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E-voting without fraud is a solvable problem, you just need to holistically think about the issues, like this guy: http://www.ted.com/talks/david...

David Bismark demos a new system for voting that contains a simple, verifiable way to prevent fraud and miscounting — while keeping each person's vote secret. http://www.ted.com/talks/david...

Huh? We use terms like "patient A" or "patient 1212" or "Ellie P". Full names are never used in medical reports.

You just made that up didn't you?

Go look in Medline. If you don't know where that is you have no right talking about what medical reports look like.

fyi, pharma companies hold data secret from doctors and doctors are furious:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_g...
(it's near the end ~15 mins)

http://www.ted.com/talks/allan...

A guy who killed elephants in the name of science changed his mind and brought back the green.

I'm seriously interested in people shooting this down, because if that's the fix = then vegans are Nazis and the world will benefit from cheap meat.

...and almost never discussed: return to herd-based agriculture, to mimic the pre-human massive herds of herbivores that crossed the plains that are desertifying.

http://www.ted.com/talks/allan...

Watch it, and tell me you're not convinced.

Also, it's too bad telling the honest truth so often offends somebody, but they'll get over it. If you are the parent of a five year old, that five year old becomes morbidly obese, and there is no thyroid problem or other solid medical reason for that, you deserve to be tried and convicted of child abuse/child neglect. Destroy your own health all you like, as you are an adult and can make that choice just like you can choose to smoke, but to destroy your child's health from the start like that is just evil.

The problem is that in some parts of the US, it's REALLY hard to source affordable real food.
http://blog.ted.com/a-visit-to...
Watch the talk; the stats on obesity are quite disturbing... as is the fact that Finley was arrested and cited for growing vegetables (spoiler: he eventually fought back on that and won).

But this is a guy who's willing to go counter-culture and risk jail time to get real food to real people. Want to avoid jail and not sink all your time into sourcing your food? You may not have a choice but to buy growth hormone-infused meats and produce. Especially if you want something affordable.

I think what *really* needs to happen is that the FDA in the US needs to reclassify a bunch of stuff so that only real food can be sold as food in the US -- anything with growth hormones should be clearly labeled as such with a disclaimer "warning: consuming product can lead to obesity and diabetes." I bet this would go a long way towards cleaning up the problem.

Nick has given a number of talks about income inequality and has been challenging other rich business owners to make drastic changes. One of his TED Talks was controversial enough that it was not aired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick...

One of the TED talks was covering this subject - it was really a kind of eye opener for me
https://www.ted.com/talks/step...
Presenter argues that there are 4 basic stories about immortality, which get repeated across the ages, with slightly different color, but same underlying idea - and realizing that helps to put some distance into believing latest 'science magic'
1) Elixir - immortality of the body (Philospher Stone, Fountain of Youth, hormone teraphy, gene telomere therapy etc)
2) Ressurection - getting raised from dead (bible Apocalypse raise-from-dead at end of times if you are buried properly, being ressurected from cryogenic sleep by future scientists if frozen properly)
3) Soul - preserving mind/person even if body is gone (most religions afterlife/reincarnation, mind upload)
4) Legacy - preserving your ideas and/or genetics (having children, rising/teaching children, creating works of art, science discoveries, blowing yourself up to good of your village/country/religion etc)

In this case, parents just wanted to believe their 'scientific' version of ressurection fairy story. It is just more expensive and slightly more gruesome than lot more common rite of putting body into ground with priest chanting over it, so it can get ressurected by allmighty God at end of time. As long as child was properly circumcised in time. Or baptized. Or hasn't killed any puppy. Or was frozen to exactly proper temperature with right mix of chemicals.

Here's Rob Knight talking about the highlights of recent microbiome research. Amazing stuff.

How can you be so sure? This scenario could have been coded for. Software could have handled it better.

In this TED talk it's demonstrated how the software controlling a quadcopters could figure out an innovative new way to fly even with two of its propellers removed.

http://www.ted.com/talks/raffa...

I'm not sure a human operator could have done that.

This is a huge change from what the country was once like, when it had a robust middle class.

First of all, this is the norm among industrialized economies. Perhaps Norway is different. I haven't checked since the fracking boom.

Second, the thriving middle class was a fairly short lived affair, centered around three decades from 1950–1980. Most affluent societies have now returned to pre-1930s levels of economic inequality. Historically, an affluent middle class is the exception and not the norm.

I had a college roommate whose brawny younger brother dropped out of high school with few skills and somehow got a job with the CAW at a starting wage north of $70,000 per year, back in the early 1980s. He soon had a wife and children, a driveway filled with expensive motor toys, and cash-flow problems.

He was almost certainly employed at a factory making automotive products that discerning consumers—those of us lacking misty-eyed Big Three loyalty—did not wish to purchase.

Meanwhile, high school drop-outs trying to scrape by on non-union wages weren't necessarily doing much better than those same people today, a major difference being that the majority of those fantasy union jobs have now gone away.

Someone needs to get in a time travel booth to go back to the early 1970s to inform the CAW management group that no matter what course of action they chose, their business model (high union wages for semi-skilled labour) could not survive selling shit product. Marketing the hell out shit product was a short-term solution at best (Future Shop—ultimately—not excepted).

As much as the Reagan and Thatcher plutocrats initiated a self-serving destruction of the middle class, the middle class itself was hardly blameless.

Now it's time for the plutocrats to determine whether they can recognize how they are painting themselves into a non-viable corner before they encounter a messy corrective force of their own seeding.

Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming

What I'm hearing, for example from Carol Dweck, is that self-esteem is not a noble goal by itself. Certainly, we shouldn't be trashing people's efforts, as Microsoft discovered after they canceled Courier; at least, I'm guessing that's the client who called Dan Ariely (video) for help. (Text summary.) In general, good work is intrinsically rewarding. I'm sick of this culture of fake cheerfulness.

What I'm hearing, for example from Carol Dweck, is that self-esteem is not a noble goal by itself. Certainly, we shouldn't be trashing people's efforts, as Microsoft discovered after they canceled Courier; at least, I'm guessing that's the client who called Dan Ariely (video) for help. (Text summary.) In general, good work is intrinsically rewarding. I'm sick of this culture of fake cheerfulness.

http://www.ted.com/talks/thoma...

There's perfectly acceptable alternatives out there for £3.95, but he's just got to build his own for £1200. Looks like shit and works for 5 seconds, but he built it himself and that's what's important.

Look at http://www.ambri.com/technolog... American made. Cheap and effective. You do actually have some pretty smart people over there and they already have the solutions you need. The TED talk is here http://www.ted.com/talks/donal... I believe you might find that you are indeed at a most opportune moment in time for making a shift to renewable power and making a huge difference environmentally speaking

They're certainly interested eg. Rebecca Saxe. Yes, she explicitly says the pentagon has called her, though she says she's not returning the calls (see the first question asked at the end of this talk). I guess that's not where she is getting her funding.

TFA says "the microbiome can influence, and be influenced by, a range of characteristics such as weight, disease, diet, exercise, mood and much more." So they acknowledge the causation can go both ways.

But it gets even more interesting. According to a Ted talk I saw about this the other day, there are apparently two different ways that our gut microbes might cause obesity. One is related to what you said:

Which gets to part 2 of the problem: We shit stuff that is still quite nutritious. Ask your local fly population. Our "waste" is not just waste. There's quite a bit of stuff in there that could still be "digested".

From the Ted talk:

When we take the microbes from an obese mouse and transplant them into a genetically normal mouse that's been raised in a bubble with no microbes of its own, it becomes fatter than if it got them from a regular mouse. Why this happens is absolutely amazing, though. Sometimes what's going on is that the microbes are helping them digest food more efficiently from the same diet, so they're taking more energy from their food, but other times, the microbes are actually affecting their behavior. What they're doing is they're eating more than the normal mouse, so they only get fat if we let them eat as much as they want.

So apparently some microbes allow you to extract more energy from your food so you put on more weight for a given amount of calories. But other ones might affect your appetite somehow. There's more in the talk, and it's not just mice: there's research in humans as well.

http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_...

I think the point is that current results have never been predicted accurately in the past. Sure, it could all go horribly wrong this time, but just watch Hans Rosling's video and try to see how everyone is going to go backwards for the first time in a century. More efficient production makes more affordable product which makes for higher consumption which creates more jobs. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_... I keep seeing people are suspicious and concerned it's going wrong, but that's also explained in the video. Terror sells papers.

Point her to the Elon Musk TED talk. When asked how he did so many amazing things, one of his more insightful comments was he learned physics, and he learned how to approach things from the bottom up the way a physicist would. If you learn something at a fundamental level you can do amazing and new things. If you learn stuff, shallowly, from the top down, you often end up copying others which is both less amazing and less valuable.

Also has pretty good lessons for all the wanna be startup founders in Silicon Vally who are doing Uber of . . . or AirBNB of . . ., me too companies.

He also covers doing big, hard things for the benefit of humanity part pretty well.

Yes, lets go back to the caves and live like Noble Savages.

For another point of view, see this talk by David Deutsch from 2005. He rambles for a while (in an entertaining way) before getting to the point. Here's the ending:

So let me now apply this to a current controversy, not because I want to advocate any particular solution, but just to illustrate the kind of thing I mean. And the controversy is global warming. Now, I'm a physicist, but I'm not the right kind of physicist. In regard to global warming, I'm just a layman. And the rational thing for a layman to do is to take seriously the prevailing scientific theory. And according to that theory, it's already too late to avoid a disaster. Because if it's true that our best option at the moment is to prevent CO2 emissions with something like the Kyoto Protocol, with its constraints on economic activity and its enormous cost of hundreds of billions of dollars or whatever it is, then that is already a disaster by any reasonable measure. And the actions that are advocated are not even purported to solve the problem, merely to postpone it by a little. So it's already too late to avoid it, and it probably has been too late to avoid it ever since before anyone realized the danger. It was probably already too late in the 1970s, when the best available scientific theory was telling us that industrial emissions were about to precipitate a new ice age in which billions would die.

Now the lesson of that seems clear to me, and I don't know why it isn't informing public debate. It is that we can't always know. When we know of an impending disaster, and how to solve it at a cost less than the cost of the disaster itself, then there's not going to be much argument, really. But no precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. Hence, we need a stance of problem-fixing, not just problem-avoidance. And it's true that an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure, but that's only if we know what to prevent. If you've been punched on the nose, then the science of medicine does not consist of teaching you how to avoid punches. (Laughter) If medical science stopped seeking cures and concentrated on prevention only, then it would achieve very little of either.

The world is buzzing at the moment with plans to force reductions in gas emissions at all costs. It ought to be buzzing with plans to reduce the temperature, and with plans to live at the higher temperature -- and not at all costs, but efficiently and cheaply. And some such plans exist, things like swarms of mirrors in space to deflect the sunlight away, and encouraging aquatic organisms to eat more carbon dioxide. At the moment, these things are fringe research. They're not central to the human effort to face this problem, or problems in general. And with problems that we are not aware of yet, the ability to put right -- not the sheer good luck of avoiding indefinitely -- is our only hope, not just of solving problems, but of survival. So take two stone tablets, and carve on them. On one of them, carve: "Problems are soluble." And on the other one carve: "Problems are inevitable." Thank you. (Applause)

Why do you think the laws of physics don't allow it? In the words of David Deutsch "in a comprehensible universe, if something isn't forbidden by the laws of physics, then what could possibly prevent us from doing it, other than knowing how?"

How close are we to being able to have the kind of system you discuss in your TED talk on computing a theory of all knowledge, and how do you think we could use this kind of approach in practice to improve the reliability of information that people are reading on the web? How would you suggest it might be integrated within the current framework to provide possible utility outside of the Wolfram Alpha site itself, if at all?

Where does this leave people between the "kills old ones" phase and the "creating new industries" phase?

There's a term for this: Frictional unemployment. It also isn't a new thing.

But is this "dollar" in exchange rate terms or purchasing power terms? Without correction for purchasing power, the hump is further distorted by the Balassa-Samuelson effect: areas without a history of producing goods for export will have an artificially low cost of living.

He goes into that in further detail in some of his other TED talks, such as this one:

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

There's a few more as well (I'd have to go find the links.) But even in the situations you describe, so far the trend has been long term increase in both wealth AND welfare (e.g. physical health of the population)

Technology always has a funny way of creating new industries after it kills old ones.

Where does this leave people between the "kills old ones" phase and the "creating new industries" phase? The summary states that "the new jobs [...] will probably be so fundamentally different from anything that exists today that meaningful planning is almost impossible."

See this, starting at 4:30 and at least to 7:00.

I read the transcript. The income histogram has lost a sharp dip between $1/day and ~$30/day, shifting from Bactrian to dromedary, as more economies have begun developing. But is this "dollar" in exchange rate terms or purchasing power terms? Without correction for purchasing power, the hump is further distorted by the Balassa-Samuelson effect: areas without a history of producing goods for export will have an artificially low cost of living.

If we truly ran into an era where there was no need for jobs, then I think we'd reach a currency-free society similar to what Star Trek has. I don't think that will be the case though. Technology always has a funny way of creating new industries after it kills old ones.

Remember that 200 years ago, some 90% of the US population were all farmers. That wasn't exactly flowers and roses either.

Also we need to get out of this stupid mindset where everybody defines wealth by income.

See this, starting at 4:30 and at least to 7:00.

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

The middle class is going away

This is because you're making the very bad mistake of measuring middle class by money. Before I proceed, let's get something clear: MONEY IS NOT WEALTH. If you define class by wealth instead of income, the middle class is growing rather than shrinking.

Watch this (start about 4:30 in and watch to at least 7:00 in)

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

there will be only well-to-do and poor people in a few years...

Will there be a revolt then?

False, false, and false, I understand that it's the common talking point among socialists/liberals/communists (yes I know they aren't one and the same, but they all like to make the same argument here) that the middle class is dying and by making everything cheap, we're in a big giant race to the bottom. But that's a big fat lie.

Stop playing the Obama talking point game, and start paying attention to wealth rather than income. It paints a much different (and more accurate) story. Money does not equal happiness. What money buys often does however. While incomes have been declining, overall wealth has not, which is mainly a symptom of nice things becoming less expensive.

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

The middle class is going away

This is because you're making the very bad mistake of measuring middle class by money. Before I proceed, let's get something clear: MONEY IS NOT WEALTH. If you define class by wealth instead of income, the middle class is growing rather than shrinking.

Watch this (start about 4:30 in and watch to at least 7:00 in)

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

there will be only well-to-do and poor people in a few years...

Will there be a revolt then?

False, false, and false, I understand that it's the common talking point among socialists/liberals/communists (yes I know they aren't one and the same, but they all like to make the same argument here) that the middle class is dying and by making everything cheap, we're in a big giant race to the bottom. But that's a big fat lie.

Stop playing the Obama talking point game, and start paying attention to wealth rather than income. It paints a much different (and more accurate) story. Money does not equal happiness. What money buys often does however. While incomes have been declining, overall wealth has not, which is mainly a symptom of nice things becoming less expensive.

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

You are right that we need machine learning. It is possible that the class of learning algorithms invented in 2006, known as "deep learning", can do the job. See this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/jerem...

I certainly agree about including physical education, etc.

Perhaps we are the same generation. I am 58. I too have heard for a long time that we would have AI by now. But just because it has taken longer than expected does not mean that it is not coming. Curing cancer has taken far longer than we thought, but I hope we will eventually figure it out - perhaps in the next decade or two, since we now are able to virtual experiments by simulation and manipulate genes a million times more rapidly than we could a decade ago. So I think a cure for cancer is coming, and I think that AI is coming.

But I don't think that human-like AI is needed to write programs: I think that "deep learning" algorithms can do the job: they just need to be trained, and they need a human to guide it. I think that we will see programming teams disappear, replaced by a "learning system operator" of some type. That is probably a decade away, but my assessment of the potential of this class of algorithms, invented in 2006, is that they can write programs. Perhaps I am wrong. If I am right, then we already have the technology - it is just a matter of refining it and training those systems to write code based on descriptions of a problem - the same way that IBM's deep learning system learned to play jeopardy.

Your point is right however, that if we can replace programmers, we can replace a great many jobs. That is in fact the chief concern with these systems. Please see this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/jerem...

Considering that we've got folks putting up breadbox-sized surveillance satellites capable of taking almost Google Maps quality images, I imagine we could make extremely powerful 10lb surveillance sats:

https://www.ted.com/talks/will...

This guy really nees to watch
Erin MckEan's TED talk.

Basically she is part of the large movement to throw out this kind of stupidity.

Languages come in two types: Living and Dead. Dead languages have solid grammatical rules that must be obeyed. Living languages are in flux, constantly evolving. What this person did is NO different than a British person going through all of Wikipedia and replacing the word Humor with Humour or Favorite with Favourite.

Words and Grammar CHANGE. Enough people use the word AINT, it gets imported into the language.

Why? Because living languages are comprised of words and phrases that take their meaning from the common usage, not from a book. If people understand a meaning, that is the meaning.

There is no language police outlawing people, no punishment - except for public disapproval and opinion - for misuse. This guy is not the public and has no right to disapprove of how the public uses the language.

My head is literally exploding about this! Literally!

Languages come in two types: Living and Dead. Dead languages have solid grammatical rules that must be obeyed. Living languages are in flux, constantly evolving. What this person did is NO different than a British person going through all of Wikipedia and replacing the word Humor with Humour or Favorite with Favourite.

Words and Grammar CHANGE. Enough people use the word AINT, it gets imported into the language.

Why? Because living languages are comprised of words and phrases that take their meaning from the common usage, not from a book. If people understand a meaning, that is the meaning.

There is no language police outlawing people, no punishment - except for public disapproval and opinion - for misuse. This guy is not the public and has no right to disapprove of how the public uses the language.

Big business and the billionaire class has taken the difference and none of that has ended up in the workers hands. We are working longer and harder and our lives are getting worse.

"Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming"

I realize that the tradition is to no even RTFA, but there's a great TED talk on this technology.

There's a great ted talk by a real astronaut on the risks. 1 in 40 chance of dying, and why he still makes the flight:

Ted Talks

I think you're talking about angiogenisis. http://www.ted.com/talks/willi...

You're basically assuming that Chinese culture is (or at least "ought to be") the same as that of the West. Most of these workers are migrants. That means they work a lot of hours in a short time period and then go back home afterwards with the intention that they'll have made more working a few months at the factory than they would have made all year in their local farming community.

I recommend watching this:

https://www.ted.com/talks/lesl...

Really you aren't speaking for their best interests. You think you are, but you aren't. If you told all of them what you just said here, they'd probably think you're a self righteous stuck up bourgeois asshole.

If you believe that, then you should watch this.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_...

Easy thing to say when you aren't the guy working 16 hours without a break making over-priced iShinies.

Yet, if you actually ask factory workers in poor countries what they want, one of their biggest desires is for LONGER HOURS. Many of them are rural migrants, often women, separated from their spouses and children. Their focus is on making as much money as possible, in the shortest time, so they can go back to their home village. They are not interested in TVs in the break room, spacious dormitories, or other things that YOU may think are important. Stop projecting your values and priorities onto people that you know nothing about.

Instead of looking at factory workers as unthinking drones, that need first-world do-gooders to decide what is best for them, perhaps you should consider what they have to say, about their own lives:

Do campaigns for “ethical supply chains” help workers?
The voices of China's workers

Before any uninformed comments start blossoming... mandatory reading about the chinese migrants workers: 'Factory Girls' by Leslie T. Chang.

She also gave a great TED speech, The voice of Chinese Factory Workers' , which is a nice introduction to her book.

These jobs represent an exit for most of these workers, the opportunity to build their life as they wish - or try. Like anywhere.

This is an excellent TED Talk about this very topic.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_...

Education policy is not the domain of those who understand education - it's decided by politicians at nearly every level. Everything from what will be taught, to the books we use, to the structure of classes and rating systems meant to produce specific results without any real understanding of how those results are achieved or the real impact of them. They also can't make radical leaps - anything that might fail would result in losing their position, so they stick to minor modifications to existing systems - so there's no disruptive changes possible, as per Ken Robinson[1].

All that while fighting through often biased or partisan processes that result in, for example, including religion and denouncing evolution in Texas schoolbooks. In fact, you can say that government run institutions are process-driven more than anything else.

On the other hand, businesses are results driven. A business that does not produce product will shortly cease to be a business. That mechanism lends itself well to tackling any problem, even if it often discards moral or ethical considerations as not being part of the problem scope. So while their primary focus is of course, profits rather than education, when education is a requirement for profits, they're both well situated and motivated to provide that.

They can even take risks, with the knowledge that success will reward them many times over. So new styles of education are realistically evaluated and considered.

That's the nice part about capitalism. We can rely on human greed and ingenuity to produce almost any result, so long as we're able to figure out how to make it a requirement for fiscal success, whereas the political systems are motivated to not take chances and not to rock the boat, while at the same time claiming to be a boat-rocker.

So yeah, there's some PR gain in there for those companies, but that's just icing on the cake compared to their main benefit from supporting or redefining education.

[1] - See http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_k... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r...
              for some interesting thoughts on disrupting the existing educational systems.

Education policy is not the domain of those who understand education - it's decided by politicians at nearly every level. Everything from what will be taught, to the books we use, to the structure of classes and rating systems meant to produce specific results without any real understanding of how those results are achieved or the real impact of them. They also can't make radical leaps - anything that might fail would result in losing their position, so they stick to minor modifications to existing systems - so there's no disruptive changes possible, as per Ken Robinson[1].

All that while fighting through often biased or partisan processes that result in, for example, including religion and denouncing evolution in Texas schoolbooks. In fact, you can say that government run institutions are process-driven more than anything else.

On the other hand, businesses are results driven. A business that does not produce product will shortly cease to be a business. That mechanism lends itself well to tackling any problem, even if it often discards moral or ethical considerations as not being part of the problem scope. So while their primary focus is of course, profits rather than education, when education is a requirement for profits, they're both well situated and motivated to provide that.

They can even take risks, with the knowledge that success will reward them many times over. So new styles of education are realistically evaluated and considered.

That's the nice part about capitalism. We can rely on human greed and ingenuity to produce almost any result, so long as we're able to figure out how to make it a requirement for fiscal success, whereas the political systems are motivated to not take chances and not to rock the boat, while at the same time claiming to be a boat-rocker.

So yeah, there's some PR gain in there for those companies, but that's just icing on the cake compared to their main benefit from supporting or redefining education.

[1] - See http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_k... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r...
              for some interesting thoughts on disrupting the existing educational systems.

Education policy is not the domain of those who understand education - it's decided by politicians at nearly every level. Everything from what will be taught, to the books we use, to the structure of classes and rating systems meant to produce specific results without any real understanding of how those results are achieved or the real impact of them. They also can't make radical leaps - anything that might fail would result in losing their position, so they stick to minor modifications to existing systems - so there's no disruptive changes possible, as per Ken Robinson[1].

All that while fighting through often biased or partisan processes that result in, for example, including religion and denouncing evolution in Texas schoolbooks. In fact, you can say that government run institutions are process-driven more than anything else.

On the other hand, businesses are results driven. A business that does not produce product will shortly cease to be a business. That mechanism lends itself well to tackling any problem, even if it often discards moral or ethical considerations as not being part of the problem scope. So while their primary focus is of course, profits rather than education, when education is a requirement for profits, they're both well situated and motivated to provide that.

They can even take risks, with the knowledge that success will reward them many times over. So new styles of education are realistically evaluated and considered.

That's the nice part about capitalism. We can rely on human greed and ingenuity to produce almost any result, so long as we're able to figure out how to make it a requirement for fiscal success, whereas the political systems are motivated to not take chances and not to rock the boat, while at the same time claiming to be a boat-rocker.

So yeah, there's some PR gain in there for those companies, but that's just icing on the cake compared to their main benefit from supporting or redefining education.

[1] - See http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_k... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r...
              for some interesting thoughts on disrupting the existing educational systems.

Education policy is not the domain of those who understand education - it's decided by politicians at nearly every level. Everything from what will be taught, to the books we use, to the structure of classes and rating systems meant to produce specific results without any real understanding of how those results are achieved or the real impact of them. They also can't make radical leaps - anything that might fail would result in losing their position, so they stick to minor modifications to existing systems - so there's no disruptive changes possible, as per Ken Robinson[1].

All that while fighting through often biased or partisan processes that result in, for example, including religion and denouncing evolution in Texas schoolbooks. In fact, you can say that government run institutions are process-driven more than anything else.

On the other hand, businesses are results driven. A business that does not produce product will shortly cease to be a business. That mechanism lends itself well to tackling any problem, even if it often discards moral or ethical considerations as not being part of the problem scope. So while their primary focus is of course, profits rather than education, when education is a requirement for profits, they're both well situated and motivated to provide that.

They can even take risks, with the knowledge that success will reward them many times over. So new styles of education are realistically evaluated and considered.

That's the nice part about capitalism. We can rely on human greed and ingenuity to produce almost any result, so long as we're able to figure out how to make it a requirement for fiscal success, whereas the political systems are motivated to not take chances and not to rock the boat, while at the same time claiming to be a boat-rocker.

So yeah, there's some PR gain in there for those companies, but that's just icing on the cake compared to their main benefit from supporting or redefining education.

[1] - See http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_k... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r... ,
                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_r...
              for some interesting thoughts on disrupting the existing educational systems.

Buses do nothing when they're stuck in the same traffic everyone else is.

I would take exception to this!

1) Time spent on a bus is time not spent concentrating on traffic. Relax, read a book, maybe do some work.

2) Every person on a bus is a car not on the road, and that results in sharply lighter traffic.

I honestly have no idea why buses aren't free. Putting a bit of economics behind the problem can make a dramatic difference, even eliminating traffic jams completely.

...not just problem avoidance" — David Deutsch

Legendary scientist David Deutsch puts theoretical physics on the back burner to discuss a more urgent matter: the survival of our species. The first step toward solving global warming, he says, is to admit that we have a problem.

http://www.ted.com/talks/david...

'cept rabbits can eat stuff you can't. Straw for example.

Similar to why some areas in the world really do have to raise cattle or goats. There's nothing else that will grow there a human can eat. (then there's http://www.ted.com/talks/allan...)

Bill Gates' TED talk "Innovating to Zero" is a great talk on this subject.