TED Community » Jorge Bourdette

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• TEDCred score: +25.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity

  Sep 20 2011: Democracy is the OS behind those killer apps; Civilization as Churchill defined.
  And more: Is our western world ruled by the law, or by the decisions of the corporations - sometimes as totalitarian as the ancient tyrants?
  If the law, instead of defending the rights of the people, is made to support the interests of the economic power (or any other), we can surely predict the downfall of the empires.
  What about China, India, Brazil? Are they going the democratic way?
  But the concept of democracy can be very resilient (e.g. think about the slaves in the democratic ancient Greece). Prosperity can reach just some people, and not all. IMHO, the most people prosperity reaches, the longer a civilization lasts. But then there is the ancient China telling me I'm wrong...

• A comment on Talk: Nathan Myhrvold: Cooking as never seen before

  Jul 11 2011: Nice, but I expect to be moved by TED talks. Besides a few technical aspects, it looks like he is selling his book. You know, there are a lot of TED talks being added every week, and TEDx events, nobody can listen to every talk. So I'd prefer a few less but highly valuable talks.
  Wait, yes, we have those ratings. I would add a new category: "doesn't really matter, unless you are kind of mad about the subject".

• A reply on Talk: Terry Moore: How to tie your shoes

  Jun 13 2011: I think this is a great talk about being open-minded, flexible, and about leaving our prejudices aside to be able to improve our lives.
  I mean, the message is much more than the simple talk about shoe laces.
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong

  Apr 2 2011: I completely agree. I'have no words to express the beauty of this - not just the song alone, but the people, the motion, the link, the dream. It makes me think of a new mind, not an individualist mind, rather a collective mind, a new step in mankind.

• A reply on Talk: Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies

  Feb 17 2011: Children excel in learning new sounds and grammar; they do not have preconceptions. I think that's a good reason for them learning usually faster. For a Spanish speaking native is much easier to learn French or Italian than German: sounds are closer and grammar is very similar. I assume the same may be true for an English speaker trying to learn German vs. Spanish...
  But I know children exposed simultaneously to English, Spanish and Japanese; they speak the 3 languages, using with each person the language the other person usually speaks. I also noticed that contact with other children may improve the language acquisition process.
  And, regarding your last paragraph, I think "will never" is too sharp to be true. Probably the native accent cannot be lost, but I have seen people with no formal training using structures better than those that had it. Exposition to the spoken language is key, even for adults.
• +7

  A comment on Talk: Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies

  Feb 17 2011: While most of her talk is about quite known facts, I think that the experiment comparing TV vs. social interaction in language learning is very interesting. There are many sounds in the environment but babies only filter those that matters (e.g. they don't learn barking).
  Language is important not only to communication but also to logical thinking. I've read about experiments showing that we use the language areas of the brain when thinking analytically; this may be an issue for impaired people whose language skills have not been properly trained. I am also quite convinced that people that speaks several languages is more flexible to understand new concepts.
  And yes, I cannot tell the english "r" from the japanese "r" :-)

• A comment on Talk: Hans Rosling: The good news of the decade?

  Oct 12 2010: I have some doubts about what is first, family size or child mortality. I have read some time ago that families in countries with poverty and high children mortality level usually have more children, because having more children ensure that some will survive to take care of you when you get older.
  Anyway, we should be careful about lowering the family size too much... I mean to avoid extinction ;-)
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Dan Cobley: What physics taught me about marketing

  Aug 28 2010: I agree. I see several things of value here. Very different fields can have similar laws, and if the concepts are the same, I would say they´d have laws with the same mathematic form - this is more than a simple analogy. This kind of thinking leaded Von Bertalanffy to his general systems theory, IMHO.
  This kind of homology is very useful, because it allows to test hypothesis for one field in other fields where investigation is possible or just simpler or cheaper.
  Other valuable thing is to realize that even soft fields have natural laws that are always followed - many people thinks that complex and/or soft fields like economics or marketing are unpredictable when they are not.
  I enjoyed the talk very much, and I consider it worth spreading; though I think this subject should have deserverd to be treated in more detail.

• A reply on Talk: Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves

  Aug 17 2010: AND don't get asleep while you're controlling your car... ;-)
  Beware of dreams! :-D
  
  Seriously... It's really amazing AND cheap. I want to try it soon!
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world

  Jul 1 2010: The late pick up thing is not surprising at all, it's human and natural. When you pay a fine, you don't feel guilty. Money is something that is in the outside; moral is in the inside, so guilt is more compromising than money. Guilt is related to a promise of late punishment, immediate punishment is a lot easier to manage - in some way, fine buys impunity, that means immunity, and you can do whatever you want: it does not hurt.
  So I would say no, it is not the same thing.