TED talk notes: Chris Urmson on Google’s driverless cars and Graham Hancock on ayahuasca

Every week, I share my notes from great TED talks. Here’s the complete list (it takes awhile to load).

This week we have Chris Urmson on Google’s driverless cars and Graham Hancock on ayahuasca and psychedelics.

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Chris Urmson: How a driverless car sees the road

  • first car ever was driven by Benz and it crashed into a wall
  • 1M people die of car accidents every year, 30K of those in the US (equivalent to a 747 crash EVERY DAY! me: not sure how they did this math…)
  • billions of minutes are spent each day in commute
  • driving is not egalitarian (e.g., it’s harder for blind, deaf, handicapped, underage, overage)
  • growth in car usage far outpaces growth in roads. in other words it’s not just your imagination: traffic is getting worse
  • humans make roughly one mistake that leads to an accident every 100K miles
  • there are important differences between “driver-assisted” and true driverless cars
  • driverless cars take data and predict behaviors, and even respond to unexpected ones (for example, a Google driverless car encountered a woman in an electric-powered wheelchair chasing ducks in a circle!)
  • driverless cars can see things humans can’t (e.g., using lasers, it can detect a cyclist out of a human driver’s field of view)
  • Google’s cars do 3M miles in simulators every day (me: what a great way to improve AI)
  • parking lots are “urban craters”

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Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness (a banned TED talk)

  • some academics now believe our consciousness was triggered by experiences with psychedelic plants
  • what evidence do we have? cave art and the rise of shamanism
  • DMT compound in ayahuasca plant is closely related to psilocybin
  • he drank an ayahuasca brew
  • was a 4-hour journey
  • “foul taste, dreadful smell”
  • often have vomiting and diarrhea, “you’re not doing this for recreation”
  • a universal experience is encounters with intelligent entities
  • ayahuasca is very successful at breaking addictions to cocaine, heroin
  • “for 24 years I was pretty much permanently stoned”
  • ayahuasca means “vine of souls” or “vine of the dead” — related to why people often have visions of their own death, near-death experiences (NDE), hell
  • Egyptians believe your soul survives death. They highly valued dream states and used hallucinogenic plants
  • “if we want to insult someone, we call them a dreamer, could not be more different from Egyptians where dream states were praised”
  • “our love affair with alcohol, glorify this terrible drug”
  • default state of (Western) society: “alert, problem-solving state of consciousness”
  • Shamans believe the West has severed its connection with spirit

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Here’s the full list of TED notes!

List #1: Robert Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Persuasion (CLASSR)

I love to collect and learn lists. Yeah, it’s weird. But it gets me excited to memorize lists like the 7 habits of successful people and Ben Franklin’s 13 virtues and Jonah Berger’s 6 “stepps” for viral media.

Similar to my TED notes, I’ll publish a list each week. Each list will be brief and include a learning/memorization aide.

Here’s the first! Robert Cialdini’s 6 principles of persuasion.

The list is curated from his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [Kindle], one of my favorite business-psychology books.

My favorite memorization trick is acronyms. Here, the phrase CLASSR (pronounced “classer”) captures this list. Let me know if you come up with a better acronym.

CLASSR: the 6 keys to persuasion

Cialdini’s question: what are the strategies used by the world’s most persuasive people?

1. Consistency and Commitment: you are more likely to do something if you consistently do it, and if you commit to doing it (e.g., by signing a contract, by shaking hands)

2. Liking: you are more likely to do something when you like the person or company making the request

3. Authority: you are more likely to do something when your boss asks you

4. Status and Social proof: you are more likely to do something when you see others doing it, or when its perceived as high status (e.g., apply to Ivy League schools, buying luxury goods)

5. Scarcity: you are more likely to do something when there is perceived scarcity

6. Reciprocity: you are more likely to do something to return a favor or kindness

Remember CLASSR: Consistency & Commitment, Liking, Authority, Status & Social Proof, Scarcity, Reciprocity.

Examples and notes from his book:

  • The trigger word “Because” makes people more understanding (e.g., “I would like you to attend my event because I think you’ll meet a lot of great people”)
  • The most powerful reciprocation tactic: ask for a big favor, then concede and ask for a smaller one. What is known as “rejection then retreat”
  • COMMITMENT: When someone does something small, they will stay consistent and do something larger as a followup request. Car salesmen will use the lowball tactic to get someone to commit to buying a car, and then claim they made a mistake in pricing. A study showed that you can ask someone to put a 3 inch sign on their lawn, then followup 2 weeks later with a request to place a much bigger sign.
  • LIKING: Guinness Book of World Records’ most successful salesmen is Joe Girardi. He had a simple trick: every month, he sends a card to his 13K former customers with one phrase: “I Like You”. Plus his contact info. That’s it!
  • SOCIAL PROOF: “the Werther effect”. Werther was a character in a Goethe novel who committed suicide, and this led to a rash of suicides in Europe when it was first released). A frontpage news story about suicide can lead to a wave of suicides and fatal accidents in areas where the story was publicized. Strikingly, the original suicide victim is similar in age/race/gender to the fatality victims
  • RECIPROCATION: Hare Krisha’s tactic for soliciting donations is to gift a flower or book to a prospect. People are hardwired to reciprocate, even when they dislike you
  • RECIPROCATION: Amway representatives will place a bag of free products in a customer’s home. “No obligations, just try it, and I’ll come back and pick up what’s left.” Half the customers would buy the bag because they used a little bit, felt guilty, and wanted to reciprocate.

Thanks for reading! What are your favorite lists that I could add? Here’s my collection :)

52 tips from The Little Book of Talent, in my words (“think like Buddha, work like Jesus”)

the-little-book-of-talentI forget most of what I read unless the knowledge is shocking or hilarious or about sex or is life altering. Maybe I don’t forget it right away, but time wins in the end. It’s always deleting what I’ve learned. I hate it. Because it wastes time, our most precious resource, and I hate wasted time more than I hate people who are perpetually late, and cafes that are too cool for wifi.

So I’ve developed two methods to retain knowledge, especially the important bits. Method one is good ol’ memorization (using Anki and Evernote). Method two is more complicated but it’s helpful in my quest to become a good writer: to rewrite things, whether quotes or short stories or essays.

When I stumbled upon The Little Book of Talent (thanks Derek!), the 52 tips were perfect for method two. The book is a companion to Daniel Coyle’s other book, The Talent Code, which I also read and summarized.

So, from The Little Book of Talent [Kindle], here is a rewritten version of his 52 tips!

1. VISUALIZE a “future you” who’s mastered your desired skill (like Michael Phelps visualizes each performance down to likely drops of water)
2. REPEAT the best performances of that skill for 15 minutes a day (if you’re a comedian, learn to recite a Louis CK routine, word-for-word and pause-for-pause)
3. STEAL from anyone better than you (this is why musical families produce musical prodigies)
4. RECORD your progress (like a daily journal)
5. BE STUPID, act silly to experiment and expand what’s possible
6. BE POOR: use simple, sparse environments to focus and motivate you (like the founders of Google starting in a garage)
7. HARD OR SOFT? Determine if you’re learning a hard skill (like a tennis forehand) or a soft one (like writing)?
8. For hard skills, be the KARATE KID: wax on and wax off. Be precise, slow, and careful
9. For soft skills, be a SMALL CHILD: experiment, explore, and challenge yourself
10. DO HARD: prioritize hard skills. In the long run, they’re more important
11. FORGET PRODIGIES. Believe you’ll only get there through effort and persistence
12. FIND THE RIGHT COACH: someone who is tough, blunt, active, usually older, and enjoys teaching fundamentals (I am reminded of John Wooden’s reputation)
13. LIVE in the sweet spot, which happens when you’re fully engaged and struggling just enough (what Mikhail C calls flow)
14. MEASURE # of tough reps finished, not # of hours spent
15. CHUNK IT. Reduce each skill into small, coherent chunks
16. MASTER A CHUNK at a time (like a difficult run in a song, or an algorithm in programming)
17. FRUSTRATE yourself. When you’re frustrated, remember: that’s when you’re improving most
18. Practice a little each day, instead of a lot in spurts
19. PLAY: Don’t do drills. Create and play games
20. PRACTICE ALONE
21. Create IMAGES for each chunk to improve your memory
22. Make a mistake? Stop everything. Pay attention. Understand what you did wrong. Then do it right.
23. VISUALIZE your neurons creating connections, getting thicker
24. VISUALIZE your neurons speeding up, getting more efficient
25. PLACE LIMITS and rules on yourself to challenge your skills
26. DO IT SLOW, as slowly as possible
27. CLOSE YOUR EYES and do it. Use your left hand if you’re right handed.
28. MIME IT
29. When you do it right (finally!): notice it. mark it. replay it in your mind
30. Take NAPS
31. EXAGGERATE: make it much bigger, or much smaller
32. SET NEW GOALS just out of reach. Stretch for them
33. WRITE IT DOWN: to learn from a book, write it down, summarize it, organize it
34. With mistakes, use the SANDWICH technique: do it right. do it wrong. then do it right again
35. Practice the 3 x 10 method: do a rep, rest 10 minutes, do a rep, rest 10 minutes, do a rep, rest
36. TEST YOURSELF DAILY
37. Plan your practice using the REPS framework: Reach and Repeat; Engage; Purposeful; Strong, Speedy Feedback
38. STOP WHEN TIRED. Don’t create bad habits
39. Practice immediately after a performance, when the mistakes are fresh (this is my favorite tip)
40. Before sleep, visualize your perfect performance (what Phelps and his coach called “playing the tape”)
41. End each practice with a REWARD (remember the habit loop: trigger, action, reward)
42. How to be a better teacher: connect emotionally, don’t give long speeches, communicate precisely and concretely, make a scorecard, maximize struggling, teach them to learn without you
43. RINSE & REPEAT. Rinse & repeat. Rinse & repeat…
44. Fight the battle anew every day (a frequent message in The War of Art)
45. For every hour of competition or performance, spend FIVE HOURS in practice
46. Instead of fixing bad habits, build good new ones
47. Teach it
48. Give a new skill EIGHT WEEKS to develop
49. When you plateau, change it up!
50. BUILD GRIT and love the grind
51. Keep your goals to yourself
52. Think like Buddha (calm, patient) and work like Jesus (strategic, steady)

That’s the list! Here’s my 1-page summary of The Talent Code.

TED talk notes: Robert Neuwirth on our informal economy and Chrystia Freeland on the super rich

Every week, I share my notes from great TED talks. Here’s the complete list (it takes awhile to load).

This week we have Robert Neuwirth on the informal (mostly untaxed, unregulated) economy and Chrystia Freeland on a rise in the super rich.

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Robert Neuwirth: The power of the informal economy

  • Lagos — no streets for stores, so lady sells stuff from boat, comes to your home
    • garbage dump — 2K people work there scavenging materials
  • “alif” — a place in the world where everything exists (e.g., imagine a hyper-crowded flea market next to a camp)
  • he calls this System D — the DIY economy, the economy of self-reliance; government hates DIY
  • we’re focused on the “luxury economy” ($1.5T market) but this excludes 2/3 of the world’s workers
  • P&G’s largest market segment is actually the informal economy: tiny stores, street hawkers selling detergent (and it’s the only segment that’s growing)
  • Nigeria is the “big dog in Africa” — 1 in 7 Africans are Nigerian
    • M-Tel — only sells airtime, sells through street vendors
    • tons of Guangdong (China) phones going to Nigeria
  • for large brands, “piracy is research” — not going to buy their products anyway, and lets them learn where their products are hot
  • Siemens paid $2B in bribes, yet we demonize the little guys

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Chrystia Freeland: The rise of the new global super-rich

  • as income inequality increases, social mobility decreases
  • today we live in the era of superstars in every industry — even dentists!
  • while the rise in the top 1%’s wealth is astonishing, rise in 0.1% is even more extreme
  • how GM employs 100K, FB only employs thousands
  • today productivity increases are decoupled from wage increases

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Here’s the full list of TED notes!

The future is only an illusion…

The future is only an illusion inferred from our present state. What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is most important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does. Only then does your life become fulfilled. And do not ask yourself questions about time. Jesus did not explain a thing about the eternity of life, but his influence brought people to the eternal. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

…from Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom [Kindle].

Here’s more Emerson.