“Hi, I’m Somebody Somewhere, and I have Something To Say. Are You Listening, AYL?”
“AYL, I’m here to talk about Humanity. You know That, right?”
“Yeah, You Do. What else? Science? Medicine? Nature? All Human Too. Talkin’ 'bout Humanity.”
“AYL, I’m here to TALK/WALK About Liberal Humanism. Yes, this is the Fundamentally Best Human Perspective Out There. It is, and here’s why: PowerPoint Presentation.”
“See?”
“Talkin’ 'bout Humanity in Space.” Please see final slide, and closer: “We all walk human, but can we truly talk human? Liberal Humanism is our best chat, AYL.”
I’m sill a fan of TED talks. If nothing else, they are often uplifting rather than the soul crushing weight of the news; a virtually constant stream of shitty things happening to people across the globe. Now, if we never knew about those things, we could never change them, and in certain cases, this works, we change the bad thing, but in other cases… I’m ending up arguing against myself here. Despite the above, I do have a problem with snake oil salesmen, but I haven’t found that too much in TED talks, but maybe I just haven’t seen enough lately. PBS after midnight though…
Unpleasant News story: my ‘t’ key works half the ime I press i
I think my problem is exactly why you enjoy it, I feel like inspiration porn exists to uplift and I don’t ever feel like I’m getting an unfiltered knowledge, I don’t feel more informed.
The father of someone I dated in college was a pretty successful motivational speaker. Lucrative business. He basically took thoughts, ideas, concepts from other people, and used them in a modular way to say different things depending on what the topic was.
I remember he would buy books, then literally tear out the sections he needed, sometimes whole chapters. He would take a pile of these ripped out sections, create an outline, refine each in his own words, and he had his commodity. At that time you rented out a ballroom or a meeting hall somewhere and charged $50 or $100 bucks a head.
To be honest I don’t think people were ever paying for the actual content. They were paying to feel ways. Inspired, empowered, whatever. They’d leave with a renewed feeling of… whatever. At the time I remember thinking it was the future “church”. Now I think maybe TED is.
I know this might sound like a put down, but if you want unfiltered knowledge, you should read a journal publication (if you have access). That said, having read some journals (admittedly mostly abstracts), I can say that I understand maybe… 1/3 of what is said, and that’s coming from a highly varied educational background. For an average person, I imagine a scientific journal is a wall of foreign words. As much as I hate to say it, for the lay-man, there needs to be some level of… filtering, not censorship mind you, but process of refining the information into terms that they can understand. TED talks largely emphasize the positives, some time with no mention of the negatives, and this is problematic, but its also a natural part of selling a product, which is what many TED talks essentially do, they aren’t there to inform as much as they are to pitch the idea for greater investment. Now that I say it like that, it sounds… it sounds shitty. But… but… it was so nice, to hear about a brighter future. I feel like in a certain way, to a certain degree, it serves a sort of purpose, sort of.
Yes, absolutely agreed. I buy books for inspiration or go to the local science-on-tap and talk to local researchers, I haven’t had access to journals since leaving college, sadly. The internet in general seems better suited to refuting popular science articles than it does informing a person about successful, reproducible experiments that may change society in subtle to dramatic ways, or if unseen, change their particular fields. You’d have to pay attention to those specific fields anyway!
