TED Community » CECILIA BELTRAN

More About Me

I'm passionate about

I am passionate about the emerging intersection of science and the wisdom of the ancients.

An idea worth spreading

The human brain is the singularity of the cosmos. Its anatomy and function is a summary of the events of the birth of the universe from the moment it sparked light until its first stirring of life. Our myths and religious symbols celebrate the pivotal breakthroughs of this cosmic energy in its path towards becoming matter. The story is frozen in the human brain. It recounts its story as our mythology, the visions of our luminaries. The human brain mimics the path this cosmic energy takes as it transforms itself from spark to life, beginning from a flash in a synaptic gap, to action, to habit, to our genes.

Talk to me about

Creativity,depth psychology, mysticism and archeology

People don't know that I'm good at

Neuroscience

My TED Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySRIvlmPbH0

Comments

• TEDCred score: +1.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: If you could choose any historical figure to give a TED Talk, who would it be and why?

  Apr 14 2013: @Chris Kelly,
  
  I think the TED community would be the short-hand way of pointing to intellectual elites. I know what a rabbi means, and they were thought leaders because there was no other education other than religious education. Anything that pertains to phenomena is attributed to God. It was only after the 19th century, when the method was introduced as an "objective" way to concur on what causes a phenomena that the separation between religious thought and intellectual thought happened.
  
  I must say, to say that the brain does not generate the mind is a religious assertion. Not a factual one. But anyone who studies the anatomy, particularly the brain will see that despite its material nature, it is quite a miraculous thing! And yes, this little mass of grey on our heads CAN produce the mind. As a matter of fact, I believe that the body is the larger mind where the unconscious resides. (but that's for another forum).
  
  My point is matter and spirit is only separated by the limits of our senses. In truth they are one and the same, they are stable energy relationships that we codify in our mind as "reality" or the material world. But observed in another way, it really is all energy. The mind and the body are one and I see nothing wrong with the notion that the same mass of grey is a version of the universe, scaled to human size.
  http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html
  
  
  My point is, we need scientists to be what they are. It is essential for them to continue to doubt and ask. That is their role. Just as we need the rabbis and priests to provide answers to questions that are unsettling, that is their role, they provide the imaginary number that bridges the equation. Somewhere in between those two forces tugging at each other is the answer, a moving evolving answer... without the two forces tugging and challenging each other, how can both grow?
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: If you could choose any historical figure to give a TED Talk, who would it be and why?

  Apr 13 2013: Its a process, on the one hand TED will not be a respected entity if everything is passable. I always say these are market forces. Its very difficult to take consciousness seriously because we can't even agree on what consciousness is. Everybody claims to be conscious, but wonder what the word really means outside of our...err...consciousness. We could be tiny little ants.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: If you could choose any historical figure to give a TED Talk, who would it be and why?

  Apr 12 2013: @Tiffany: Well, they weren't scientific because the method didn't come until Galileo. They were game changers and all three had a common goal, to introduce rationality in place of ritualistic practice. Jesus was trying to teach sense. The 613 commandments of the Jewish People can be a little bit too much when really its just the 7 laws of Noah in detail. What Jesus did was condense it even more to one teaching which is, you and I are no different so treat me as you want to be treated. It is humanitarian. And he taught this to like everyday folk, people who need to hear it, not the TED people of their time, the intellectual rabbis who are studied and learned.
  
  Moses took the magical letters from the egyptian tradition available only to priests and royalty, and made it available to the workers. The Alef-Bet is math, but not only math, it holds the progression of concepts from energy into matter. You will see what they mean if you study the alphabet. A for ox-power, B for house, G for path etc, etc. It was pretty advanced. He said that all those powers that the egyptians were breaking down as separate powers is ONE power.
  
  Buddha is the first atheist, let me just say that. Maybe humanist, not atheist. Most atheists have (knock knock, disclaimer...i do know this is a generalisation) parent availability issues and therefore cannot rely on a "saviour" or "a higher power" and believe that they're on their own.
  But people get ideas and hold tack them into fixed points and then check back on it constantly because they don't dare deviate from it or make it meaningful for them. Then it becomes dogma, then it returns to what it struggled against. Science is a method. It's not a god. What you find out in science moves, changes everyday. But its essence remains. All knowledge can be found and lost and regained but with better understanding. This is a human habit. We keep on forgetting what we know and then when we remember it, we think its new

• A comment on Conversation: Science is developing the tools towards de-extinction of species on the planet that have become extinct. The question becomes; Should we?

  Apr 12 2013: I think before we ask should we, let us first know how. While caution is good, choosing to NOT pursue a scientific possibility because we fear the unknown is like resisting believing that the earth is round and NOT the center of the universe...(as far as we know. The universe is so large we can't truly know if we are indeed at the center or not)
• +3

  A comment on Conversation: If you could choose any historical figure to give a TED Talk, who would it be and why?

  Apr 12 2013: Definitely the greats: Buddha, Jesus and Moses.
  
  I mean, what we are calling religion now were merely Ideas that captured the imagination of people and it spread like wildfire, changing the consciousness of man for thousands of years. Jesus, love others as you love yourself. That was new then. Jesus was the first humanitarian. Including the samaritans despite them being outsiders of the flock. Buddha, x=X (individual consciousness = collective consciousness). Moses, there is only one God (the forces we see around are a product of one universal phenomena)
  
  Most scientists like Newton, and Johannes Kepler and even Darwin are quiet eccentric people who most likely don't look you in the eye. I would go for the luminaries!
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: If you have NEVER been to Africa, when someone mentions "Africa" or you hear "Africa", what is the FIRST thing that comes into your mind?

  Apr 12 2013: Lions

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

  Apr 12 2013: Fetal brain development IS hard science. But it is also about babies, cute cuddly babies you can hug and care for like dolls. Why can't we study the mathematics of beauty? Or hair tension, or the chemistry of food? Much of the movement to include girls in science are not sensitive to what MOST girls are naturally interested in. Some girls who grow up with boys, tend to have boyish interests just because they want to belong. I find that the same phenomenon is happening in science. Women have to be man-like to be considered scientists. They don't have to be. They can be totally girly and still be absolutely capable of hard science on things mostly ignored by male scientists.
  http://www.thesciencebabe.com
  True feminism is embracing the feminine and being totally okay. In the sciences, there are many unexplored areas that need further scientific inquiry just because the male counterparts are focused on things that go. Science is a method that can be applied to anything observable. If I decide to make a science experiment on girl bonding by measuring the rate of blinks versus girl and boy bonding, that is still science if I follow the scientific method and the experiments can be replicated and confirmed by other scientists.
  Human consciousness can expand in all directions. To limit pushing sciences to girls by saying, yes you too can build a rocket ship, when most girls find collecting seashells more fascinating is not really doing it. How about we show how the beauty of nature is a mathematical phenomenon, how about teaching them about fractals applied to pretty things? The point is to look at the interest of young girls (and definitely a majority will be into pretty things, pretty faces and friends...) and showing how that can benefit from a scientific perspective too. Girls ask for dolls. If they've never held one, they wouldn't ask for it. But I've seen a girl think she was boyish until she saw her first monster high doll. She was transfixed and wouldn't let it go.

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

  Apr 11 2013: I think any publicity, if you draw attention to it and make it look attractive catches on. People sometimes just forget to champion science to girls because girls are more socially-minded and tend to be more interested in people than things. That said, there are plenty of science to be explored in female-centric preoccupations. Science of fetal brain development, science of friendship, science of love, science of beauty. The point is NOT to try to too hard making girls feel drawn towards rocket ships. Some would be, but if you're around children in a play area, you'll see girls zoom in on a doll and other girls, while the boys will immediately be drawn to things that go. Science is a method. Girls can still remain girls and be preoccupied in things that they are naturally drawn to--but this time in a scientific perspective.

• A comment on Conversation: What does cave art mean to you?

  May 23 2012: Great topic Sid!

• A reply on Conversation: What does cave art mean to you?

  May 23 2012: Plus the whole thing is emanating from a water source (now dry of course) at a center which is in keeping with the symbolic function of Mem, (or water) that consciousness is the source which the VEDAS insist is the source of "creation". Now the definition of consciousness becomes rather controversial in this day and age and ripe for further further debate. In the book 25 Big Ideas, the author discusses that today's consensus is that it is not about being conscious or not, rather the level of consciousness. Like for instance we are highly conscious of so many details in our environment whereas a sunflower is conscious of where the sun is, but is conscious perhaps of only that. The Caves are really really interesting in that you can see it as primitive art OR something else depending on how much you know.