TED Community » Alexander Shepherd

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• A comment on Conversation: Is equality feasible and is it worth achieving? Subquestion: By your definitions, is equality synonymous with fairness?

  2 days ago: When it comes to equality, chances of it working are very slim in my opinion, especially with income and skill equality. This is because, equality in my opinion leads to unfairness, because as someone personally tries to better themselves (get a new skill, etc.) it would be unfair then if the playing field was levelled as then the individuals do not get a sense of satisfaction and with that, I feel that it could lead to negative effects, such as dumbing down because no-one cannot be bothered to increase their "ableness" in their abilities or learn new skills which then would build self-worth.
  Also, equality is not a concept we can give a certain scale to, therefore, we can ask ourselves, to what extent is equality, what does equality look like in action? If we cannot answer this question, then how can we achieve equality? We always have to design the product before we can take the necessary steps to manufacture it or make it into reality.
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  A comment on Conversation: What are some realistic and creative ways to reduce wealth inequality?

  2 days ago: In my opinion, you could reduce this gap between the rich and the poor by getting the rich not to part with their hard-earned money, but with sharing their skills, almost like apprenticeships. For me, the wealth lies in what skills you have and specialised you are in a particular field. In theory, the more specialised you are, the higher the wage. In turn, the more you know, the greater the chance of getting a job and a highly paid one at that!
  If this imparting of knowledge from the rich to the poor were to exist, I believe that it would take away any prejudices that come with being rich or poor and would shrink the gap of inequality between the rich and the poor both in terms of wealth and socially.
  Hope this helps and good luck with the assignment!
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  A comment on Conversation: If you were to give a TED talk what would it be about? What points would you make about your topic?

  Mar 3 2013: I would talk about how truth is non existent.
  When we determine that something is truthful or not, it requires human understanding & interpretation, which could lead to error or manipulation of the 'truth', even if we get video footage of someone committing a crime, it still leads to (possible) human error. Therefore, how do we know that something is the truth, how do we know that cotton is a material and coal is solely made out of carbon are true?
  The answer, because everyone else thinks that it is true.
  We are not able to determine whether something is true by instinct, as again, it leads to human error / manipulation (our emotions could get in the way also if it was an instinct).