TED Community » Geoff G

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Bridging America's fabricated political divide and repairing her citizens' pessimism in order to acknowledge the path we're already walking toward an exponentially evolving and ever-improving future.

An idea worth spreading

DIY Amalgamationism - The thesis: if your personal beliefs don't unlock a fulfilling level of productivity, lead you to authentic happiness, help you sleep night and predispose you to uphold the Golden Rule, there is a personalized but fragmented instruction manual hidden within the whole of human wisdom distilled in art, the world religions, and scientific discovery that can lead you into self-produced prosperity.
In other words, with some effort and awareness, every person can use the recorded history of dead men's minds (and women's) to piece together a personal philosophy that works for him or her.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +59.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Talk: Sean Gourley on the mathematics of war

  May 4 2011: My thoughts exactly.

• A reply on Talk: Sebastian Thrun: Google's driverless car

  Apr 10 2011: Maybe a panic button that also automatically dials the cops?
• +4

  A reply on Talk: Sebastian Thrun: Google's driverless car

  Apr 10 2011: No one's gonna care that they're stuck in traffic if they can play angry birds (or read or watch TV or TED talks or nap etc.) while they wait.
• +3

  A reply on Talk: Clifford Stoll: The call to learn

  Apr 7 2011: Not in the slightest. ;)
• +21

  A reply on Talk: Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter ...

  Mar 23 2011: My favorite line, "Getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air" seems to fly in the face of your summary. It sounds more like she wants her daughter to experience life to the max, hardship included. She's making the argument hardship is an essential element of the human condition, not one she'd shield her daughter from.
  PS. Clichés with slight twists populate many modern poems, for sure, but at least it isn't pop music.

• A reply on Talk: Deb Roy: The birth of a word

  Mar 12 2011: But could you have told me about the sentence complexity dipping to lift the kid out of baby talk? Maybe you could; I don't have kids so I wouldn't know.

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

  Feb 17 2011: This just makes me want to make friends with people of a variety of ethnic backgrounds to get them to teach my kids as many languages as possible. Would I be breading ideal diplomats or my own undoing as they talk amongst one another in languages I can't understand?

• A comment on Conversation: What does it mean in terms of making children watch tv shows that are meant to improve their language skills?

  Feb 17 2011: Although I agree with Patricia for the most part (human contact is definitely key), I wanted to point out that the babies exposed to video did seem to improve slightly. It was an almost negligible improvement, but it was on the graph nonetheless.
  Maybe as kids get older they get used to the TV screen as a kind of one way communicating nanny and start to pick up more from it? Even a poor substitute does more good than nothing at all.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Does this mean that your "total language proficiency" is a zero sum game?

  Feb 17 2011: Judging based on her graphs (the babies spoken to in mandarin were equally proficient to actual mandarin babies, not slightly less) and my experience with bilingual people, I would have to guess that no, it is not a zero sum game. It seems more like babies are capable of logging and fully learning a number of different languages based on the sounds that occur commonly in each.
• +5

  A reply on Talk: Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives

  Jan 31 2011: How can we have a conversation if all you do is yell talking points at me?
  I'll take you to lunch if you promise to respond to one thing I actually wrote and back up your points with evidence/examples/links. (http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_lesser_take_the_other_to_lunch.html)