TED Community » Yale Wang

More About Me

I'm passionate about

The environment, communication on societal issues, and generally spreading the word in a collaborative atmosphere.

An idea worth spreading

We live in a world where tensions meet demands, and influential actions or decisions are a click of a mouse away. Perhaps discussion and dialectic an excellent venue for coming to terms with current societal issues, the beginning of doing something to implement a solution. Often, both sides of a conflict desire the same thing, but cannot arrive at their common solution owing to their perpetual conflict situation. Philosophical inquiry may open the door to open-mindedness, which is only the first step at fixing these issues. Every change begins with the individual, and every solution must incorporate those who are causing the problem.

Talk to me about

Global warming solutions, human dynamics, and being a productive member of society.

People don't know that I'm good at

Beatboxing on the flute in jazz chords and rhythms - maybe I'll learn to dubstep at the same time!

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.40 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: What makes cancer cure so elusive?

  Apr 5 2012: Cancer cells always exist in a human body, and our natural ability to fight cancer is part of the immune system, compromised by such things as carcinogens, sleep deprivation, etc. We hear about new advances almost every week, yet most don't get any press attention because they are always preliminary. Asprin, for example, was recently found to have anti-cancer properties, but doctors do not recommend taking Asprin just to lower your cancer risk! There are also drugs available, derived from such plants as the vinca seed (leukemia) and the yew tree (a compound that reduces most cancers), that are being incorporated into regimens such as chemotherapy. Yet most of those treatments have horrible side effects.
  
  There are many theories concerning the origins of cancer. These include glycolysis of oxygen-deprived cells through the Warburg effect, the trophoblast, rising incidence related to better healthcare and more old-age diseases due to higher life expectancy, processes related to stem cells, viral mechanisms, bodily energy, and a natural consequence of aging and teleromeres, seeing that 1/5 of people who die from natural causes do so from cancer. There are both genetic and environmental factors, as well as random ones, and the process of hormesis such that people who are routinely exposed to low radiation levels, for examples, suffer less severe health effects over time.
  
  There are potentially many venues of research, but it has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry focused largely on the promotion of pharmaceuticals often carrying deleterious toxic compounds. Attacking just the cancer and not the rest of the body is typically highly inefficient. This of course has led to accusations of profit-mongering and a charge by often-discredited natropathic 'experts' that big agencies are covering up natural cures that are already capable of curing cancer--nothing has been proven for certain.

• A reply on Conversation: The place to start a real conversation is with oneself. This is the voice the voice that has been squelched, most often from birth onward.

  Apr 5 2012: Self-understanding, self-actualization, self-concept in the midst of others, whatever you want to call it and the process. Some people describe it as a spiritual experience, others deep contemplation.
  
  By the way, here's the question I referred to: http://www.ted.com/conversations/10535/a_discussion_style_school_club.html
  
  And I agree, we all have that inner voice that we at all times push away from influencing our daily lives, a call to philosophy that is also ignored. We are experts at silencing and oppressing that voice whenever we try to help us through that voice embodying ourselves, fearing the irrelevance.

• A reply on Conversation: Is it valid to forefend anything that will not submit to examination by the scientific method?

  Apr 5 2012: Well, science is the study of human representations of nature through theories, paradigms, axioms, generalizations, quantum processes, energy conversions and models, refined by experiments and theoretical analyses, not necessarily the direct study of nature itself. We cannot even explain things-in-themselves: we can for example describe how an atom is composed, how its particles interact with one another and its physical properties, but can never say what an atom, or subatomic particle, actually IS. That's called the noumenon problem.
  
  Again, it depends on how you define reality, and where reality's boundaries lie--but if reality can have boundaries, does that mean reality is itself only limitedly real? It really stretches the mind, which by the way is perhaps our brain's representation for itself, unless material definitions are somehow incomplete. There are many things or entities that are hard to define--for example, how would you explain the material reality of ideas, time and space, or the mere absence of matter and energy--is this absence real, can it be quantified, or does reality stop when reality's constituents are missing? The realm of absolute concepts can also be confusing to the materialist. In fact God is one of these concepts, an absolute entity accessed or established by the human mind, which in turn is a self-referential manifestation of itself.
  
  Interesting.

• A comment on Conversation: The place to start a real conversation is with oneself. This is the voice the voice that has been squelched, most often from birth onward.

  Apr 4 2012: Introversion, when done properly, leads to extroversion. We really do need a lot more open discussion, since everyone is closed. Also check out my other question in this forum.

• A comment on Conversation: Should high school football be cut out of every high school, or still be offered to students?

  Apr 4 2012: I'm from a school where we don't have a football team, but we do have rugby, which is often far more violent and competitive.
  
  Sport is risk. Embrace it.
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  A comment on Conversation: Education: Is it truly a level playing ground for all who have access to it?

  Apr 4 2012: I'm just upset that "designing ideas/solutions for the betterment of society" is not a part of the standard educational curriculum, considering that we now have so many issues beyond the realm of what humanity has ever seen and the students are perhaps the best-equipped to deal with these issues!
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  A comment on Conversation: Is it valid to forefend anything that will not submit to examination by the scientific method?

  Apr 4 2012: It depends on how you define existence and what science is able to address through experimentation. You can't experiment using ideas such as God, for example. Perhaps human conscious experience will yield some new leads, but that isn't allowed under the sphere of materialism, and invokes subjectivity.
  
  “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
  --Nikola Tesla

• A comment on Conversation: Is modern society's prescription for status and a successful life, even by TED standards, valid?

  Apr 4 2012: More philosophical debate is not only beneficial, but necessary.

• A comment on Conversation: To use every bit of land that is fertile and use the food as to barter for In example: oil,cars,anything of value that our country needs.

  Apr 4 2012: Of course, vast tracts of land need irrigation. Just look at Nebraska, where mile-wide perfect circles of irrigation zones and one-radian angles sweep across areas, likely using fossil water from the Ogallala Aquifer. Other projects like energy (and sadly, biofuels from corn) require land space. Maybe the issue is not occupying all the land with agricultural, but updating our agricultural methods to include permaculture, hydroponics, vertical farming etc. Low-impact or zero impact farming, alongside non-monoculture and non-GE/GM plantations would help too, especially for simultaneous food crop and cash crop production. First World countries typically produce less agricultural product as a fraction of its total GDP than do developing countries, because developed countries tend to be more service-sector oriented. A great paradox is that the high-agricultural producing countries often have less access to food as money is needed to buy everything, and famines in huge proportions are typically preventable, though some are caused by adverse weather. The American Breadbasket is now under threat from global warming. What we need is better farming methods, otherwise it's unlikely we'll be able to feed more billions of people as the population grows under the stress of reduced arable land (from development and environmental factors) in the coming few decades.
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  A comment on Conversation: Are grownup bullies teaching kids how to bully?

  Apr 4 2012: It's human nature. More legislation will solve nothing. We need to start discussing and addressing human nature.
  
  It's easier than most of us think. Simply responding differently to the bully can be easy but frightening for the victim, but it can be done. As for the bully, sometimes they are trying to fit in themselves in some new way, but they are going about the wrong way to do it. People are turning to suicide because they do not see the answer. Everything sinks back below the surface when it's undiscussed.
  
  The basic premise of bullying is that those who are different somehow deserve to be ostracized and excluded. WRONG. Perhaps they naturally need to work harder to gain acceptance, but perhaps there is another part of ourselves we are refusing to accept in this modern hubristic day and age.