Mar 21 2012: Fritzie, I'm not really sure about K-12 education in the US, but having gone through the liberal arts curriculum at Yale I'm sure that K-12 in US must be the most updated and world-class system. However, in India and from what I here even in Western Europe, systems are totally outdated, hardly any innovation is taking place, and things haven't changed for decades. And you're right I shouldn't have taken a swipe at History/Geography, but yes I do feel that many important skills and abilities that would be highly critical in life after education are just not touched upon at all.
In any case, would love to hear regarding what latest cutting edge stuff can be adopted for our project.
Sep 8 2011: Wow, that is an awesome reply totally puts things in perspective. I think we tend to fall into the false negative trap when we lack the micro level explanation. Not so confused anymore!
Sep 7 2011: Matthieu trust me I would LOVE to believe that they're just con artists since it fits into my understanding of the world. So it can't be the case that I wanted to believe it (wouldn't be asking this question then, right?). So they're just fooling us? Any brain magician have anything to say..?
Apr 10 2011: One of my favorite ponderings! I'm not even going to try to answer it but would love to share a bit of my perspective.
First, the burden of proof always lies on the claimant and hence free will is something that remains to be proved. So by default we should be refusing to believe it exists from a scientific perspective, which asks us to be skeptical about things before we accept it. But that is hardly the case and it seems we have a STRONG innate inclination to believe that we are acting on a free will. This innate inclination might be a necessary evolutionary adaptation, which our dear Robert Wright calls one of the many self-deceptive traits of our psychology. There is every reason to challenge the idea of free will.
Another related but sort of irrelevant fact: it has been established in scientific experiments that people who are happy and confident have a very strong 'feeling' of free will and this 'feeling' reduces proportionately as you move down on that scale with depressives feeling like they have very little control and free will in their lives. Little risky to re-phrase abstracts of experiments, but it is on those lines. Great, great debate. I personally believe it is a self-deceptive evolutionary adaptation.
Mar 23 2011: Very exciting stuff! But when it comes to ethics, I really don't understand why there is so much debate about how such experiments affect the autonomy and lives of creatures when even today billions of animals are living horrid lives only to end up on humanity's dining table. I mean your local butcher has caused more suffering than all the genetic engineers of the world put together. I don't see any TED talks raising this very grave moral issue that humanity must address first.
Jan 31 2011: I can hardly believe the gross generalizations made in the talk. Europe is ignorant, westerners cannot understand China and are wrong about their predictions. He is too keen to criticize 'our' supposed attitude or perspective. How he can generalize opinions to an entire country, continent or culture I do not understand.
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A reply on Conversation: Where is the revolution in education?
In any case, would love to hear regarding what latest cutting edge stuff can be adopted for our project.
A reply on Conversation: Are there scientific explanations to psychokinesis and telepathy?
A comment on Conversation: Are there scientific explanations to psychokinesis and telepathy?
A comment on Conversation: There is no such thing as free will.
First, the burden of proof always lies on the claimant and hence free will is something that remains to be proved. So by default we should be refusing to believe it exists from a scientific perspective, which asks us to be skeptical about things before we accept it. But that is hardly the case and it seems we have a STRONG innate inclination to believe that we are acting on a free will. This innate inclination might be a necessary evolutionary adaptation, which our dear Robert Wright calls one of the many self-deceptive traits of our psychology. There is every reason to challenge the idea of free will.
Another related but sort of irrelevant fact: it has been established in scientific experiments that people who are happy and confident have a very strong 'feeling' of free will and this 'feeling' reduces proportionately as you move down on that scale with depressives feeling like they have very little control and free will in their lives. Little risky to re-phrase abstracts of experiments, but it is on those lines. Great, great debate. I personally believe it is a self-deceptive evolutionary adaptation.
A comment on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering
A comment on Talk: Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China