Tag: tim urban

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”