed" from 1928 to 1945 is well known to the scientific community. A retrospective analysis revealed that the shifts in measurements of the speed of light were the result of systematic errors in prior measurements and some bias in estimating the error bands, placing measurements after 1945 within the corrected earlier margins of error. There's a brief analysis of this here.

I smiled when I saw the book from which that analysis comes. It was edited by Daniel Kahneman (thank's again @Pamela Gallifor recommending his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow") who's Nobel Prize winning work in behavioral economics put a dent in the idea of human rationality, and David Dunning of the Dunning Kruger effect. Sheldrake is probably no more rational, nor more immune to the Dunning-Kruger effect, than those who've measured the speed of light over the years... or me.

Sheldrake also made an argument about a chemical's propensity to crystallize spreading across the world in an inexplicable (except to him) way. I think he used an Abbott Labs AIDS drug as one example. I've read about that (I think as a result of first seeing Sheldrake's TED talk), including looking at the patents Abbott received for the original drug and its eventual reformulation.

The problem is approximately this: If you manipulate chemicals in ways that rarely or never occur in nature (an "unnatural condition") you may get results that rarely or never occur in nature. You might get an exceedingly rare polymorph/isomer (a variation of a chemical with the same formula, but different physical/chemical properties, perhaps the propensity to crystallize) or an astonishing nuclear kaboom. This can also work in reverse. If a useful variant of some chemical exists in nature, attempts to "distill" it might end in failure, as the existence of the useful variant might depend on impurities you've removed.

Abbott Labs purified an AIDS fighting crystalline chemical to the point where a never before seen isomer formed, producing a less useful crystal that crowded out the original by seeding growth (as crystals do) of its own kind. The little bugger infiltrated the manufacturing process and ground things to a halt. Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance theory posits that once a new isomer is created, the universe picks up on the news and favors it because the original chemical has acquired a new "habit" available anywhere. Believers claim that Abbott was unable to rewind their process to the point they could produce the original variant of the chemical because the universe had learned a new trick, now preferring the bad variant.

That's not true. Abbott never had a reliable process for making the concentrated chemical in the first place. It was only a matter of time before the bad polymorph would pop up because they'd refined the original chemical to an unnatural concentration, possibly removing contaminants that kept the original variant stable and/or created conditions that promoted creation of the new variant. They eventually understood that any attempt to start the process from scratch in a clean room environment would ultimately succumb to the same probabilities, particularly as they weren't sure what "clean" actually was. The AIDS drug did not learn a new habit, Abbott simply didn't know what they were doing, and learned from their mistake, working out a different manufacturing process that allowed the seemingly unavoidable and more stable new polymorph to work well. The reformulated drug, and subsequent new variations (as much to extend patent protection as for efficacy) are in production to this day.

There are numerous other particular polymorphs of chemicals that can no longer be easily produced, and many of those problems have been traced back to impurities that existed in old manufacturing processes that were never quantified, or even identified. Unable to replicate those old processes, we're sometimes unable to replicate the old polymorphs. This does not require the universe to learn new habits, it simply requires us to make changes to recipes we never understood in the first place. And it makes sense that we don't know what the impurities were, we got rid of them without looking.

I've witnessed this effect personally in the production of cadmium sulfide photosensors. There are sensors from 70 years ago that exhibit certain desirable properties that no modern sensor can replicate. These particular sensors were made by some, but not all producers of that era, who likely used the same or similar equipment in their production lines. There were impurities in the old processes that produced desirable characteristics for a small population of low volume customers (audio engineers) and degraded performance characteristics that were important for a wide range of high volume applications. To increase sales, all manufacturers improved their processes to target the high volume customers. Nobody carefully examined the contamination that was removed as the process was improved, so there's no way of going back to the old way of making the things. Would Sheldrake surmise that cadmium sulfide photosensors have developed the habit of working better than ever before, except for audio engineers?

You mentioned anthropocentrism. Consider the possibility that alien civilizations elsewhere, millions of years ago, might have created endless new polymorphs of naturally occurring chemicals. Sheldrake's resonance theory would have those new polymorphs instructing the universe to not produce the old ones, precluding us from ever witnessing them in the first place. Yet we do see them, and we see them vanish. Must we then be the only ones capable of doing this? That's mighty anthropocentric!

I haven't the time to list all the other little things that caused Sheldrake's TED talk to turn me off years ago, but it sure did. I don't so much mind that he's out there selling snake oil, people have been doing that forever. I'm more concerned about what appears to be increasing scientific illiteracy in an epoch of human development when access to knowledge is easier than ever.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Madelaine McMasters
Extinguishing nonsense polymorphs of the words I'd intended.

[Prokofy Neva]

TED is a cult. A tech cult. Predominantly trans-humanist/techno-libertarian/techno-communist/cosmic engineer etc. Which is why it's a cult.

If TED were really open to all kinds of schools of thought, allowing them to contend, it wouldn't be a cult. But it doesn't, so it is. TED talks take the place of religious revivals -- the format is very similar, I've written on this.

We already have an awful lot of the TED culture in SL in various forms so I'm not for institutionalizing TED in SL.

There's an awful lot of pseudo-science already on TED -- this fellow singled out for removal probably just didn't do the secret handshake right.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Prokofy Neva

[ChinRey]

I love TED but TEDx is more fun.

[Luna Bliss]

14 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Dunno why TED singled out Sheldrake's pseudoscience for removal, they've presented a lot of other stuff of similar caliber. That's why I qualified my endorsement of TED in my first post in this thread. Sheldrake's removal from the TED library potentially makes him more compelling to the lay public, playing into the anti-intellectual conspiracy theory that educated people are trying to hide the truth from we ignorant masses. Never mind that we're well equipped to do that all by ourselves. We need no help.

Well that's a good question...why did they single out Sheldrake and ban him? I think it's because he's too much of a threat to the status quo. For one, he actually is a very good scientist and if you read some of his experiments they are scientifically valid.
But reading the history of science, one see where time and again the new paradigms are initially rejected -- other scientists with influence going against the norm are ostracized or worse. Of course this does not mean his theories are automatically right and will be the ones that replace the old paradigm, but it is suspicious as to why he is singled out -- again, I think it's because he's seen as a valid threat and not easy to dismiss except with a banning.

But the ramifications of banning him, regarding the anti-intellectual conspiracy issues you referred to, sure there are people who distrust science and elevated this fear to the level of belief in a conspiracy, but I think they in the minority. I'm thinking specifically of climate change deniers here, and yeah they are annoying. But believing in science isn't going to change the notion that it's okay for a wealthy few to dominate the majority poor -- this is more the crux of the issue. Rational minds and a belief in science will not solve all ills (not saying you said it will, it just seems a common belief in those who love science to an extreme).

14 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

In the talk, Sheldrake says stuff that's not true. He'd have you believe that he's the only person who's questioned the constancy of the speed of light. Einstein proposed variability in 1911, Dicke in 1957 and others since then. It's an accepted aspect of quantum mechanics (though only at the quantum level).

I didn't get that from his presentation, but I've read some of his writings and he acknowledges that others have questioned the constancy of laws that Physics is based on. However, Physics still goes by these rules, and I see him in this talk as emphasizing these rules are not true.

 

14 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Sheldrake also made an argument about a chemical's propensity to crystallize spreading across the world in an inexplicable (except to him) way.

I don't know much about chemistry, but from the way you've interpreted his connection of crystals to morphic resonance it does sound a bit dodgy. Not sure that disproves morphic resonance overall though.

 

Edited January 3, 2019 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

13 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Sheldrake's pseudoscience

I've noticed that people hooked on scientific validity as a sole means to define their reality quite often assign motivations to those who differ in opinion from theirs --ironically, motivations that are not scientifically verifiable but instead come from the accusers head.
For example, you've stated that those who believe in a reality beyond what can be proven do so to feel good. That's not why I believe in it -- I don't believe in it to make myself feel good anymore than I believe in the sun to feel good. Another level of reality is just there -- I've experienced it and so have many others, and some tests actually prove there's more than what the eye can see (or our human instruments we now measure with). For me, this 'other level' is not "spooky" or "supernatural" as you've called it  -- it's just 'there' as a deeper level of reality that humans can't measure (and maybe they will measure at least some of it in the future).

[Rolig Loon]

The problem I see here is a misunderstanding of what the scientific method entails.  Science is not about "believing."  The basic premise of science is that any hypothesis that we make about how the universe behaves is worth considering until can be shown to be flawed in some way.  The role of science is to find flaws in our understanding.  So, for example, Dalton, Lavoisier, Boyle and others developed the atomic theory to provide a better explanation for the way that matter behaves than the old earth/air/fire/water explanation.  Carnot, Gibbs, and others laid the foundation for modern thermodynamics by showing that heat could be better understood in terms of energy transfer instead of invoking a mysterious substance called phlogiston.  Geologists in the 1960s followed multiple lines of inquiry to conclude that plate tectonics made more sense as a framework for understanding earthquakes, orogeny, and volcanism than the mess of geosynclinal theories that had been favored until then.  Each step in scientific study involves finding weaknesses in what we have learned from previous study.  It is a process of systematic skepticism.  The more we study the universe, the more we understand that we don't have it right yet.   Science is in the business of disbelief -- finding answers that are not false -- which is quite different from finding answers that are true.

There are many areas where science cannot be applied.  "Why are we here?  How do we know what is the right thing to do? Is there a God?"  These are the realm of religion, of philosophy, of law, of politics.  Sometimes science can provide observations or tests that can inform our beliefs, and it certainly shapes the way we see our place in the universe.  Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton showed that the Earth revolves around the Sun, for example. That led many people to ask serious religious questions, but it did not answer them or even address them. Faith is belief in the answers to questions that we cannot ask in science: "Is there life after death? Do you love me?"  Science can disprove the idea that the Earth rests on the backs of an infinite stack of turtles, but it cannot tell whether there is a Heaven.  That's where belief rules, in the search for what is true -- the "deeper level of reality that humans can't measure ."

[Madelaine McMasters]

4 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

I've noticed that people hooked on scientific validity as a sole means to define their reality quite often assign motivations to those who differ in opinion from theirs --ironically, motivations that are not scientifically verifiable but instead come from the accusers head.

While I have not noticed this myself, I have noticed people noticing it.

You just ascribed a motivation (the sole means to define one's reality) to people you disagree with (the pejorative "hooked") inside a sentence I believe you intended to denounce ascribing motivations to people you disagree with.

What motivates you to do that?

[Madelaine McMasters]

10 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

For example, you've stated that those who believe in a reality beyond what can be proven do so to feel good. That's not why I believe in it -- I don't believe in it to make myself feel good anymore than I believe in the sun to feel good. Another level of reality is just there -- I've experienced it and so have many others, and some tests actually prove there's more than what the eye can see (or our human instruments we now measure with). For me, this 'other level' is not "spooky" or "supernatural" as you've called it  -- it's just 'there' as a deeper level of reality that humans can't measure (and maybe they will measure at least some of it in the future).

There's significant research showing that "belief" reduces stress, improves health, and is used as a coping mechanism. Here's an example. We needn't know that believing is helpful, it may well be an evolutionarily advantageous adaptation and difficult to avoid. The reason you think you believe in something needn't be the real reason you do. I have experienced "other levels of reality", perhaps like those you mentioned, and I'm pretty sure that's just my brain making it up. I have been able to work with those feelings to fine tune them, and it's fascinating. I find that to be wondrous, well worth marveling over. I have some small concern that my athiesm may deprive me of the healthful advantages of belief. I can only hope that maintaining a healthy social network will help.

We have known there's more than the eye can see for millennia. We routinely theorize there are things we cannot (at the time) detect, like the Higgs Boson. Ultimately we advance technology to the point we either detect it, something contrary, certainly nothing, or are left still wondering. Can you provide a link to an experiment which proved the existence of something without detecting it? The claim seems preposterous, but I'm curious.

The sensation of a "deeper level of reality" you mention has been evoked by the use of entheogenic drugs throughout recorded history. The Marsh Chapel Experiment is one well documented case. As legal restrictions on research into psychoactive drugs are eased, and we expand the use of functional MRI, I suspect we'll get a much better grasp on the neural mechanisms via which these feelings arise.

As Rolig explained, science does not answer the unanswerable questions. So long as people feel there is something out there that can't be measured, some will believe it's just a feeling, some will believe there really is something out there that can't be measured and some will ignore measurements that show something contrary. That ain't gonna change.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Madelaine McMasters
Spelling and clarification.

[Luna Bliss]

On ‎1‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 11:59 AM, Madelaine McMasters said:

I might tell the story of how I've convinced numerous people that I have supernatural powers, and how at least two of them refused to accept my eventual debunking of that with a perfectly natural explanation. That story evolved over more than three decades, culminating in my realization that people have a deep need to believe in things, will do so on the flimsiest pretense, and will reject compelling evidence if it conflicts. I have long felt that my conscious self is riding on a subconscious creature that reveals itself sparingly, but can be coaxed into the light through various mental tricks. There's nothing supernatural about the world, but it feels good to believe otherwise.

 

14 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

There's significant research showing that "belief" reduces stress, improves health, and is used as a coping mechanism...….

….I can only hope that maintaining a healthy social network will help.

Sure, believing we have external support (be it from the friends you mentioned receiving this from, or be it from a conception of a supportive God) is going to reduce stress -- the world is a vast and at times painful place, and any kind of help in dealing with it will make one feel better. According to developmental psychology, as one matures however they need less from the external world in order to feel validated. Evidence for me regarding this dynamic comes from witnessing how Yogic meditators experience their guru or photos of saints on their altar -- initially, if lacking the external validation they've needed, they feel the saint is more of a parental figure who sends them love as they develop a more solid identity, but as they mature the saint is more a reminder of universal love. This growth is part of the 'deeper realities' at a more personal or basic level that I've been referring to -- growing through stages and understanding the 'big picture' of reality more and more.

So when I say a "deeper reality" I'm meaning the very structure of the Universe, on both a personal and a more expansive level. Knowing a deeper reality basically means knowing a reality hidden from us most of the time until it's developed.
There are aspects of this perceived deeper reality that I understand would make your friends feel good (if you're referring to a type of telepathy or psychic ability as the supernatural abilities your friends thought you had?), as that would make them feel more emotionally connected perhaps. But the fact that something would make one feel good does not always prove that it's false -- I'm sure you can see that's illogical?

But going past a more personal, developmental aspect of reality, why do people believe in a 'Rupert Sheldrake' conception of the world, a world where time and space is not how we have conceived it to be in the past? For many it's because they have experienced a reality that does not fit our current scientific paradigm.
Take, for example, the sense one has that they are being stared at from behind. Scientific experiments prove that it is possible to perceive this (very significantly above the chance level), but how is it possible? A 'Rupert Sheldrake' interpretation might say that a type of 'energy' connects everything and that it is possible to sense this 'energy', and so we can feel this 'energy' being directed to us as it is actually touching us as surely as a material hand could.

I could go on and on about all sorts of unusual manifestations like remote viewing, telepathy, bilocation, other psychic manifestations and the like, but this is not something we're supposed to focus on in Yogic practice as they detour one from the path with silly games. They happen, sure, and indicate knowing aspects of a deeper reality, but in Yoga the focus is on increasing Love.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

On ‎1‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 9:01 PM, Madelaine McMasters said:

The sensation of a "deeper level of reality" you mention has been evoked by the use of entheogenic drugs throughout recorded history. The Marsh Chapel Experiment is one well documented case. As legal restrictions on research into psychoactive drugs are eased, and we expand the use of functional MRI, I suspect we'll get a much better grasp on the neural mechanisms via which these feelings arise.

Do psychotropic drugs have the potential to take one to another 'real' place not normally accessible, or a way to experience reality in a different state of consciousness that is as valid as our typical one?…….. or are they simply creating a feeling with no basis in reality as you're implying here?

BTW, I astral projected to your home last night...did you see me? ;0 

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Do psychotropic drugs have the potential to take one to another 'real' place not normally accessible, or a way to experience reality in a different state of consciousness that is as valid as our typical one?…….. or are they simply creating a feeling with no basis in reality as you're implying here?

Yes.