TED Community » Thomas LoCurto

More About Me

I'm passionate about

languages and linguistic anthropology. Pulling people out of the world that is formed by assumptions that they didn't even know they'd made.

An idea worth spreading

All humans are equal. Our value isn't quantifiable and nothing we do can diminish or increase our value. 60 billion people have lived and died on this Earth so far, and by our standards a few thousand have been exceptional. Maybe our standards miss the mark.

Talk to me about

Languages, public education in the US, how language affects and carries culture. How much does our native language affect the way we interpret the world.

People don't know that I'm good at

Singing, DIY projects.

Comments

• TEDCred score: 0.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: Artificial Intelligence will supersede Human intelligence

  Mar 30 2011: I think that it is inevitable that artificial intelligence will surpass our own if for no other reason than the fact that any artificial creation with that level of intelligence would be essentially - that is to say, produce or invent and then fabricate the equivalent of more processing power or memory and upgrade itself to use it. The human brain, though incredibly complex and powerful, still has an upper limit - we don't know exactly what that upper limit is or even how to know for sure that we've reached it, but I do believe it exists. At the same time it has to be said that before AI achieves an equal level of intelligence to our own, we may very well have begun to upgrade ourselves, or even transfer our consciousness into some kind of artificial structure that would allow us to grow beyond the physical limitations of our brain. At that point would it not even make sense to differentiate between what we consider artificial intelligence and that of humans? I think we'll have to wait and see how everything develops.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Diane J. Savino: The case for same-sex marriage

  Aug 28 2010: $2.5 billion is a small price to pay - how much do we spend on the military to protect the rights of Americans? Is it too much to pay to protect America? If we follow your logic, the following would seem to indicate that allowing heterosexual marriages is FAR too much money, and I as a tax payer deserve transparancy in how much frivelous heterosexual marriages cost me:
  
  "The 2004 State of Our Unions report reveals that "marriages that end in divorce also are very costly to the public. One researcher determined that a single divorce costs state and federal governments about $30,000, based on such things as the higher use of food stamps and public housing as well as increased bankruptcies and juvenile delinquency. The nation's 10.4 million divorces in 2002 are estimated to have cost the taxpayers over $30 billion."
  [Whitehead, B. and Popenoe, D. The State of Our Unions. Retrieved July 13, 2004 from http://marriage.rutgers.edu/publications.]
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Diane J. Savino: The case for same-sex marriage

  Aug 28 2010: I'm sorry Adrian but your argument holds no water; if it did, a man who was infertile or a woman that was barren would be denied marriage as it is impossible for them to procreate.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Diane J. Savino: The case for same-sex marriage

  Aug 28 2010: The "traditional" European traditional family is in much more danger from a 50% divorce rate than it could ever be from same-sex marriage. What people like this woman are doing is making sure that, as Thomas Jefferson said when he commented on the fact that the United States is a federal republic and not a direct democracy: "The rights of the minority must be protected from the tyranny of the majority." Your argument has been used before, they tried to say the same thing with interracial marriage, that it was unnatural for races to mix. The United States is based on equal rights whether it be a question of creed, race, gender and I dare say soon sexual orientation.