TED Community » Philipp Böing

More About Me

I'm passionate about

work and projects; good books and movies; technology and innovation, science and sci-fi; singing and performing in musicals; great ideas, meaningful conversations; TED

An idea worth spreading

"The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance, but to overcome it' (Lawrence Krauss, during a conversation with Richard Dawkins at Stanford's Aurora Forum about science education and intelligent design)

Talk to me about

Technology; books and movies; science and sci-fi; your favorite TED talk

People don't know that I'm good at

Frothing milk and making cappuccino.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +205 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Is there a working hypothesis as to how consciousness arises?

  Apr 19 2011: Another corollary to this point is, that consciousness is usually very overrated. We are conscious of much less than we think we are.
  Daniel Dennett dispels the myth of what he calls the 'Cartesian Theater'.
  Here's one of his TED talks: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness.html
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Watch TED on TV and have TED audio files

  Feb 17 2011: If you have an apple tv you could easily watch TED on your TV, since it's already a podcast in iTunes. Also, there's the OpenTV project that TED launched to encourage TV stations to build programmes around TED. I'm not sure how much that has taken off yet, though, I haven't heard anything about it since launch.
  
  I agree that an additional audio format would be a nice second option for most TEDtalks (as you said, not all are useful - a photography talk doesn't work without the visuals...) You could already do it yourself now, but an audio only podcast would be more convenient.

• A comment on Conversation: Has TED EVER had an Australia Aboriginal speaker? If so, where can I find the talk?

  Feb 17 2011: Not TED itself, but TEDx's in Australia would be a good starting place.
  
  Apparently just a couple of days ago at TEDxManitoba, three aboriginal men were interviewed on stage and made quite an impact. Unfortunately the video isn't yet uploaded, but take a look at this: http://www.nothinginwinnipeg.com/2011/02/towards-a-more-diverse-tedx-manitoba/
  
  Also there was this from TEDxSydney, though I'm not sure it meets what you're looking for:
  "Mary Victor O'Reeri - Indigenous Australian Wisdom. A Story of Life, Discovery & Death"
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYAR-UYo04w&feature=player_embedded

• A reply on Conversation: The use of population control in the fight against climate change

  Feb 16 2011: Let me say that I'm not necessarily against population control, but I think you're severly overestimating the problem.
  As Hans Rosling has pointed out (see my other post), population growth declines steadily. Also, consider the massive trend towards urbanization. People living in cities have a much smaller footprint on the environment, and - closer to the question of population - when people move to cities there's also a significant drop in children per woman. So, while there're always many things to worry about, the population isn't amongst them.
  
  An another note: You only have to look at China to look at a large-scale method of population control that worked. I'm however quite certain that a 'one-child-policy' isn't easily possible in other cultures (the question of desirability is another). An interesting issue culturally raised about this (I believe I heard it first asked by Christopher Hitchens, but I might be mistaken) is that China has now raised generations of only-children. Literally a whole culture for whom the word "sibling" / "brother" / "sister" has no direct meaning. Thats an fascinating cultural byproduct to me (although, as I realize now, slightly off track, so excuse me ;-) )
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: What's the best hidden gem in the TED archive?

  Feb 16 2011: My favorite hidden musical performance:
  Pamelia Kurstin and the theremin. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pamelia_kurstin_plays_the_theremin.html
  
  Also, one of my personal and early favorites:
  Patrick Awuah on Educating Leaders (at TEDafrica) http://www.ted.com/talks/patrick_awuah_on_educating_leaders.html

• A reply on Conversation: What's the best hidden gem in the TED archive?

  Feb 16 2011: agreed, definitely one of the most inspirational ones.

• A comment on Conversation: How can we revolutionise education?

  Feb 16 2011: Another talk that I think is very relevant to this question is Sugata Mitra's "Child driven education", particularly insightful on the possibilities and limits of technology in education - http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html
• +2

  A reply on Conversation: Mere transfer of approaches and processes from successful enterprises to poverty eradication will not work, and could set back efforts too

  Feb 16 2011: That is not necessarily true: Huge profits have been made when China and India (although there is still a substantial amount of poverty left) have started to develop. In fact, isn't it quite the opposite: As regions develop (ie. poverty decreases) this increases the potential for non-zero-sum games, as these regions are integrated in a web of dependencies, specializations and sharing of labor. So there is clearly a profit to be made from eradicating poverty. However, this is an effort that requires long-term investment and patience, whereas there are other investment opportunities which yield more short-term profit.
  The "problem" isn't that there's no profit in investing in poverty regions, but that there's more profit in other regions like emerging economies.
• +7

  A reply on Conversation: A world without religion, how will it really look?

  Feb 15 2011: wow, this is the first comment I've read on the TED conversations that made me look for a "vote down" button (which I'm happy doesn't exists, which I think is actually a good thing, since it doesn't discourage people from expressing contrarian / unpopular views...)
  
  I'm part of a growing number of atheists and agnostics who try to apply rationality and skepticism. We don't go around at nights to engage in rape or murder or 'more and more and more'. Why do you assert his opinion? What are your experiences with people who lose their faith (or never had any) and also their moral compass?
  
  On the other hand, there are some religious people who use their faith to justify acts of extreme cruelty, including genital mutilation, murder and 'more and more and more'. I'm not saying that religion leads necessarily to violence (although you say the absence of it does), and indeed most people of faith are good people just as most people without it are, but there is a worrisome tendency for extremists 'who have god on their side' to really lose a sense of moral boundaries.
  I concede the opposite point however: If you are a person who has violent tendencies, religion might be one way to channel it, with a big leviathan looming overhead, keeping you in check. Maybe for some people this makes them behave morally, and they might really behave otherwise without diving Big Brother. It seems to me however, that this isn't a very high standart of morality at all. Not doing evil simply for fear of punishment is surely the least moral reason.
  
  The fact is: Human beings (psychopaths exluded) are born with an immense innate capacity for empathy and morality. We enjoy being good to one another much more than doing harm.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: The use of population control in the fight against climate change

  Feb 15 2011: This just reminded me of a question asked by Hans Rosling earlier: http://www.ted.com/conversations/39/why_do_so_many_think_that_popu.html
  
  The fact is, as countries escape the poverty trap and women are empowered, population growth is no longer an issue. The only measure we have to undertake to "control the population" is indeed to empower women in the bottom billion countries and help them escape the poverty trap.
  The "Total consumption" in your equation then has to be tackled by addressing energy efficiency, new energy resources and maybe social engineering to create environmentally conscious behaviour (the problem with this is of course, that often enough we have created seeminly green trends that aren't so green at all, or indeed the opposite, like the 'organic food movement')