TED Community » Jay Dalal

More About Me

I'm passionate about

design, bionics, engineering, emotions, social change, and more

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• TEDCred score: +1.30 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Will making rockstars out of women in science get more girls interested in science/technology/engineering/math (i.e. STEM) fields?

  Apr 16 2013: I agree that reforming education is a good place to start. As Nina Tandon's link showed (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/04/science/girls-lead-in-science-exam-but-not-in-the-united-states.html?_r=0), boys slightly outperform girls in math in the US in particular. I suspect that this may have something to do with the way that US education revolves around prepping for standardized tests. Standardized test prep detaches the teacher from their teaching, and detaches the subject with its purpose. Studying math and science is less rewarding when the problems feel irrelevant or arbitrary. It is also more difficult to care.
  When faced with these tedious tasks, in addition to the societal expectations of women that girls probably feel from an early age -- from toys, as you mentioned Nicki, to advertisements to cartoon characters -- and when there is no strong force opposing those messages, it's probably very easy to develop a habit of thinking that math and science don't deserve much attention.
• +2

  A reply on Conversation: Is the use of EMS(electrical muscle stimulation) a form of doping?

  Mar 11 2013: Whenever we try to categorize something into legal terms, it's more important to think about ideals and fairness (like you do) than to think about written legal definitions.
  
  Sports regulation aims to ensure fairness, and fairness will vary with the sporting event's setting. International events and local events can be expected to have different doping rules if the pools of participants have different levels of access to performance-enhancers. For example, in international swimming events, a certain new type of hydrodynamic wetsuit is banned. But in a country where all players have approximately the same access to the suit, wearing the suit might be fair.
  
  But is it possible to achieve complete fairness? Electrical muscle stimulation devices can be between $50 and $900. (e.g. Compex Sport, $899.) If cost and performance enhancement are correlated, then you're more likely to make it ONTO the team in the first place if you have more money, and that's not fair. Similarly, more money allows an athlete to have more time to train, better coaches, better diets, and better resources. Laws can only get us so close to fairness.
  
  The other consideration is the impact on society. Because of how public some sports events are, champion athletes are role models for the audience. If athletes are known to have an inaccessible or unsafe advantage, then sporting events can be demotivational or harmful to society.

• A reply on Conversation: Do you believe the human brain will continue to increase its capabilities?

  Mar 11 2013: George, if I'm interpreting your question correctly, you're asking whether humans will ever experience another advancement through natural selection. Because the development of the mirror neuron was something that came about through natural selection, and the reason that it was so fit for survival was that it enabled a new kind of evolution.
  
  Natural selection only happens if an environment is significantly better for some than others. But humans have made so much progress that we've almost removed ourselves from nature. We have medicine and transportation that enable us to survive harsh conditions. We are supporting each other's survival instead of competing for survival.
  
  An advancement in our brain structure won't spread through future generations unless it were *much* better for survival than what we already have. Maybe there are people alive right now with advanced brain structures, but they're regarded by the people around them as abnormal, and they're discouraged from reproducing.
  
  Like Tom said, natural evolution is such a slow process. We'll probably learn to force evolution sooner than nature can (by learning how to give someone dominant traits that can be passed on?), or we might advance digital technology so much that a development in brain structure is unnecessary.

• A reply on Conversation: How do we best balance collaboration and individual efforts to solve our grandest challenges?

  Feb 26 2013: I agree that passionate work is what innovates the fastest and most creatively. It's a more advanced form of specialization, which is what enabled early societies to grow.
  
  Passionate collaboration can be huge. I believe that personality is partly pre-determined, and that some personalities are more likely to take interest in science. There is so much untapped potential in impoverished neighborhoods. If we can unlock that potential through community organizers and better schools, and then increase awareness of our greatest problems, we can innovate in the right direction so much faster.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Why don't we treat science experiments like primetime TV?

  Feb 26 2013: Hey, maybe there's some potential in mixing science with trashy reality tv. It sounds like some science exposure's better than zero, which is what I imagine too many people at home are seeing. We can take baby steps in the right direction if we don't forget the end goal :) Could this idea potentially mislead people, or can the scientific research and the people be independent?
• +2

  A reply on Conversation: Why don't we treat science experiments like primetime TV?

  Feb 26 2013: That's an interesting TEDtalk (For others: it was about how videos go viral. It argues that tastemakers and sharing within a community are what make videos popular. Not just the content of the video.)
  
  In "The Chair" by Galen Cranz, Cranz argues that chairs that encourage a C-shaped slump are terrible for our spines, while squatting on the floor or chairs that promote autonomous sitting are more healthy. But Western culture will continue to love our slump-encouraging chairs until the social elite can convince them to switch. He argues that a designer's responsibility in society is to change culture for the better, by designing body-conscious chairs in a way that is also stylish and likely to be adopted by the social elite.
  It's related to the MAYA rule of design: design the Most Advanced Yet Acceptable form of something to create the greatest impact.
  Good marketing is also an important part of the process.
  
  So until our culture's "tastemakers" are excited about understanding science at a high level, it won't become popular? Then maybe we have to design science information in a way that's conscious of today's popular tastes. That's tough.

• A reply on Conversation: Why don't we treat science experiments like primetime TV?

  Feb 26 2013: I like the way you're thinking about this. Cultural studies tends to forget instinct / evolutionary advantage.
  
  But I've heard that orangutans have been observed to be very curious. Upon seeing a camera, for example, they might take it apart and put it back together.
  
  Also, it looks like the human species has thrived because of our cognitive abilities that enabled us to develop agriculture. Wasn't agriculture built from scientific research?

• A reply on Conversation: Why don't we treat science experiments like primetime TV?

  Feb 25 2013: I see. So TV series need to have long-term interest in order to succeed. But there's a tradeoff between popularity and academic depth.
  
  Maybe we don't need to turn everyone into researchers then. I think that a real difference can be made if people simply became more skeptical of non-scientific sources of information.
  
  Maybe people don't need to be shown many different experiments to understand what goes into making a sound conclusion. A couple of very good, interesting, and thorough examples, in the form of a documentary movie?, are what people need to see.

• A reply on Conversation: Why don't we treat science experiments like primetime TV?

  Feb 24 2013: That's a great point: a fuller picture of the research field would not only be more honest, but also more appealing. If we limited film to successful perfected experiments, we miss out on the people and the decision-making. When we can have an audience that forms opinions on the research, maybe we've succeeded in engaging them. ("You should give up because it didn't work three times" versus "Keep trying, you'll get it!" for example.)

• A reply on Conversation: Why don't we treat science experiments like primetime TV?

  Feb 24 2013: Hahaha. Yeah, the media likes to say that they decide what to show based on what the consumer wants. The media does not fully realize that they partly control the taste of the public. (Think fashion magazines and the way they choose models.)
  
  When people have learned something interesting, they feel some pride and they want to share it with their friends. I have faith that someday, current scientific research can be popular on television (or whatever form of media takes over), but we have to take baby steps in the right direction.
  
  Channels separate topics -- and people. TV-watchers identify with a list of channels. There is a channel for news and a channel for science, appropriately called Science in the US. Why do they need to be separated in the first place?