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Having these filters as an option is a good thing; that's just a tool you can use to refine a search.

Having them on by default and invisible (or obfuscated) is not. In this case, information is being hidden from searchers who may not even realize that filtering is taking place.

The TED page for the speech has a transcript for those who don't have sound, or just don't want to sit through a nine-minute video.

And get probably 75% of medical issues diagnosed and cured, as they are mostly nutritional deficiencies... :-)
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.grassrootshealth.net/

Sure, Omega-3s and Iodine are important too:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
    http://www.iodine4health.com/
    http://www.bluezones.com/

As is a good night's sleep, friends, family, a connection to that which is beyond us, meaningful work, daily exercise walking and such, and that kind of stuff. And obviously avoid smoking, excessive alcohol, and obvious environmental toxins at work and play.

The focus on magic bullets is unfortunate. As is a focus on diagnosing things like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes that are mainly signs of vegetable deficiency disease and lack of vitamin D (and to a lesser extent those other issues). Most health rests on the basics. It's true that there are exotic genetic diseases and so on, but what causes the most chronic misery and early death in the industrialized words is these basic nutritional (and sunlight) problems.

Still, for cheap testing, this may be the future through using a paper-with-chemicals test and a cell phone, and such tests could help detect nutritional deficiencies:
    http://www.ted.com/talks/george_whitesides_a_lab_the_size_of_a_postage_stamp.html

Of course, there is not much profit in actually preventing or curing disease, so most of the money pours into diagnosing and treating what are really symptoms of nutritional and lifestyle disorders... It's been that way in part since the misguided Flexner Report:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report

But yes, this is still a great initiative -- even if it misses the obvious. But there is so little that is obvious (as is said in the Skills of Xanadu): :-)
    http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51

And of course, in our widely dysfunctional and dying culture, where people mostly eat either long dead carrion (aged factory farmed meat) or ground up long-dead plants (flour and sugar), and much of our entire cultural socio-economic infrastructure is geared around getting everyone to embrace this death-eater cult, it is no metaphorical surprise that the result of being a death eater is that you die early... Related:
    http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

Do you really need a "tricorder" to diagnose death-eater disease?

One of their cars makes a fairly fundamental mistake in their TED presentation.

At 1:30:

http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car.html

The car proceeds to make a left turn, only to be stopped by pedestrians thus stopping in the oncoming lane.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work.html

There is also a mention somewhere that a core lib of Amiga os was written by one guy over 2 days in virtual isolation. He only had to get one design issue clarified with a superior during the process.

you won't be around for a hundred

This guy disagrees with you

It's perfectly possible to explain beauty without needing anything remotely God-like. First of all you have to realise that beauty isn't at attribute of an object. It's a response of your brain to certain objects. And that response is formed by evolution, the same as everything else about you. It's most obvious to see when it's the beauty of other people - the strongest driver there is picking the best partner for reproduction.

There are many other drivers for evolution developing a sense of beauty for non-human objects too. Here's an interesting animated lecture on the topic.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty.html

I'm more afraid of the filter bubbles. Information on the web is increasingly filtered for you, without you knowing it, or being able to control it.
See this TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

I'm more afraid of the people who choose their own filters. "Fair and Balanced" news, anyone?

I'm more afraid of the filter bubbles. Information on the web is increasingly filtered for you, without you knowing it, or being able to control it.
See this TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

Hmmm...so you have a lot of explanatory power with that statement. You can explain pure altrusim (my tribe will all start acting nice because they saw me do it for some reason, creating a bright shiny utopia), and you can also describe selfish behavior (I saw that guy mug someone and get away with it, that's why there's so much selfish behavior in the world). So which is it?

One word answer: Yes.

Three-word answer: Ask Schrodinger's cat....

....or better yet, take a look at this talk from TED and consider what Philip Zimbardo has to say on the subject.

http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html

These people can't delay gratification enough to save up

Reminds me of this.

Human nature hasn't changed, but the ease of finding like minds (whether it's to exchange rhubarb recipes, terrorist plots, or shared delusions) and likelihood of information bias is unprecedented.

One of the great ironies of living in the information age is that we have so much information that it's a little overwhelming without some filtering. And most people don't have the maturity/intellect/meta-cognitive insight (pick one or more) to see that they're self-selecting only ideas that confirm what they already believe, while actually forgetting the facts that don't fit (or as psychologists put it, falling victim to Confirmation Bias). It's a very easy trap to fall into.

Here's a nice TED talk from the author of "The Filter Bubble," about the danger of personalized search narrowing our worldview. http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

There is a TED talk that clearly demonstrates this issue. The guy talks about how public announcements are ridiculously worded and obfuscated deliberately to dissuade public involvement in community development, and other issues where the public is supposed to be involved.

While I cannot find that video, please enjoy this one of a very related topic.

http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_siegel_let_s_simplify_legal_jargon.html

Ralph Langner: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon
http://www.ted.com/ When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS01Hmjv1pQ

In short he shows/claims US was behind it.

An intelligent civilization will realize that a great way to let others know that intelligent life exists in that solar system is to put some Sulfur in the atmosphere of their star. Stars are well studied and the chemical ratios are well known, therefore, with an anomaly more than and order of magnitude above your uncertainty, you would know some intelligent being did this. Of course I do not recommend WE do this, as Aliens may not be friendly.

If you wanna live like a poor Chinese citizen be my guest, my family moved to the US for a reason, and the cheap oil and gas that made this country rich can't be ignored. But you are correct, we shouldn't be telling what China to do until the PER CAPITA CO2 production is higher than ours.

Hans Rosling has a great TED talk on this, and it's very enjoyable to watch.

Just look at Europe, even with a insanely high tax on gasoline, the technology for electric cars just isn't there yet. I applaud the Europeans, they have let me buy much bigger/faster/nicer cars that would have been available if they had no tax (since gas prices would go up for everyone if Europeans used more).

There is an entertaining video on this from a presentation at TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) that is only 4 minutes long. And no I've never been.

http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html

The above is actually a much more important point than it seems. According to this guy (about 9 mibutes in) the Copenhagen summit consensus panel estimated that loosening of trade barriers and subsidies in the US and EU would result in pulling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in only 2-3 years and result in massive gains for the world economy. This would result also in wages going up in third world countries, making outsourcing less profitable and in turn putting money in the pockets of workers in the first world countries. The reason this isn't done is because it is more profitable for the corporations operating in those countries to have this poverty. To bring this train of thought back on topic, economically, sharing and globalism have an end result of making everyone better off. The question with copyright law as with free/fair trade is corporate profits vs social gains. Now choose.

There is no point to them; it just illustrates our very backward way of teaching math in schools. We need to stop teaching students "calculation" (memorizing formulas, remembering how to solve various types of integrals, etc) -- something computers are extremely good at, and instead teach students how to translate real world problems into equations that computers can calculate, and then how to interpret a computer's answers. These skills are far more important, and computers DON'T give you much of an advantage in these areas.

Conrad Wolfram (brother of Stephen Wolfram, of Wolfram Research Mathematica) did a great TED talk about this very subject.

Honestly, the real reason for the demand for crippled technology is the idiocy and cluelessness of high school maths teachers. What's the problem with writing a TI-BASIC program to solve a formula?

When I was in high school (the mid-late 90's), the first thing I did when I understood a formula was to write a program on my calculator to solve it. (I did the same thing on my Debian box at home, but in C, just to make sure I wasn't being retardedized by BASIC). This was before the days of 'wipe your calculator before the test', so of course, I would use my program; I was here to learn math, not to repeatedly perform rote computation, right?

Wrong, evidently. I lost points on my exams for 'not showing my work', even though I included my code (which my teachers couldn't understand, apparently). Luckily, my mother got it. She went to every parent-teacher conference to defend my use of programming rather than repetitive, boring computation. The teachers argued, 'Well, if he just wrote a program, how do I know he understood the math.' She just looked at them. 'Really? How could he write a program without understanding the math?'

Eventually, it came down to, 'He has to show his work, that's the stupid rule because I'm a big stupid-head.' Luckily, I discovered this trick before the xkcd comic made it blatant.

In hindsight, it's not so bad. Today I'm a programmer, and I make more than twice what my idiot math teachers made, and probably have more fun doing it.

In other news, Conrad Wolfram agrees with me 100%. And I trust Stephen Wolfram's son over my high school math teachers any day of the week.

Actually bonuses haven't been shown to be all that effective. That well known good idea is a well known fallacy:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

I agreed with you until you trotted out a ted talk.

Actually bonuses haven't been shown to be all that effective. That well known good idea is a well known fallacy:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

There are a couple of good talks about ocean exploration on TED, for instance http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/robert_ballard_on_exploring_the_oceans.html

This must be the inverse to Clay Shirky's rule that as soon as an organization is set up (or in this case: about to be destroyed), the goal for which the organization began shifts to second priority, and the new primary goal is the preservation/perpetuation of the organization.

From here(s):
http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/1594201536

Fine on most of your other points but one bit sounds odd:

that the drug dealers have to force people to work for them.
by reliable accounts teens are lining up to voluntarily work for them in really bad neighbourhoods.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_economics.html

in the worst neighbourhoods being a senior member of a gang is about as high as a position as many teens can imagine themselves in so they line up to join.

It would be pointless and problematic to *force* them to sell drugs.
willing employees are easier to handle.

now what they tell their family when they're discovered selling drugs might be different.

I am curious if these open ocean deserts are man made or just nature.

Not necessarily a direct answer, but this academic presentation is incredibly eye-opening and well worth a watch:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html

Here. Lousy subs and editors linking to random shit-ass blog posts instead of direct to ted. I'm not turning on javascript for some regurgitator to earn ad views. Is this enough text to get past the lame filter? Posting anonymously to not karma whore. Not sure if the "no karma bonus" thing works. Let's try this.

I was a math major. As a kid, math was what inspired me. But other kids are inspired by different subjects, less "valuable" subjects, and we have to see this as a benefit rather than a detriment.

"Our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip mine the earth for a particular commodity. And for the future it won't service. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children... our task is to educate their whole being."
Ken Robinson, from this truly amazing TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

In this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_root_wolpe_it_s_time_to_question_bio_engineering.html ... the speaker details an experiment where they had a robotic arm respond to the brain signals a monkey has when it moves one of its arms. The monkey realized intuitively how it's controlled and eventually was able to move the arm without moving its real arm, effectively giving the monkey three working arms. Might've been an ape -- I forget.

This is not serious or credible. Building prosthetic devices is a serious challenge with a lot of ergonomic issues. This project and the reportage like some kids building a lego robot and expecting it to revolutionize the automobile industry. Great, they controlled some simple pneumatic with an alpha wave reader: yawn.

How about Dean Kamen's TED talk as a reference point for what's really needed and where this game is at: http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthetic_arm.html

At this point I don't think that NASA is in any way able to push forward in space exploration. Though we are in for some 'dry' years in space I really think that this will be the best move, get NASA out of the way and allow private corporations to get into the mix.

If you really want something interesting on this topic, look at Burt Rutan's talk on TED. He makes some very excellent points on the pace of space exploration and technology and why NASA just isn't helping the situation.

I remember the outrage over how Microsoft's Milo was faked.

And then it turned out it wasn't? Or they lied to TED.

Combined with the fact that Kinect was actually a remarkable piece of tech, the outrage died off.

Anyway, I think that as long as the Galaxy Tab ends up being pretty damned good, this will end up just being a cheap jab by the competition. If the Tab is a piece of shit, then hey. First pillar is knocked down, roof is coming down soon.

If abstinence was a working strategy, none of us would be here. The human sexual instinct ranks just below air, food, and shelter.

But your last point on conquering poverty and improving education to lower population and increase the poor's standard of living is absolutely right. Here's a great TED talk that brings up some of the points everyone has made:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

But they just won't go far enough and say "What about a "new technology" for energy that is not based upon another scarce resource?"

That freakonomics article is hopelessly short on information. Bill Gate's TEDtalk has more information, specifically:

The idea of Terrapower is that, instead of burning a part of uranium, the one percent, which is the U235, we decided, let's burn the 99 percent, the U238. ....And, because you're burning that 99 percent,...You actually burn up the waste, and you can actually use as fuel all the leftover waste from today's reactors.

Wikipedia: Emphasis mine.

...burning fuel made from depleted uranium, natural uranium, thorium, spent fuel removed from light water reactors, or some combination of these materials...

TL/DR: These type of reactors uses the waste from other type of reactors, which is more readily available.

The transistor will be replaced by 3d self organizing molecular circuits. Watch this ted talk by Ray Kurzweil from 2005, where he explains the whole paradime shift issue. http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_how_technology_will_transform_us.html "Inventor, entrepreneur and visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness." - Thats right, nanobots will be operating you consciousness.

Lesley Hazelton in her TED talk about the koran stated that there isn't any mention about getting virgins in the text. She compares this to the imagery of angels in heaven which similarly has no mention in the bible.

Huh? She must have skipped Qur'an 56:36. And that wiki points out:

Raisins which are dried grapes, cannot have large eyes (56:22), big breasts (78:33), cannot be described as virgin (56:33) or have any of the characteristics referenced above. Qur'an 44:54 says the men will be wed to houris. Men cannot be married to raisins or white grapes.

Lesley Hazelton in her TED talk about the koran stated that there isn't any mention about getting virgins in the text. She compares this to the imagery of angels in heaven which similarly has no mention in the bible.

It'd be awesome if there was a way to place this sort of intelligence into chemicals. Like, not just replicate the biology virtually... but actually do it with chemicals. Literally creating something like DNA, then getting bits of it copied with something like RNA to cause growth. Create cell like things that split. I mean, with work like this we have the theory... now could we put it into actual chemical practice? There I go being a dreamer :)

Dream no more, we have actually created synthetic life, having DNA modeled 100% in a computer.

There's even a website address & code to decode the website address hidden in the synthetic life, sort of like a fingerprint.

I hear it's next goal will be to engineer the new lifeforms to help produce bio-diesel or other fuels.

There's a TED talk about this concept that you ought to watch. http://www.ted.com/talks/joe_derisi_hunts_the_next_killer_virus.html

I'm butchering his words, but it's something like they make a wafer with millions of slots shaped like every virus they've ever seen, and you spread infected fluid on the chip and the area with slots that shape turns a different color.

Skip to about 10:00 mark for a relation of them using it to diagnose a viral infection that had never been documented before.

My N900 is the computer i use more in a way or another most days. But it don't replace my PC, complements it. Sometimes i need far more horsepower, memory, and bigger screen and input devices than my phone, and in that tasks the Atrix would fall short too. I don't know if future devices (using i.e. the Sixth Sense approach?) will improve a lot input and output of information for small devices, that coupled with improvements in battery, cpu and memory could make the PC less needed.

Maybe im using PC too much as synonymous of desktop computer (or big/powerful laptop), but still, odds should be even smaller than netbooks replacing PCs still.

True, except I don't consider spatial memory and image memory to be the same.

True. They are not the same, but there is overlap. Topological rarely goes without image memory. Images are encoded, yes, and photographic memory is really rare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVqRT_kCOLI) and probably there's a reason.

First of all spatial memory provides a constant stream of clues. That is you have a current view that you can use as a key to the next assiocation, if you try to remember an image you usually have a one clue -> all details relation. You can fix that by making strings of associations, but that is the memory tricks we are talking about.

Memory is association. What you call tricks are just using conscious efforts to reinforce associations.
Furthermore, memory can be improved even without conscious meddling in encoding system; one of the standard exercises during drawing classes is to observe different parts of face - for example you spend a week observing people's noses. All the time. Everywhere you go. Result: your perception and memory increases - it is like the compression algorithms that help you encode and associate a given detail (nose, ears, eyes, etc..) improves.
Also, the image is not a single, full detail clue in terms of experience on the level of neuron excitation - your eyes always provide the stream, even looking at the still image - full resolution of your eye can only be achieved on a very limited FOV, that's why you move your eyes while you read this text or while you look at the painting, etc...
It is the encoding system (and hardware) that your brain uses that distinguish the image retention capabilities - be it naturally or consciously trained.

I consider remembering numbers and images equally hard because both has a single context to a lot of details relationship, and to remember many of the details you need all kinds of tricks.

People have different difficulty of remembering certain details, some remember dates, some smells, some people, some emotions, so when having to improve your memory you would usually use something that you are natural good at remembering.

Again true, however, I repeat, spatial (in a sense of topological+image) memory is particularly good in humans. Also, most faces (image) you remember from just one meeting (names are the problem; reinforcing association is useful in remembering the name; but this remembering faces is understandable - we have specialised hardware for that, see http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html on what happens when it breaks). Most locations you remember extremely well with quite a lot of detail. Stephen might remember more, but is that optimal? So you do abstract the images, unless there are particularly important to what you do or what you like; at the same time you do remember distinguishing factors: for example you might still remember the exact way to your childhood school, a neighbourhood where you lived ten years ago, student dorm, streets in various cities that you walked and that is not pure abstract topological graph; memory contains enough image detail for recognition (compression algorithms are normally optimised for recognition, not necessarily reconstruction; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipomu0MLFaI).

Paul Stamets had a ted talk on this subject. His research shows that fungi can cause the creation of fertile topsoil for plants to grow.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

This comes to mind:

Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice

Probably people from 100-200 years ago would not feel as bad, even if seeing it live. In this TED talk is argued that we feel more the violence than before, that somewhat empathy is more cultural than, well, being human. And we feel less empathy, specially the suffering part, on non real characters, unless you do the "based in a real story" trick.

It is also like kid-proofing your house. Don't. The kid will get some bumps and that is how you learn: by failing.

I agree with you; the scrapes and falls are a long-term benefit to the child, but it is rarely a short-term benefit to the parent.

And, if you haven't seen it, this is a great TED talk.

Case in point: My 3 year old knows how to use a screwdriver and can easily find screws around the house to take out and put into things. Yesterday I was, for the first time, wishing I had bought those little electrical outlet cover things.

I went to plug in a 3 prong electrical cord (US style) and it wouldn't go in. I decided to get down on my knees and look into the outlet. Turns out there is a tiny screw driven deep into the ground hole part of one of the outlets. Arrg.. We had to have a talk about that.

Anyway, I still haven't taken the time to go find the breaker for this outlet and proceed to disassemble the faceplate/recepticle to a point to see if I can get the screw out.

Now that I think about it...never mind. She would have most like just taken the outlet kiddy protector/cover plastic thing off anyway, then inserted then screw. After she realized her mistake, she would have most likely replaced the plastic cover. Then, it would have really blown my mind.

Oh well. Smart 3 year old, slow dad.

(BTW, I tried using a high-power neodymium magnet against the screw....but, it looks like the screw is aluminum ...appears to have come from a disassembled HDD.)

Your comment of the purpose of the armed forces vs how they are applied reminded me of a talk Thomas Barnett gave for TED about six years ago.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html Interesting idea, even if so ambitious as to never happen :P

It may not have been an idyllic paradise filled with innocent natives, but the US government has certainly done an extensive amount of lying, cheating, and stealing from the natives. Consider the treaties we broke with the Lakotah: http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_huey.html

It's been called the Paradox of Choice (TED video link). The problem is that when you are spending a large amount of money (such as on a cell phone), the costs of getting it wrong can be large (since, unlike a box of cookies, replacement isn't cheap). Having to choose between dozens of nearly identical models can be confusing or at least taxing.

Steve Jobs gets this. When he came back to Apple he got rid of the dozens of similar products that were just slightly different (Performa 600, 610, 700, 720, 720CD, 730AV, 590HSBCPDBA, 617BBQFTW) and replaced them all with a handful of models. Things may not have matched your exact criteria as closely, but it was much easier to find something close to your criteria than it was before. Car companies can be quite guilty of this too. Mercedes sells 5 sedans/coupes, each in 4 or 5 trim levels. After that you get to options, and other companies are the same. So if you want buy a car, and price isn't a big object, and you want to look at Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, and Audio you could be looking at comparing 80-100 cars just to get a sedan, and thats without the individual option packages.

There was a great picture on a gadget site a year or two ago. It was a picture of Sony's lineup of earbuds. Between different styles, ear loops, colors, etc there were over 100 combinations of products they were selling. There were just too many choices.

This has always been a bit of a problem for Sony. Right now, their site lists 13 point and shoot cameras, 23 handycam camcorders, and 11 clock radios. They have at least seven different 46" TVs.

Do you know why Flip video succeeded? They made a simple little video camera, but they made ONE. Right now they have 3. One with a touch strip, one with HD, and a smaller one with HD and a rechargeable battery. Easy to pick. With sony, you need to decide form factor, 3D, resolution, pop-out screen....

Anything that increases choice is a good thing.

I'm not entirely convinced

no its always been bad, its the same how we view wars http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
basically we learn more about it faster then it gets better

Well sure, this is clever and all... but I still prefer the shock-and-awe approach to mosquito control:

http://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria.html

You can just f-fwd to the 12m mark for the craziness.

Dear sir or madam, could you tell me how much it costs to license that invention from Intellectual Ventures, the company of former Microsoft bigwigs? Why is no one using this technology? Could it be ... cost of licensing?