TED Community » Augustus Yuan

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• +2

  A comment on Talk: Frank Warren: Half a million secrets

  Apr 11 2012: I always get goosebumps at the end of a good speech when I hear the applause and I see the audience begin to stand, one by one, and clap their hearts out because the way look at life was changed that day.
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  A comment on Talk: Drew Berry: Animations of unseeable biology

  Jan 14 2012: I'm terrible at biology but I have to say this was a phenomenal representation of DNA and I really hope things like these will eventually reach schools. It really DOES help a lot of people who are visual learners at learning how our bodies are working at the molecular scale.
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  A comment on Conversation: In your opinion, what should the purpose of education be?

  Dec 28 2011: Well I believe education should be focused on bettering ourselves and our own interests. We should have more classes that focus on asking "What would you like to learn today?" rather than saying "Here is what we are learning today." As Ken Robinson said in his speech, our education system teaches us subjects like Mathematics, Science, etc because it assumes these are general necessities for everyday life but this is not necessarily the case. If an artist wants to learn about art, he/she should be able to learn art and if a dancer wants to learn more about dance, he/she should be able to learn dance. People don't really get the opportunity to learn what they REALLY want until maybe college -- in both middle school and high school you have requisite classes you MUST complete and high school has become more of a pass by in our lives that serves as, rather than an educational experience, our transcript for getting into a college we want -- and even college has its limitations with class sizes being too full, pre-requisite classes to take a certain class, etc.
  
  The main problem with this form of learning is that it is heavily dependent on the student. In our current education system, we simply feed people knowledge that society has deemed "important" or "necessary." In this idealistic world, the student will have to know what he/she wants to learn and in a lot of cases, people don't know what they want to learn or what they want to do. It requires a lot of self-motivation and self-discovery because people can and should be able to always change what they want to learn, what they want to be, etc. Of course, this skepticism should be saved for the "how" conversation you mentioned.

• A comment on Conversation: Let us change the world by using TED to crowd source an idea.

  Dec 27 2011: I also share a large passion for TED and I think one of our main steps should be spreading TED. A lot of people know about it, that's for sure, but then again a lot of people don't. I was actually in a public speaking class and my TA, who previously taught at a different college for public speaking, never even heard of TED which surprised me because TED is a wonderful resource for not only sharing and learning new ideas, but also watching and listening to phenomenal speeches. Perhaps our first step should be organizing more (independent) TEDx events around the world. The TED conferences sound amazing, and I hope to be able to attend one within my lifetime, but it's not affordable for everyone.
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  A comment on Talk: Alberto Cairo: There are no scraps of men

  Dec 27 2011: This is such a moving story... Definitely added to one of my favorites.

• A comment on Talk: Homaro Cantu + Ben Roche: Cooking as alchemy

  Dec 19 2011: This is so cool! Tricking the mind into thinking you are tasting a food that actually isn't. Like they said, they might well redefine food as we know it! However, I do have a question... for newer generations who don't know what tuna tastes like, when they taste it, will they really taste tuna? I mean if someone has never tasted tuna before, how could the mind trick you o_O? Nevertheless, I think this approach definitely has a lot of promises.

• A comment on Conversation: Why isn't TED also a Television station? Couldn't it either make a lot of money, or support a lot of wishes?

  Dec 15 2011: I totally agree with this! Wonderful idea :) The only problem is I would likely have a hard time doing anything else because I find myself, even with just the computer, glued to good TED Talks, and once I start listening I can't stop.
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  A comment on Conversation: If you could trade lives for 24 hours; who would you trade with? Why?

  Dec 15 2011: I would want to live as someone suffering in a third world country so that I can understand the heart of their problems, what needs to be fixed, and what I believe can be done. I feel that there are a lot of things that we do not know and by doing so, I could bring a change to many lives.

• A comment on Talk: Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration

  Dec 12 2011: I've been looking for a website like this forever. Truly ingenious and to think when I learned about reCAPTCHA in my Informatics class, I was already blown away. Really well done.

• A comment on Talk: Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter ...

  Dec 11 2011: I have a completely new outlook on what poetry is. Thank you Sarah Kay. You are truly an inspiration.