Apr 15 2013: Certainly there is investment. However, compare 800 million pounds to the billions spent, and projected to continue to be spent, on the Keystone XL pipeline. They spend money where they believe they can get a return on their investments. When it makes sense to invest in solar they do so. When it makes sense to build pipes, they do that. Currently the math works out so that the amount of money invested in traditional petroleum based energy significantly outweighs that spent on solar expansion.
Mar 14 2013: "Big Oil" just wants to make money. They don't care where it comes from. They're perfectly happy pumping natural gas, or offshore oil, or building nuclear plants, or anything else that's able to return the massive profits that those portions of the energy sector do. The reason they haven't invested in solar or wind is because the ROI sucks. If they could make $16 billion in 3 months making solar panels they'd jump ship in a second.
The key is making these industries profitable. If you can't make profits with solar and wind then the only people building them will be the people who care more about the environment, or social consciousness, or whatever, more than they do about money. Unfortunately those things don't put food on the table, they don't buy houses, and they don't provide for families, let alone build massive fortunes.
A competitive landscape to make these industries massively profitable (which is necessary to employ millions) would deal with "big oil" inherently. "Big oil" will be part of the competition once there is an obvious profit to it.
Mar 14 2013: "Donors just don't want more than half their contributions to go to advertising, marketing, or executive salaries"
Why not? They're fine with their retirement investment doing that, because that's what's necessary for a return on that investment. If the goal is to make an impact and help people, then we should use the best tools available. If the goal is to not spend money on advertising, then we're doing a pretty good job of that.
Why is it a more important goal to not spend money on advertising than it is to double or triple money spent directly on charitable causes?
Mar 14 2013: I don't have a problem with people being paid well in the non-profit sector. However, the recent NY Times article outlines that the extreme costs of healthcare are being driven in some part by multi-million dollar salaries for hospital executives. This happens at the same time those non-profit hospitals are providing virtually no free/low cost healthcare to the poor, and charging exorbitant amounts to most of their patients.
I don't pretend to know how these executives are spending their money, but based on the way their hospitals are often run I tend to doubt that they're turning around and putting a quarter of that pay back into philanthropic objectives.
Dan has some good points, but there must be accountability in any business. That includes both for and non profit businesses. Currently we don't have much in either. I don't know how we incentivize social accountability in all businesses, but it's what we need.
Dec 7 2012: Why? Terrapower is not a pressurized reactor. It's also not water cooled. It doesn't have any of the problems that Kirk was ascribing to them. It can also burn Thorium.
Having multiple effective, efficient reactor designs is a boon and something to be endeavored towards. Then whichever makes the most sense for a given location, terrestrial or otherwise, can be used.
Nov 16 2011: You're correct that humans want to do more than reproduce. That said, only traits which benefit our ability to reproduce will be selected for over time. It is entirely possible for admirable traits to occur which do not benefit reproduction, but they will not be selected for.
Take the structure of the human iris for example. Closeup views of a human eye are extremely beautiful, but that beauty was not selected for. The ability to see well was. The beauty is incidental.
So then art, music, benevolence, and various other aspects which we see as core to humanity may over time. Some of these things will directly add to our ability to reproduce, and some will not. Those which encourage reproduction will be selected for and will proliferate regardless of whether or not we see them as admirable or reprehensible. This isn't a reductionist issue, it's a principle we've seen played out in every organism we've looked at, ourselves included.
What is amazing is that we as humans now have the ability, through reason, experiment, and scientific thought, to modify the next generation. Through the use of simple means such as eugenics all the way up to advancements in genetic engineering we are, or soon will be, able to modify future generations. There are of course significant ethical and moral issues which come with these abilities. We have historically been driven by wholly by natural processes. We now have the ability to change that. Hopefully we will do so responsibly.
Nov 8 2011: He answers your question at the very end: we move so that we can eventually reproduce. We move so that we can find food, avoid danger, reproduce, and then protect our children once we have reproduced.
His point is that if you are trying to study why the brain does something (interprets sights, stores memory, tells you you're hungry), you should reduce that action down to its base cause. In his opinion, and he makes a strong case, the root cause of any functionality that the brain develops is to help it move the body.
You also seem to be equating movement with walking or running. Wolpert is talking about any movement, from throwing a spear, to chewing food. Your brain needs to find the most efficient method of doing these things, so that it can save calories, be accurate (hit what you're aiming at) and not make mistakes (you don't want to bite off your own tongue).
Oct 6 2011: The problem with your definition, is that part of it can apply to things which are not alive, and at the same time only applies to higher life forms. Bacteria have no aspiration, no longing, nor drive. All they do is multiply. Fire is the same way. It multiplies, spreads, and then dies out. One of these is alive, one is not.
Aspiration, requires a complex logic engine such as a brain. Viruses simply replicate; there is no desire there. Crystals do the same thing. Given the necessary building blocks they will multiply unendingly, but there is no purpose to it.
Oct 5 2011: "I think we need a law to protect innocent virtual life forms."
Assuming you aren't just trolling here, do we also need laws to protect innocent viruses? Or bacteria? Should you go to jail for fighting off an infection?
Pay more attention to the video. There is no "heat" involved here; that was a simplification. He was modifying the amount of information which changed with every generation. The "virtual life forms" you speak of are just packets of information, like words on a page. The information is written, examined, displayed to a screen, and then it "dies." The information from the previous generation is used to write a new one. This happens thousands of times a second. Each piece of information lives out its life, if you can call it that, perfectly fine. The population changes over time and, eventually the population "dies out" when it cannot pass on information.
Oct 5 2011: You don't understand the issue. We aren't building houses, we're looking for them. You just argued that we should only look for Victorian mansions. That approach isn't helpful when looking in downtown NYC, or suburban Dallas, or a village in Sub-Saharan Africa. We need to find elements common in all life and look for those, rather than looking for mirrors of ourselves.
If we limit our search to things that look identical to us, we'll never find anything. What Mr Adami has done is define a way to analyze components of a system and determine whether or not they were put there by something that is alive.
TEDCred score: +33.70 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.
A comment on Talk: Jennifer Granholm: A clean energy proposal -- race to the top!
A reply on Talk: Jennifer Granholm: A clean energy proposal -- race to the top!
The key is making these industries profitable. If you can't make profits with solar and wind then the only people building them will be the people who care more about the environment, or social consciousness, or whatever, more than they do about money. Unfortunately those things don't put food on the table, they don't buy houses, and they don't provide for families, let alone build massive fortunes.
A competitive landscape to make these industries massively profitable (which is necessary to employ millions) would deal with "big oil" inherently. "Big oil" will be part of the competition once there is an obvious profit to it.
A reply on Talk: Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong
Why not? They're fine with their retirement investment doing that, because that's what's necessary for a return on that investment. If the goal is to make an impact and help people, then we should use the best tools available. If the goal is to not spend money on advertising, then we're doing a pretty good job of that.
Why is it a more important goal to not spend money on advertising than it is to double or triple money spent directly on charitable causes?
A comment on Talk: Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong
I don't pretend to know how these executives are spending their money, but based on the way their hospitals are often run I tend to doubt that they're turning around and putting a quarter of that pay back into philanthropic objectives.
Dan has some good points, but there must be accountability in any business. That includes both for and non profit businesses. Currently we don't have much in either. I don't know how we incentivize social accountability in all businesses, but it's what we need.
A reply on Talk: Kirk Sorensen: Thorium, an alternative nuclear fuel
Having multiple effective, efficient reactor designs is a boon and something to be endeavored towards. Then whichever makes the most sense for a given location, terrestrial or otherwise, can be used.
A reply on Talk: Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
Take the structure of the human iris for example. Closeup views of a human eye are extremely beautiful, but that beauty was not selected for. The ability to see well was. The beauty is incidental.
So then art, music, benevolence, and various other aspects which we see as core to humanity may over time. Some of these things will directly add to our ability to reproduce, and some will not. Those which encourage reproduction will be selected for and will proliferate regardless of whether or not we see them as admirable or reprehensible. This isn't a reductionist issue, it's a principle we've seen played out in every organism we've looked at, ourselves included.
What is amazing is that we as humans now have the ability, through reason, experiment, and scientific thought, to modify the next generation. Through the use of simple means such as eugenics all the way up to advancements in genetic engineering we are, or soon will be, able to modify future generations. There are of course significant ethical and moral issues which come with these abilities. We have historically been driven by wholly by natural processes. We now have the ability to change that. Hopefully we will do so responsibly.
A reply on Talk: Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
His point is that if you are trying to study why the brain does something (interprets sights, stores memory, tells you you're hungry), you should reduce that action down to its base cause. In his opinion, and he makes a strong case, the root cause of any functionality that the brain develops is to help it move the body.
You also seem to be equating movement with walking or running. Wolpert is talking about any movement, from throwing a spear, to chewing food. Your brain needs to find the most efficient method of doing these things, so that it can save calories, be accurate (hit what you're aiming at) and not make mistakes (you don't want to bite off your own tongue).
A reply on Talk: Christoph Adami: Finding life we can't imagine
Aspiration, requires a complex logic engine such as a brain. Viruses simply replicate; there is no desire there. Crystals do the same thing. Given the necessary building blocks they will multiply unendingly, but there is no purpose to it.
A reply on Talk: Christoph Adami: Finding life we can't imagine
Assuming you aren't just trolling here, do we also need laws to protect innocent viruses? Or bacteria? Should you go to jail for fighting off an infection?
Pay more attention to the video. There is no "heat" involved here; that was a simplification. He was modifying the amount of information which changed with every generation. The "virtual life forms" you speak of are just packets of information, like words on a page. The information is written, examined, displayed to a screen, and then it "dies." The information from the previous generation is used to write a new one. This happens thousands of times a second. Each piece of information lives out its life, if you can call it that, perfectly fine. The population changes over time and, eventually the population "dies out" when it cannot pass on information.
A reply on Talk: Christoph Adami: Finding life we can't imagine
If we limit our search to things that look identical to us, we'll never find anything. What Mr Adami has done is define a way to analyze components of a system and determine whether or not they were put there by something that is alive.