TED Community » Arvind Venkataramani

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.40 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: Extinction of human being in past history of earth and Evolution theory

  Jun 2 2011: @SR: "is there any evidence disproving this saying of Imam Sadiq?"
  
  I think the Imam Sadiq could learn something from a fellow wise man:
  
  A neighbour came to the gate of Mulla Nasruddin's yard. The Mulla went to meet him outside.
  "Would you mind, Mulla," the neighbour asked, "lending me your donkey today? I have some goods to transport to the next town."
  The Mulla didn't feel inclined to lend out the animal to that particular man, however. So, not to seem rude, he answered:
  "I'm sorry, but I've already lent him to somebody else."
  All of a sudden the donkey could be heard braying loudly behind the wall of the yard.
  "But Mulla," the neighbour exclaimed. "I can hear it behind that wall!"
  "Who do you believe," the Mulla replied indignantly. "The donkey or your Mulla?"
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Elizabeth Lindsey: Curating humanity's heritage

  Mar 26 2011: I'm a little puzzled by the comparisons to GPS and whether this knowledge is 'practical'. (We may as well burn all copies of the Army Survival Guide, then, simply because us cityslicker infohipsters don't use it on a daily basis.)
  
  The talk isn't about whether the GPS is better or the Polynesian navigator. The fact that Mau can navigate AT ALL under those conditions should be considered a great feat, much like running the marathon or beating Deep Blue or our other modern mythologies of skill. Imagine: one lone human doing what it takes others entire systems of technology & materials to do! How the heck does he do it? That's worth knowing, just as learning how to work iron or tune a motorcycle or play an instrument or learn a dance or a martial art or completing a WoW raid is a craft worth knowing: potentially obsolete or useless, but delightful and deeply fulfilling nevertheless.
  
  But the deeper point is less about arcane feats of human ability, and more about forms of knowledge: the Polynesian navigator has a form of knowledge worth preserving, despite (or precisely because of) the fact that we don't understand it. It's not about us vs. 'them', or 'modern' vs. 'ancient', or 'folk' vs. 'scientific': it's about maintaining a diversity of forms of knowledge, because who knows when our beloved forms might fall short? Who knows what we might have to call upon if our ways of life change, or have to change? (this is pre-packaged innovation, just waiting for us to use it; if these ideas were presented by a hip designer with words like minimalism and sustainability thrown in, the technophiles would be all over it).
  
  It would be a waste to throw away things we have collectively learned, our thousands of years of human inventiveness, just because we think we know everything we need to know.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Elizabeth Lindsey: Curating humanity's heritage

  Mar 26 2011: Actually, it's precisely because scientists haven't bothered investigating these forms of knowledge that we don't know how or if they work. And yes, the Polynesians can navigate: its been documented exhaustively, and there are several theories on how it's performed, and it has been replicated independently as well. There's nothing mysterious about it, and it will probably only work in Polynesia (since it appears to rely on deep local geographical knowledge), but it's not hand-waving and tall tales.
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms

  Jan 10 2011: @Pāvils Jurjāns: it's one thing to invent the telephone, quite another to invent customer support or phone sex. I don't think we should be looking to Sir Ken to give us a plan: for one, he might be horrible at planning, but he's definitely great at articulating the problem in a way that defines the characteristics of a good solution. If his wisdom can be absorbed and used by all of us, that will doubtless be much more impactful because there'll be so many more of us trying to apply this knowledge and understand what to do with it than just him.
  
  I'd suggest that you think about how you can use what he's saying - remember that he's not just talking about the school system, he's talking about learning. Which happens at work, too. So, for starters, why don't you try to use these ideas in your office, and come back here and tell us about it? We might be able to learn from you!
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Mitchell Besser: Mothers helping mothers fight HIV

  Sep 23 2010: who says africa can't be a site of innovation? the american healthcare system could learn a lot from this...
• +4

  A reply on Talk: Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums

  Jul 3 2010: "All the things that rely on rote memorization (like the alphabet and elementary algebraic operations) can be taught well in the classic classroom. It is very optimistic to state that there are cost effective alternatives, which can do that better."
  
  @wolfgang i think this is one of the basic issues at play. if you think learning math means learning algebraic operations through rote memorization, you're still subscribing to one notion of what learning means, and what doing math means. for an alternative opinion, take a look at jean lave's work on situated learning (i.e. learning in a context instead of in a school) amongst communities of practice (e.g. tailors) and post-school learning & mathematics use among adults. both of these works show that even the sorts of things we use rote memorization for do not necessarily need it. why teach math to use in carpentry, when you can teach carpentry and through that teach math? lave's books are 'situated learning' & 'cognition in practice'

• A comment on Talk: Brian Cox: Why we need the explorers

  Jun 8 2010: this is all terribly eloquent and joyous, but we should keep two things in mind
  
  1. the hard task facing us is not progress, but survival. anyone who thinks that cheaper, smaller transistors (for instance) will save the world is severely misinformed. the same applies to a lot of promised scientific advancements, and there are ample talks at TED to that effect
  
  2. what else gets cut before pure science does? is it more or less essential? why don't we have those other people argue as eloquently as Brian does? and how can we help them do so?
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids

  Apr 13 2010: it's interesting that it takes a child giving a carefully crafted adult-like speech for adults to be inspired, though that inspiration is completely situated in adult frames of reference - the comments here on vocabulary and the quality/originality of her ideas and why she is/is not special, and why her talk is/is not important use as their basis adult notions of what is and is not good.
  
  i feel like criticising, praising or defending adora is beside the point; it is not that the world needs more kids like adora, or even that the world needs to recognize its adoras: it is that the world needs to be such that kids like adora do not have to give this talk. (while at the same time i'm incredibly glad that this talk happened and these issues were given voice)
  
  let us create a world in which we give everyone the same respect and openness that adora demands for herself and her fellow children.

• A comment on Talk: Sendhil Mullainathan: Solving social problems with a nudge

  Feb 21 2010: interesting. mullainathan talks about the fallacy of assuming technological solutions to human problems, and jumps straight to individual psychology as a level of analysis, skipping social & political structures entirely. while the psychological approach is commendable & necessary, unless we learn how to change large-scale structures of inequality, we will never really solve the 'last mile problem', because the psychology/design approach focuses, like technology, on the objects. social scientific approaches focus on human systems - so not only is it important to design the right kind of objects/information that encourage the right behaviours, but to embed those objects in an ecosystem that supports & sustains that behavioural change..

• A reply on Talk: Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf: Lose your ego, find your compassion

  Nov 2 2009: "to a majority of people who want nothing to do with religion" - um, let's see some real data on this first, please.