TEDGlobal - Day One

This is your brain.

This is your East-bound five-hour jetlagged brain on TED Global!

OK, very brief, inadequate summary of Day One. 

Richard Dawkins, admonished by Chris Anderson to stay away from the kind of religious comments that both electrified and polarized TED two years ago, gave a perspective-grounding talk on our lives in "middle world," in which our brains have evolved to view anything too small, too large or too fast for it to perceive/comprehend as "queer."  The universe, however, is "queerer than we can suppose."  Quotable line, "drink a glass of water and you will undoubtedly consume one molecule that passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell."  Later, Richard did manage to make a comment on religion.  Good for him.

Steve Levitt presented the material from his New York Times Magazine article of last Sunday on children's car seats.

Seth Godin made the most of his three-minute TEDster presentation.  His focus: storytelling and its side-effects.  Although we've become experts at telling stories, we only tell them incompletely, leaving out the darker parts.  His admonition: tell the whole story.  His questions: 1) what are you working on?; 2) what's the story you're going to tell.  NB - he did not use the words "lie" or "liar" once.

Jacqueline Novogratz spoke on the need for developed countries to go beyond aid to developing, "sustainable, scalable systems" in poor countries.  Great story about connectivity: she gave away a sweater (after developing breasts, you had to be there!) and seven years later jogging in Kigali, Rwanda and seeing a boy wearing that very sweater.  I wanted to ask her a question about Edward de Bono's recent comment that we help the people of poor countries to learn to think creatively rather than simply giving them aid.  My question: what kind of thinking does she believe holds people in poor countries back, and how would she suggest helping them learn new thinking skills?

Ashraf Ghani then spoke about the need to mobilize capitals (plural intended) for state-building.  A courageous veteran of Afghanistan's thirty-plus years of military, political and religious conflict, Ghani's claim is that despite capitalism's and democracy's dominance on the world stage, most of the global population has not felt their effects.  For most, capitalism = extractive industries.  Living in one world, not three, demands inclusion of the huge pockets of population that are currently excluded.  This will require a substantial infusion of seven types of capital: physical, institutional, human, social, financial, security and infrastructure.  With $1 of investment equalling $20 of aid, the consequences could be extraordinary.  Major problem: corruption.  Fighting this scourge will require changes of assumptions ("oh, that's just how they are"), tax laws ("put the consequences of extractive policies on the books"), and simplification ("burearcracies are evil" - well, not his quote exactly, but my note!)  The best models, in his estimation, for these kinds of simplifications, are large global corporations.

Juan Enriquez previewed ideas for an upcoming book that looks like a blockbuster.  The books central question: why do successful countries fall apart?  Guess who's in the crosshairs on this one?  Chronicalling the history of the decline of great countries and empires, Enriquez makes the case that the stable borders, flags and anthems we take for granted today are merely vulnerable myths.  He asks the provocative question: how many stars will the US flag have in 50 years?  His answers range from 45 to 55 with credible logic for either extreme.  Key point: the gap today between promise and reality determines a country's fate 50 from now.  Houston, we have a problem.  (What will happen to Texas will apparently be a theme in the book.)

Hans Ulrich Obrist spoke about the future of the museum in ways that were fundamentally incomprehensible to me.  I'm sure there were brilliant ideas there.  I simply couldn't understand them.

Irshad Manji, an openly lesbian Canadian Muslim, spoke of changing Islam from the inside.  The biggest problem todayh in Islam (or any religion): "literalism."  Islam, she pointed out, has a lost tradition of inquiry, "ishtihad," which it needs to recover.  She publicly showed a video interview of the Gaza head of Islamic Jihad, in which she asked the question, "where in the Koran is it suggested that you can take your own life and have that be called martyrdom."  The gentleman equivocated and squirmed for 25 edited minutes before producing a half-baked answer.  But, does it matter?  This meme, Koran-based or no, is now wildly alive in the Muslim world, and it seems to me that putting this genie back in the bottle will take more than a scripture quiz.

The remarkable David Deutsch spoke next.  Wow.  A brilliant Oxford physicist, Deutsch presented two "known truths": 1) Earth, the solar system, our galaxy, is uniquely suited to sustain our evolution and survival; outside of this area, the universe is implicitly hostile (this is the "spaceship Earth" notion); and, contradictingly, 2) humans are not the hub of existence in the universe, but, according to Hawking's characterization, chemical scum on a typical planet, in a typical galaxy, etc.

Wrong on both counts, says Deutsch.

First, typical?  No.  Look around and we don't see other places like this at all.  Everything around is is dark, cold and empty.  We create knowledge of physical structures unlike ourselves, which does make us a hub.  (If any of this sounds dumb, it is, I assure you, my reporting, not his thinking).  We have, in our neighborhood, a concentration of matter, energy and evidence (wanna prove gravity exists? hang around, something will fall).  Everywhere else: cold, dark, empty;  remember?

But, here's the kicker, those terms are only defined from our point of view!  Thank you, Heideggerian conceptualization of consciousness!  Like Dawkins said, above, it's all relative to our own "middle world" perspective. 

The big kicker here was his idea about global warming.  He starts by saying, "hey, I'm no expert, but..."; this means, hold your wallets, folks.  It's already too late to do anything about this in terms of current knowledge (it was probably already too late before we even knew we had a problem; say mid 70s.)  So, stop trying to prevent warming and start trying to develop knowledge of how to fix warming.  Ah, Grasshopper, there are two tablets, he told us (OK, without the Grasshopper part): 1) problems are solvable; 2) problems are inevitable.  Put it right, don't waste time doing penance. 

A big idea talk to close Day One, for sure.

See ya tomorrow.

TEDGlobal

Comments

[Michael]

Tom, so glad you are there to report! Thanks for the effort. I can imagine being too weary to post a blog report like this. Thank you bringing us up to date - grateful in Iowa, Michael

[Connie Sartain]

Enriquez's theme sounds similar to Jared Diamond's Collapse...speaking of doing well. Congrats on being there and awake.

[Vera]

Anyone know how I can say hello to CONNIE SARTAIN? :-D