TED Community » Sjors Provoost

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• TEDCred score: +37.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +6

  A comment on Talk: Jessa Gamble: Our natural sleep cycle

  Sep 17 2010: The talk reminded me of Dr. William Dement's Google Tech Talk about sleep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8
  He showed research suggesting that most people are in an eternal state of sleep deprivation. People forced to stay in a dark room for 16 hours a day would sleep for 16 hours day in day out, until they've repaid their debt. After that they can only sleep about 8 hours a night. IQ, physical performance, etc, go up.
  
  I'm also really exited about gadgets like the Sleep Cycle iPhone app, FitBit and WakeMate, that are cheap and non-intrusive ways to measure your sleep. Combined with this kind of research, people get much more insight into their sleep habits and needs.
  
  Face it: we're not going back to the old days anytime soon, so we'll have to make do with the best research and tools (and personal priorities) to sleep well.
  
  By the way, when I get the chance to go to bed at 8 pm, I tend to skip the 2 hour wake period and just sleep 12 hours with only brief awakenings.

• A comment on Talk: His Holiness the Karmapa: The technology of the heart

  Sep 17 2010: Would it be possible to get subtitles directly for His Holiness? I'm sure the interpreter does a great job, but I find other languages much easier to follow with subtitles than when I have to wait for interpretation.

• A comment on Talk: Nathan Myhrvold: Could this laser zap malaria?

  May 21 2010: I love this idea! Not as a replacement for other methods, but as an additional strategy.
  
  One way to fund it is to sell it to developed world consumers who don't like mosquitoes, bees, wasps and flies. I could image there would be a few regulatory issues though, but I'd buy one if it's under $100.
  
  Is it possible to detect the difference between a mosquito that carries malaria and a "clean" one? Perhaps some sort of spectrum analysis just like with the malaria detectors that were described earlier in the talk? Or different behavior of the mosquito?
  
  Is it possible that mosquitoes will adapt their wing frequency to avoid detection? How many generations would that take?
• +1

  A reply on Talk: David Deutsch: A new way to explain explanation

  Nov 3 2009: I think your comment touches some very important questions. Progress over the last couple of hundred years has been much faster than before, but can we support that with some hard numbers? More importantly, is the Scientific Revolution really the cause of it, or is it just a strong contributor?
  
  I'm tempted to think that the Scientific Revolution was very important, but sometimes a bit overrated.
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Michael Pritchard: How to make filthy water drinkable

  Aug 8 2009: Very good point about the risk of counterfeit products. But what is to stop people from making their counterfeits anyway, even without the slightest clue on how it works? So I'm not sure if this is a solid reason against opening up the design.
  
  I do agree that it takes money to scale this up and that open sourcing the design might get in the way of raising capital. Not to mention the fact that you already spent a lot of time, money and energy on this.
  
  However, I would recommend keeping the option in the back of your mind. Possibly at some point in the future, it may help accelerate distribution, if it's done correctly.
  
  Maybe a first small step could be to move the patent to the foundation.
• +5

  A comment on Talk: Craig Venter: On the verge of creating synthetic life

  Aug 2 2009: I was intrigued by the Synthetic Organism Designer software that he shows at 15:50 and would love to know more about it. So I created a stub article on Wikipedia. Anyone care to add more information to it?
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_Organism_Designer
• +4

  A comment on Talk: Liz Coleman's call to reinvent liberal arts education

  Jun 8 2009: Really appreciate this talk. It's not just about multi disciplinary institutions (could not agree more), but also about redefining purpose.
  
  When I was still a student, not very long ago, one the things that frustrated me about academia in general, and my own Utrecht University (The Netherlands) in particular, is the idea of "Academic Value" .
  
  It means that research should always have academic value and that practical use is irrelevant. In fact, in the case of my University, practical value is often considered inferior, especially by some of its (former?) leaders. Other institutions ought to deal with that.
  
  I think you can make the case that this obsession with "academic value" and "academic freedom" has a lot in common with religion.
  
  I love the idea of throwing that overboard and picking something else as a purpose. Like: doing the right thing.
  
  As far as I'm concerned, the goal and focus of universities can be arbitrary. I like her particular choice.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Laurie Garrett on lessons from the 1918 flu

  Apr 30 2009: Charlotte wrote:
  > Laurie makes her presentation as if it is objective, but then adds that she is bothered that
  > the poor farmers are not paid when their animals are killed. By saying this, she introduces a
  > moral argument into the video.
  
  I don't she meant it as a moral argument. If you want to kill a specific group of animals to prevent the spread of a disease, you want to be sure that you've killed all of them. If you don't pay the owners (enough), they will try to hide the animals.

• A comment on Talk: Joseph Pine: What consumers want

  Jan 17 2009: This talk almost makes me think the world could use a little recession, so people start looking for good value again, in stead of something more 'authentic'. I personally get very tired of paying $3 for a cup of tea or $20 for a piece of chicken.
  
  I think the only reason that happens is because bars and restaurants rarely compete on price nowadays. They realize that peer pressure will flock groups into the most 'authentic' (cool?) place anyway as long as they stay within the socially accepted price range. A bit like a cartel really, but not as deliberate, and ironically enforced its own "victims".
  
  I recently had to take a taxi in The Netherlands (completely agree with his observation about the country), and I had to pay about %u20AC10 for a 3 km trip. A large part of that cost was probably due to the taxi driver insisting on buying a way too expensive car, presumably to make the experience more "authentic".