Category: TED

TED talk notes #1, James Cameron: Before Avatar…a curious boy

I’m adding more TED talk notes to my master list. The talks themselves are rather dated by TED standards (circa 2015 and earlier), but I just discovered them while going through some old files…so they’re new to the blog :)

NOTES

grew up in Canada, then California

as a boy, he liked to draw, loved sci-fi, wanted to scuba dive

lifelong love of the ocean

got into filmmaking to put pictures and stories together

Arthur Clarke: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

wrote Avatar to push film state of art (with tech as lead, instead of the story/narrative), but when he first wrote it, it was too early and so he shelved it to make Titanic!

…which he also made because he secretly wanted to dive to wreck

fell in love with deep sea exploration, combining science and discovery

the most important bond between people is a respect that’s earned through tough times

Notes from a Jonathan Haidt TED talk: “Sports is to war as pornography is to sex”

I was going over old TED talk notes and found this gem. Seems especially relevant today:

Here are my notes:

  • openness and comfort with new experiences are traits strongly correlated with liberal political attitude
  • worst idea in psychology: “mind is blank slate at birth”
  • in reality we’re pre-programmed with a lot: “nature provides a first draft”
  • “sports is to war as pornography is to sex”; way to exercise our ancient drives
  • basis of morality, his 5 best candidates for that “first draft”:
    1. harm/care — feel compassion
    2. fairness/reciprocity — ambiguous evidence whether it’s found in other animals
    3. in-group/loyalty — found in animal kingdoms, usually very small or among siblings, only in humans does it expand to large groups
    4. authority/respect — in humans, this is based more on voluntary interest and feelings of love sometimes
    5. purity/sanctity — food is becoming very moralized these days
  • think of these as channels, moral equalizers
  • liberals care more about 1 harm and 2 fairness; conservatives carry more about 3 in-group, 4 authority, 5 purity
  • all of these are relative
  • in most countries, less debate about harm and fairness, most are about #3, 4, 5
  • most people start fair, then cooperation decays if there’s no punishment, but if there’s punishment, cooperation increases in successive rounds
  • liberals speak for weak and oppressed, conservatives speak for order and tradition; this forms a balance
  • in religions you find same thing: yin and yang, Vishnu and Shiva (in fact, some icons show the two deities as the same body)
  • “If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease” – Sengcan, a Chinese Zen Patriarch
  • believes a key moral insight from history – supported by today’s science – is that we’re inclined to form teams and fight against other teams

Notes from 8 TED talks: Samina Ali, Tim Urban, Tom Chi, JJ Abrams, and more

I watched two TED talks on a flight yesterday, and then realized there were some old TED notes that I still hadn’t published. So here they are, in their scattered and collective glory. Some notes are thorough, and others are – at best – just passing scribbles.

Also, here’s my collection of 100+ TED talk notes. I haven’t updated this page in more than a year, but the notes (and talks themselves) are mostly evergreen.

Samina Ali: What Quran says about a Muslim woman’s hijab

  • 600AD – when woman awoke in middle of night, had to walk into dangerous territories to use restroom, group of men began to attack
  • if a woman wore a coat (status symbol) the woman was free and protected by her clan
  • if she dressed freely (didn’t wear a coat), or men knew she was a slave, men attacked her
  • Mohammed learned of situation, turned to God, and his verses were revealed
  • “draw upon yourselves the garments, so that she not be known, and molested”
  • idea was to have a conservative, uniform look among women, to make it hard to distinguish free from slave
  • in modern times, if wearing a veil leads to harassment, then it actually goes against the roots of why veils arose
  • The Qu’ran is 114 chapters and 6000+ verses
  • Only 3 refer to a woman’s dress: the one above, a second specifically about the Prophet’s wives, and a third which is specific to that time’s context – a scarf to wear on the head, which would cover exposed breasts
  • There is no mention of a woman’s veil
  • What “hijab” really means is “a barrier”, “a divide”, between human and divine, or between men and women
  • Women played an important and strong role in early Islamic and Arabic culture
  • Mohammed’s first wife was a successful CEO, import/export, hired Mohammed and eventually she proposed to him
  • His second wife rode into battle
  • Early women demanded to be part of Mohammed’s revolution
  • They even publicly debated with Mohammed himself
  • At that time, custom was for woman to select her husband, propose, and initiate divorce
  • Today, why does hijab = Muslim women, seclusion & isolation?
  • This isn’t an accident
  • Islamic clerics are responsible; they twisted and added words to Mohammed’s original verses (eg, they specified that the garment would be a veil, and exactly how long that veil should be)
  • They issued fatwas = legal rulings
  • Today Muslim women are heavily discriminated against
  • A woman only need finish elementary school
  • A woman must fulfill physical obligation to husband
  • Islam forbids a woman from wearing a bra
  • Sounds erotic, misogynous fantasy

Tom Chi: Everything is connected

  • Story of the Heart – blood transports hemoglobin and center of hemoglobin is iron; only way iron is created is supernovas, stars forming and exploding; most common formation of new stars is galactic collision, which itself is driven by gravity at the galactic level
  • Story of the Breath – 3B years ago, 80% nitrogen, not enough oxygen, but cyanobacteria came to rescue; slowly ozone layer forms, then multicellular life forms, then Cambrian Explosion; cyanobacteria descendants became chloroplasts in plants
  • Story of the Mind – piano invented in 1700; pianists use many parts of their brain to play; the piano, its brain patterns and music it produces, was not a thinkable thought until it was invented; like inventing a new color, like inventing computer science
  • “palette of being”
  • all spiritual positions have this same concept of connectedness

Adam Grant: The surprising habits of original thinkers

  • They’re quick to start, slow to finish
  • There’s a procrastination sweet spot for creativity, not too much, not too little
  • MLK’s famous “I have a dream” line for his speech wasn’t in his speech notes, it was likely improvised!
  • First mover advantage is largely a myth, improvers (followers) have a 5x lower failure rate
  • The opposite of deja vu is vujas de – surprising new idea and insight from seeing some old unoriginal thing in a new light
  • Firefox and Chrome users more creative than IE users, when normalizing for other variables because of one reason: they don’t accept the default (eg, IE comes pre-installed so it’s about questioning what you’re given and making a conscious choice)
  • Classical composers – one of the best predictors of success was sheer quantity of composition, how much output

Yuval Harari: Why humans run the world, a recap of his book Sapiens

  • What enables us to cooperate in such large numbers, and thus what separates us from every other species, is our imagination. Fictional stories from capitalism to religion
  • All about “flexible cooperation in large numbers”
  • Kevin’s note: this is the same as Karen Armstrong’s point that our chief religious faculty is imagination

Here are my highlights from reading Sapiens.

Amy Lockwood: Selling condoms in the Congo

  • The Congo is 2/3 the size of Western Europe
  • Sex workers’ hotel manager doesn’t sell condoms, there’s no demand, only 3% of DRC uses them
  • Despite similar prices and plenty of marketing, people don’t buy branded condoms, only generic
  • Branded messages: FEAR, FINANCING, FIDELITY
  • Generic messages: all about sex, nudity / sexuality, provocative, aspirational

JJ Abrams: The Mystery Box

  • Loved his grandfather who opened and studied electronics
  • Obsessed with letter printing and book binding
  • Loves boxes, even took apart his hotel’s Kleenex box
  • Was gifted a Super 8 camera at 10 years old
  • Bought Tannen’s Mystery Magic Box a long time ago, never opened it, memory of his grandfather
  • Damon Lindelof and him created Lost, had 11 weeks after writing to making a 2 hour pilot
  • What are stories but mystery boxes?
  • In TV the first act is called the teaser: “withholding information intentionally”
  • ET: you think it’s alien meets kids; but ET is really about heartbreaking divorce, same with Die Hard
  • Jaws: really about a guy dealing with his place in the world
  • Father to son: “C’mon…give us a kiss”. “Why?”. “Because I need it.”
  • The movie theater is another mystery box

Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

  • Wrote a 90 page senior thesis in 3 days – was a terrible experience
  • Started waitbutwhy
  • Wrote about procrastination because it confused him
  • The Instant Gratification Monkey only cares about 2 things: what’s EASY and FUN
  • Dark playground – where leisure happens when it shouldn’t happen
  • Procrastinator has a guardian angel: The Panic Monster
  • The Panic Monster lies dormant until a deadline, or embarrassment, or career disaster
  • Everyone’s a procrastinator
  • The Monkey’s sneakiest trick is when the deadline isn’t there
  • “frustration isn’t that you’re not able to achieve your dreams, it’s that you’re not even able to start chasing them”

Tony Fadell: The first secret of great design

  • Steve Jobs hated when you opened a new gadget, and then you had to charge it before using
  • So he increased manufacturing time from 30 minutes to 2 hours to fully charge the battery so that when a customer opened the box, the gadget was ready to use
  • Habituation is incredibly powerful, but also because of it, you miss great opportunities
  • Built a custom screw for the Nest thermostat; it’s expensive, but easier to install on the wall
  • “Think younger”, kids haven’t been around long enough to be exposed to habits
  • “Stay beginners”

TED talk notes: Hannah Fry on the mathematics of love (or why couples who last continually try to repair their relationships)

I should be done publishing TED talk notes in the next few weeks. Nowadays I listen to TED talks in podcast format and I’m usually doing something else, like running, and can’t take notes.

Anyhow here’s the complete collection.

This week we have Hannah Fry on the mathematics of love.

* * * * *

Hannah Fry: The Mathematics of Love

  • math is the study of patterns
  • OkCupid was started by mathematicians; they have data for more than a decade
  • how attractive you are doesn’t dictate how popular you are on OkC
  • what matters is the spread of scores: ideally you want some people to LOVE you and some to HATE you
  • also, if everyone thinks another person is attractive, they often won’t try to contact
  • let’s say you start dating at 15 and want to be married at 35, what’s your optimal mate selection strategy?
    • the math tells us we should ONLY date for first-third of that span (about 6-7 years), then pick the next person that comes along who is better than everyone you’ve seen before
    • there are actually wild fish, other animals that follow this strategy
  • 1/2 of American marriages end in divorce
    • the best predictor of divorce: how positive or negative partners were in discussions
    • math could predict divorce at 90% accuracy
    • particularly dangerous are the “spirals of negativity”
    • successful relationships have really LOW negativity threshold (which means, they tend to bring up even little things that bother them, though this finding may be counterintuitive)
    • these low negativity threshhold couples don’t let things slide, they continually try to repair their relationship

TED talk notes: Andrew Stanton on how to tell a great story and James Pennebaker on how pronouns give you away

Listening to TED talks was a regular habit of mine. I’m publishing all of my notes. Here’s the complete list.

This week, Andrew Stanton on the clues to a great story and James Pennebaker on the secret life of pronouns.

* * * * *

Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

  • stories are all about the ending
  • the greatest story commandment: “make me care”
  • at beginning, stories should make a promise, can be as simple as “once upon a time”
  • the audience WANTS to work for their meal, they just don’t want to know they’re doing it!
  • “Pixar’s Unifying Theory of 2 + 2”; don’t give them the answer  (4), make them do the work
  • “drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty”
  • every story needs a strong, unifying theme
  • before they made Toy Story, everyone in Hollywood thought animation = singing

* * * * *

The Secret Life of Pronouns: James Pennebaker at TEDxAustin

  • writing 15 mins/day shown to help with trauma – rape, assault
    • what you write about didn’t matter – it was the usage of specific articles and prepositions that did!
  • content (nouns, adjectives) versus function words (rest)
    • function words are 65% of language usage; in English they’re usually the shortest words, and so they’re processed so quickly that they’re basically subconscious
  • function words are profoundly social
    • for example, usage of 3rd person pronouns (he, she, they) shows you pay attention to other people
    • first person pronouns: I, me, my
      • the higher your status, the LESS you use them
      • the lower your status, the MORE you use them
      • high status looks at world, low status looks inside
      • suicidal and non-suicidal poets use negative words at same rates, but suicidal poets use “I” more!
      • depressed people – high awareness, self-focused, extremely self-honest, unable to have positive allusions about themselves
      • honest people use “I” more, own what they say, liars distance themselves
    • in relationships and speed dating – the more your function words match your partner’s, the stronger your relationship

* * * * *

Here’s the full list of TED notes!