TED Community » Ian Barrett

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Beauty, fairness, art and the human mind

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• TEDCred score: +0.30 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: Is neural activity truly the basis for thoughts, feelings, and perceptions?

  Jan 11 2012: We probably don't know enough to say we really know ... on another tangent are we our thoughts and feelings or are they responses that manifest
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  A comment on Conversation: Should public schools in the United States eliminate the traditional A to F grading scale? And if so, what assessment do we replace it with?

  Jan 11 2012: I guess it depends on what or who such letter grades serve ... for potential employees it is a unidimensional way to measure you against the herd in terms of perceived academic excellence ... it could just as well reflect an ability to cram for exams successfully, show that you have a great mind, prove you are a able to cheat sneakily, that you have mastered great exam technique or that you are an erudite scholar.
  
  It does not necessarily indicate you have a grasp on the fundamentals of the various topics.
  
  Our education system has the hidden curriculum and message that says if you get good marks you will be a success and get a good job etc.
  
  There are so many aspects of intelligence ... the ability to apply learning, to adapt it, to communicate it and to synergise with other disciplines ....
  
  Our world is too obsessed with how athletic, beautiful, rich, connected we are rather than shifting to a different paradigm where we value each other in the total honesty and effort we put int o living together in harmony ..
  
  That is the real "win win" that educatio has to work on ... not just rote learing but teaching kids how to think and also how to act ethically.
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  A comment on Conversation: We can all be heros! We share many of the same insecurities and fears, so why do some people take action while others continue to look away?

  Jan 11 2012: Sounds like the David Bowie song ... in some cases I can be a hero but if I stop to think too long and engage at an intellectual level rather out of compassion I can talk myself out of it.
  There are all sorts of heroes including those who will take time to be with someone that "normal" society often shuns, acts of selfless kindness, acts that cost us something and acts that require danger to our physical or mental well being ....
  
  And a person can be a hero one day and the next walk right on by ...
  
  Findamentally for me at the heart is the ability to step outside my own narrow constraints, bias and self serving mentality to seek the diminution of suffering for another ... it could be as simple as supporting a person's argument or aspect of it where others are shouting it down.
  
  The more we engage with the right of us all to express ourselves so long as we do not deliberate harm the more we become a community of heroes ...
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  A comment on Conversation: If you could learn 1 thing from a child what would it be ?

  Jan 11 2012: To constantly be in the present moment of wonder ... this constant moment is all we ever live in / are conscious in but the world infects us / affects us and we become self absorbed, self conscious, dissatisfied and anxious.
  
  I don't want the "childish" baggage that kids sometimes exhibit but the "childlike" sense of wonder and immediacy is a gift we lose too soon.
  
  In losing the sense of wonder to self absorbtion is why the world is in a fine state ... greed and narrowness are the enemy