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TED Wants To Remind Us That Ideas -- Not Politicians -- Shape the Future (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: Amid global political upheavals, TED curator Chris Anderson argues that ideas have never mattered more. "Ideas changes how people act and [shape] their long term perspective," he said in during a April 17 press briefing. "Politicians come and go and ideas are forever." He said TED -- two segments of which will be broadcast live in movie theaters this year -- wants to re-introduce civility into political discourse. "We want to avoid the zero sum game we see on cable television every day," said Anderson, noting that TED is a non-partisan organization and has historically featured controversial and intriguing thinkers from both sides of the political divide. In place of the shrill, headline-bait tenor of political spectacles, TED wants to take viewers to a place of "reasoned discourse" where big ideas can act as a bridge between opposing views. By creating an eclectic program -- including an entire session delivered in Spanish and another on artificial intelligence -- Anderson said he wants to steer the conversation away from government and politics. "With so much focus in politics, the world is in danger of forgetting that so much of what really changes the future happens outside completely of politics. It happens inside the mind of dreamers, designers, inventors, technologists, entrepreneurs," he said.
"It happens inside the mind of dreamers, designers, inventors, technologists, entrepreneurs," and meee.
TED is fucking overrated. Pablum.
TED's been posting some hopelessly feminist content lately, and they know it, too, because they've disabled ratings and comments on those vids. They're also abusing the DMCA to shut down criticism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The DMCA-censored vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And an update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The staff at ted might like lofty ideals but they are to be consumed not discussed - Bearing an Australian youtuber and others have been dmca'ed and Ted lost the fair use test.
To call them communicators is a paradox when they censor too.
Freedom?
Individual and Inalienable rights?
Personal Responsibility?
Limited Government?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
"Do you mean that dialogue and not violence is a better way to solve problems? Most intelligent people know this."
Actually, dialogue is the ideal way to solve problems. However, you need to have two parties willing to talk and compromise. When one or both parties are unwilling to compromise violence is likely inevitable. Most intelligent people understand this.
There has been an ongoing debate in history comparing the macroscopic idea of history and the "Great Man" idea of history.
From a macroscopic level, things like the industrial revolution (or more specifically, things like the invention of the Spinning Jenny) made societal changes inevitable. It was only a matter of time before the Monarchies feel in Europe. It could have been earlier or later by a few decades or centuries, but it was inevidible.
From the "Great Man" level... it's hard to imagine if Nepolian didn't exist that "meh, somebody else would have conquered Europe."
It's hard to accept the assertion that politicians have no impact and it is only ideas. Can anybody honestly say, "If George Washington had decided to become King of the fledgling United States, to the applause and approbation of all his contemporaries, the United States would absolutely still have become a republic?"
You should try TEDx, it's a bold new direction for their brand.
The format is a bit different. Instead of curating the speakers, they just rent a room with a microphone and send a guy with a gopro there. Said guy then records every homeless person who thinks they have something intelligent to speak about getting up on stage for their 15 minutes of fame.
Gopro guy then emails the raw video to someone at TEDhq who edits "Why farts are oppressing my gender" into Youtube gold.
Well, that's true.
However, for the most part, the party/ideology from the left in the US that promotes itself as the party of diversity and tolerance, is ONLY tolerant of viewpoints they hold and not only will put you down for what you think (overusing terms like racist, etc) but will try to actively prevent you espousing your viewpoints at all in public (see recent colleges shutting down speakers coming to campus).
How can you have a dialog, when one side tries to actually prevent any opposing views from being presented at all?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I would really like to see someone reply to this with a realistic solution. I don't have an answer to that problem and the only response I seem to be hearing is "Their (read: republicans) viewpoints aren't reasonable or worthy of consideration", which shuts down any kind of dialogue before it starts.
An idea which is reshaping the entire Muslim world for the worse and the Muslim communities in Europe with it. Of course not, he thinks social progressiveness is the only way forward as long as white politicians just get out of the way and open the borders.
TED, where PC morons spew pseudo-intellectual bullshit at other PC morons and where they present mundane, pie in the sky and just plain ridiculous technology as revolutionary.
However, for the most part, the party/ideology from the left in the US that promotes itself as the party of diversity and tolerance, is ONLY tolerant of viewpoints they hold and not only will put you down for what you think
Ah, the old intolerance of intolerance argument. The paradox of tolerance is that if society is tolerant of intolerance, you ultimately allow that intolerance to destroy tolerance in that society. Ultimately tolerance is useless without the right to not tolerate the intolerant. (you might need more than two hands to count the double negatives there)
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Those links expose TED as censor-happy authoritarians, who (despite their "Ideas Worth Spreading" slogan) abuse the DMCA to prevent fair use of their content for criticism. The claims in the summary of TED being a "non-partisan organization" and wanting to "steer the conversation away from government and politics" are laughable, given TED's repeated attempts to suppress dissent.
They do not want to start a "civil" conversation or "reasoned discourse" or a "bridge between opposing views" or any of the sounds-good buzzword BS rattled off in the summary; they want start a monologue of approved ideas while everyone else (especially wrongthinkers) has to shut up and unquestionably accept what they're hearing.
TEDxx
Hosted by The Most Interesting Man in the World? "I don't always give talks, but when I do, it's at TED Dos Equis."
We'll leave TEDxxx for the obvious porn parody that someone will eventually make of these shows.
I'd be surprised if Japan hasn't done this already. I'm just not sure whether it will be of the "unstoppable public speaker" or "crowd of couples" genre.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...is that the first thing people want to do with them - especially in the TED crowd - is use politics to force them on everyone.
And some of the ideas actually are good - for certain people in certain situations. The problem with using politics is that you're applying these ideas to everyone, by force. This usually results in an overall net negative impact.
We live in a world of incredibly diverse values, beliefs, and practices. Much of the goodness or badness in these areas is fairly subjective. For example, some people prefer more leisurely lifestyles and others value high productivity. Some people want to work and function in highly communal environments, and others are more individualistic. None of these things are wrong, but when you start building strict sets of societal rules around them then you create strong and completely unnecessary conflict.
There are less subjective areas that involve hard science and scientific experimentation, but these are relatively rare and usually uncontroversial. There are also plenty of ideas labeled as "science" that do not involve the scientific method; these tend to be extremely controversial and because the "science" label is misapplied their proponents tend to be very quick to pull out the political guns.
In any case, we also live in a world where far too many people want to force their beliefs and lifestyles on everyone else. The political left and right are fairly equally guilty of this - the left from an economic standpoint, and the right from a religious standpoint, and both from an overall values standpoint. It's deeply sad that virtually none of these people are capable of saying "Hey, it's OK that you're different - go be your crazy-ass self over there and as long as you're not in my face about it then we'll ignore each other and everything is fine." But instead, they demand strict enforcement. These days the left demands that we memorize sixty new gender pronouns a week, and the right loses their shit if you don't say "Merry Christmas."
We don't need 50 new TEDxasfaz talks a week. We need a planet full of people to chill the fuck out.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Well, for the most part (of course there are always exceptions), I don't see those on the right, have protests that turn violent against the counter protesters, etc. Again..IN GENERAL.
I don't see the right trying to actually shutdown or prevent talks by left leaning speakers at town halls or colleges especially.
Yes, both are opposed to the other, however, I don't see the folks on the right trying to actively suppress the liberal views being presented in public. They may disagree with them, but they don't riot outside the hall where the speaker is supposed to talk and actively try to intimidate the leftist audience or prevent the speech even being given.
This is something that has been happening with greater frequency in the past few years.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Politicians come and go and ideas are forever.
The problem is that while politicians may go, the bureaucracy they create does not. That essentially lasts forever, and has a great impact on what ideas are possible, if for no other reason than it drains funds form making some other idea possible.
Rather than term limits we need the concept of department limits, where each arm of a large bureaucracy must be voted to continue every ten years or so after justifying what it has done.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ideas are great, but in a representative system ("government") CHANGE only comes when people imbued with sufficient power make the effort to evolve an idea into policy. Even if today's politicians/leaders don't like an idea and get removed from office, someone is going to have to take a leadership position to make changes to the official way things are done.
"With so much focus in politics, the world is in danger of forgetting that so much of what really changes the future happens outside completely of politics. It happens inside the mind of dreamers, designers, inventors, technologists, entrepreneurs,"
No. Your personal interpretation and your world view change *internally* with ideas. How you and others are physically affected relies on what "ideas" politicians have and put forth as policy. Politics, however fatiguing, is not unimportant.
I'm all for protest but you are missing the context and what some of those bills are outlawing. Namely BLOCKING A HIGHWAY. Is your pet protest more important than the people that lose their job because they couldn't get to work? Or the emergency response team that was delayed because muh protest? Should you be liable because some protestor walked out in front of your car AT NIGHT on a highway when you going high way speeds? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
All of those are in repose to the violence and extreme actions of "protestors" lately. I don't like limiting protest but holy shit do I understand why States are doing it.