TED Community » Jesper Wille

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Communication in all its forms and the field of social interaction between people - how we choose to frame ourselves and the discussions and topics we take part in... a large subject indeed.

An idea worth spreading

How about if we listen better, talk better, and also take to assuming intelligence on the part of other people until anything else is reasonably proven, how would that be?

People don't know that I'm good at

Wailing out a passable blues guitar solo at the drop of a hat

Comments

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• A comment on Conversation: Misunderstanding Ethics and the purpose of this talk

  Mar 27 2011: I think, after reading all of your thoughtful comments, that the thread may be sort-of jumping the gun; the discussion seems to be about what is or is not ethical, as if ethics is the discipline of providing near-perfect answers to our questions (or its inability to do so).
  However, the subject of the talk (and thank you for it Paul, excellent stuff!) is to question, specifically bioengineering - ethics being a method of designing the questions. So to investigate the concept of ethics (as I believe is Paul's purpose of this discussion, given its title), rather than trying to answer the ethical dilemmas (such as Sabin's), we should look at how those dilemmas were designed, or formulated, and why.
  I believe that ethics is the process of finding out which questions need to be asked with regards to whichever topic is chosen - as such, it resembles the scientific process, which also is trying to formulate a question to which we want or need an answer, precisely *because* the answer is beyond our grasp to begin with.
  (We should remember that a basic tenet of science is falsifiability, by the way)
  
  The difference is that science is (or should be) a tool for the acquisition of knowledge, and ethics is (or should be) a tool for seeking wisdom - it should be obvious that I agree with Daniel in his definition of the twain.
  
  By this token, ethics should be an evolving process, again just like science, and the questions we design should be posed in the search for a greater wisdom than whatever such we may posess at present. It is, in my opinion, a clear misunderstanding of ethics to think of it as a simple exchange of opinion, or that any ethical question that has us scrambling for an answer that eludes us somehow indicates that ethics "don't work" or are not important - the lesson of such questions depend entirely on how they were designed.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Noreena Hertz: How to use experts -- and when not to

  Feb 21 2011: I'd be right on board with this speaker if what she said was to listen critically (like people such as Michael Shermer do) - but that isn't what she is saying.
  
  What she is doing is lumping *every* kind of expert together, and hanging a "broken" sign around the bundle, and that is neither accurate nor useful.
  
  Since she is an economist and made some predictions that were vindicated by the financial crisis, I can't help but think what she is really saying is "don't listen to *the other* experts".
  
  But even in her own field, the talk is inaccurate; the crisis was not driven by expert advice but by greed - in fact, she is not the only expert who predicted the crisis, but *they weren't listened to*, especially not by the general populace, who could not grasp the complicated mechanisms they were talking about (and certainly not figure it out on their own).
  People were put upside down in houses they couldn't afford because the banks appealed to greed, and to a common sense fallacy, namely that when things are going so well, what kind of party pooper actually believes the whole thing could go arse-over-tits with little or no warning...?
  You may recognize this as the opposite of expert advice.
  
  Even so, being an expert in economy, perhaps she should stick to that topic and refrain from this kind of blanket dissing (as we kids say today) of other experts, whose fields of expertise she has little more than a laywoman's knowledge of.
  
  One might also note that New Age, conspiracy theories etc. are booming at this time, hinting that resistance to expertise is actually in vogue - this movement, however, does not tend to show much in the way of common sense.
  
  Just blindly refusing to listen to an expert does not make you sensible.
  
  (by the way, I assume she takes this line of critique as a compliment, if you take my meaning...)

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

  Feb 15 2011: Beautiful - and, dare I say, kinda obvious? Not to belittle the science here, of course, which is truly beautiful. But it makes perfect sense that this exact "method" is what a super-learning-machine - the mind of a child - would do to arrange experience (which it does by arranging the brain) in ways that makes the experience useful. Keep in mind that the child is built for learning how to survive and function, and to assume that the parents (or rearing adults, whoever they are) are examples to follow.
  
  Perhaps we might also take this away from Kuhl's talk and research - that we, adults, are indeed examples for children, who have no choice but to follow our lead. And if we take to heart her final remark about openness and continued learning, maybe we can also keep ind mind that we're examples for each other...
  
  Thank you for sharing this wonderful body of work!

• A reply on Talk: Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?

  Dec 12 2010: Thanks for the link, Michael, a very interesting paper which I'll devote a little more time to as soon as I can.
  I'm not entirely sure, though, that those graphs contain fuel consumption etc. during mining and transport of main fuel (oil, coal or ore) - it's not specifically stated, or did I miss that?
  
  I feel that I should point out, being an opponent of nuclear energy, that NE is in fact a near-perfect energy technology, low on emissions and high on output - it's just that, it's extremely vulnerable (not to attack but to things like fuel shortages; we're only running a few hundred plants now but imagine them being numerous enough to cover future energy needs, which will only skyrocket), and when things do go wrong, the consequences seem pretty great - again, consider enough plants, and large enough ones, to cover future energy requirements.
  
  I just think we'd be better off with something that doesn't have that factor and doesn't use fuel at all - and focus our tech skills there...

• A reply on Talk: Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?

  Dec 12 2010: Easy on the caps there, John - we can hear you.
  
  You emphasize the word "electrical", why is that? Which other sort of energy would a wind farm produce, and is that a problem?
  
  Also, Denmark, being a very small country with upwards of 4500 miles of coast line, would be quite amiss not to use near coastal areas, as upposed to farmlands or residential real estate, for this kind of thing - it's not because we are maxed out.

• A reply on Talk: Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change

  Sep 12 2010: Actually, CCC wll most likely *not* review changes in technology, unless they are specifically prompted (by whom?) to do so - as Bjørn points out the Dream Team is made up of economists, and as such they'll be likely to deem new, and therefore untested and unknown, technologies as financially risky.
  Some players in the business world have already begun to realize that a purely economic point of view is likely, if not certain, to miss important points - it also seems that innovation, the most important force or process in fighting the problems of the present and future, is stifled by overemphasis on financial goals (like businesses cutting R&D to bump up the quarterlies because hey, it's just research...).
  
  Lomborg is not wrong, there are sensitive issues that must be discussed - but he is, I believe, wrong in riding only economics and expecting them to take him across the goal line. There's just more to it than that, even if he is right at the face of it.

• A reply on Talk: Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change

  Sep 11 2010: Thanks for posting the links Michael - a truly great and inspiring talk!!
  
  Indeed a problem with Lomborg (as with many other people) is that, while his points and logic is pretty much dead on the money given his own premises, his rhetorical prowess and personal charisma can dazzle the audience and keep people from investigating wether or not those premises are solid.
  
  What we need to do in facing the climate challenge is to separate out the science, facts and exploration of the problem itself from the politics of (hopefully) implementing solutions to it, so as not to muddy up the issue - but Lomborg is doing the exact opposite of that, and the work of CCC is highly political in nature.
  
  
  
  I'm sure you don't need me to tell you but I will anyway: - keep up the sterling work!!
  
  :)
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change

  Sep 11 2010: There's something very interesting about this talk, besides the controversy that has become inherent to Lomborg's name (the climate scepticism) - it seems to involuntariy reveal a fundamental trait to economic thinking (ET for short).
  The tenet of ET seems to be that with economic prosperity progress will come automatically - make people less poor and they will solve the rest of their problems.
  This is logical to a western ET'er; they all live in the wonderful world of great things brought about through economic prosperity, and need only look around to see this concept at work - so it should be the same for the 3rd world when they get richer.
  
  But.
  
  If you zoom back out a little and look at the list again, you'll find that most of the problems on it are, in fact, caused directly or indirectly by the economic growth in the west. Yes, we make solutions, but we also make problems.
  
  So it's fair to say that economy alone doesn't solve problems - maybe CCC needs more than just economists...
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Jeremy Rifkin: "The empathic civilization"

  Aug 29 2010: Interesting talk - also referencing another great talk, V. S. Ramachandrans speech on the mirror neurons, which I love.
  
  One thing I noticed though, is that mirror neurons (MN) is one thing - that's experimental fact (go check out VS's talk if you're uncertain) - but the rest is ideology. What if MN are just for learing better? Egoistically?
  
  What if we jumped at Haiti to feel better about ourselves, egoistically? A lot of people and countries did not follow through on the promised help...
  
  What if Rifkin is right, but just as we could get better, we can also destroy our empathy systematically, just as nature built it for us, systematically?
  
  What if we can't empathise properly through technology, maybe because we still see a suffering person on TV as just a mass of pixels?
  - we can't, after all, smell him, or go to him to touch and comfort him, so what if some part of our supersmart brain concludes that he is not actually real?
  
  Should we hope for the best, but prepare for the worst?
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?

  Jun 12 2010: I live in Denmark where we cover some 15-20% of our energy consumption via wind power, and I have to say that Stewart is incorrect - we are not maxed out. We've just opened another large wind farm (Horns Rev 2), producing a little more than 200MW of electricity, and we've plenty of coastal waters for more of those.
  
  By the way, people will complain about wind turbines ind their back yards too, so that isn't a particular argument agains nuclear plants... just sayin :)
  
  Also, the argument that you have to buy oil- or nuclear-produced energy at times with low wind or sun suggests that we might as well buy RES-produced energy - in fact, Denmark buys hydro-electricity from Norway even now when we need to. So if we're already trading energy, local weather is a moot point.
  
  Also-also, the argument of not needing any fuel at all, removing a great deal of logistics entirely - is that factored into these numbers? How much fuel is used in obtaining and shipping fuel, at what cost in pollution?