TED Community » Lucia Lukanova

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I'm passionate about

Cosmology, Quantum theory, Democracy, Basketball and Skiing

An idea worth spreading

Let's design our democracy. Returning to Socrates, considering technology of today, having learned from consequences of rationalist and technocratic burden of Plato.

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Anything worth talking coming to your mind.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +1813.20 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A reply on Talk: Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

  Aug 30 2009: hi Joan, very good point! I agree, apart from the presumption/natural law you mention, there are many different forms of being smart or talents.
  
  The point was, that bonuses are little of an acknowledgment for someone's creativity or social contribution. The bonuses Dan mentions are much more a premium for turning off areas of people's critical judgment and rewarding particular skills needed to "outperform" other banks in the foul part of the banking business.
  
  Think of it as the sharing of the loot among knights who had won the battle over heretics. With this argument I would like to challenge Dan in classifying jobs into manual and non-manual. The motivational metaphor behind bank bonuses may easily qualify for the motivational logic behind manual type of work. They just share their loot.

• A comment on Talk: Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

  Aug 27 2009: This is a great energizing presentation style!
  
  Contentwise, I am not sure Dan's idea really links with high investment bank bonuses or that those bonuses should impede perfomance. There simply (still) is enough capital to pay them.
  
  In this respect bonuses can be seen as part of the base pay (expected renumeration) or a market premium necessary to keep all the smart people in the investment banking jobs. Without the premium, they would wander off, for example start a social business for the better good of the society and the better good of their own health and happiness. Don't pay the bonus and your smartest employees become your competitors or critics.
  
  While I understand the experiment, I know that on a day to day basis in a non-manual position I do not stress myself about the hight of the bonus at all. The approximate range of the bonus was part of the decision to do the job but the day to day motivation depends on completely other factors.
  
  Dambisa Moyo could advice?
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

  Aug 27 2009: Mike, I guess Daniel's comment, more than to results, applies to how CLEARLY REALLY something should be defined to employees in their day to day and week to week work. Too clear definition can turn even the most interesting task into a boring one. You want a delicate balance between top-down and bottom-up.
  
  What Kiersten describes is a matter of good delegation. What is good depends on culture and social styles. You would delegate very differently to an Indian, German, Italian and for that matter US employee, then you would still want to consider their social styles. At least if you want to pull the most out of them and leave them happy behind. Too much clear definition kills.

• A reply on Talk: Ray Kurzweil: A university for the coming singularity

  Jun 13 2009: Spot on! With the risk of extrapolations.

• A comment on Talk: Ray Kurzweil: A university for the coming singularity

  Jun 13 2009: Our intuiton is rather exponential Kurzweil proves finding the data.
  
  I like the reference to Larry Page that Google would contribute if Singularity University puts technology in service of humanity. Doesn't Kurzweil's promise here contradict his notion of technological singularity?
  
  What is the difference between humans learning to use fire, atomic bomb or intelligent machines?!? Any of these are good slaves but bad masters. In that light Kurzweil's predictions of when and how are likely to remain useless extrapolations at which it is good to smile back.
  
  Is Kurzweil's singularity argument counterintuitive to the quantum consciousness hypothesis of Penrose and Hameroff? Maybe someone has got a thought on it.
  
  Yes, Kurzweil is a smart mind, but even then or especially then, one should better distrust and not assume he knows /better. Kurzweil's arguments are logically consistent, masculine, and seem to go beyond his area of expertise. OK, but risky :-).
• +4

  A reply on Talk: Jacqueline Novogratz on patient capitalism

  May 21 2009: Andrew, why not being fair to Adam Smith and giving him a try? Smith got it fairly right unlike the cuckoos who followed laying zero sum eggs into his nest. Check him out.

• A reply on Talk: Alex Tabarrok on how ideas trump crises

  May 7 2009: Hi Matthew, yes Alex comes up with generally great and agreeable ideas.
  
  But the assumptions hidden behind his arguments still may surprise some of his audience. With accent on "AUDIENCE", not on "MARKET". It takes a lot of optimism to speak for 14 minutes instead of simply saying "TED", and yet more optimism to summarize with TRIPS language (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) the idea of Creative commons.
  
  Looking forward to TED India in Nov 2009!