Listening to TED talks was a regular habit of mine. I’m slowly publishing the notes, to share with readers and as a personal refresher. Here’s the full list of notes.
This week we have a talk from Nick Hanauer (one of the infamous banned talks) on why rich people don’t create jobs, and from Clio Cresswell on the link between math and sex.
Nick Hanauer: Rich people don’t create jobs
- the rich aren’t job creators, supply side economics is false
- consumers are king, consumers create jobs
- hiring is a last resort for capitalists. to call capitalists job creators is disingenuous
- rich people may consume more, but it’s not commensurate with their higher earnings
- look at recent decades: as taxes on rich and capital gains have gone down, unemployment has stayed high, real incomes for middle and lower class have stagnated
- to raise taxes on the rich benefits everyone long-term
- help the middle class prosper, and create jobs for everyone
Mathematics and sex | Clio Cresswell
- there are equations that predict with 95% accuracy whether spouses will stay together over time, includes data on in-laws and body language
- couples that compromise the LEAST ended up staying together the longest
- maybe having high standards, finding ways to reach for them, is the way to go
- mathematics is used in many fields: from creating chocolate to optimizing antibiotics to predicting political elections
- men overestimate their # of past sexual partners, but estimation as a process usually leads to over-guessing (her favorite clue in the data: 80% of self-reported men’s numbers were divisible by 5!)
- testosterone peaks in morning, slumps in the evening, and cycles every 2 to 2.5 hours
- rats can count approximately, but can’t do exact because they don’t have a linguistic / mental representation of numbers. we’re the same: if we can’t count out a sequence, we can only do approximations, too
Here’s the full list of TED notes!