TED Community » Krystian Aparta

More About Me

I'm passionate about

some science fiction, some cognitive science (e.g. conceptual blending), constructive novel perspectives, disowning authority, some music, non-philosophical forays into the mind, kinesthetic thought

An idea worth spreading

"Distance doesn't mean the unity of space" - this is a mnemonic that sums up one of the study quests that I am interested in.I explored the idea of time (conceptualization, inner logic, sources of its "concreteness") in my master's thesis, using conceptual blending and research on episodic memory. While getting to the bottom of my understanding of time,I realized that much the same work could be done for the concept of space.I am especially interested in the concrete conceptual reality of unitary space (non-discrete), and I would like to get deeper into what this is based on, cognitively and culturally. My intuition is that one major source of the power of this "concreteness" is the conceptualization of distance,and its cultural elaboration (e.g. models of location). I find it interesting that I live in, and live by an infinite and yet concrete environment of space. I don't like it that it's counter-intuitive that it be discrete, and would like to explore the structure of my intuition.

Talk to me about

everything but why dogma is not that bad. the unimaginable. ideas pushing out of scope, science fiction, localization, lyrics, Star Trek

People don't know that I'm good at

writing lyrics

Comments

• TEDCred score: +403.30 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Talk: David Anderson: Your brain is more than a bag of chemicals

  Mar 13 2013: I must say that I take issue with summing up years of complex research as "perhaps the kids are just bored and that's why they fidget so much." I must point out that David Anderson did not define what he means by "learning disability." I think he is referring to "problems with studying," which is not the same - learning disabilities are things like dyslexia or dyscalculia. You could argue that there is a problem with semantic memory formation in ADHD, and that can be considered a learning disability. But in a science-based talk, one should not depend on the common "feel" about what a term like "learning disability" may mean when making an important argument. ADHD may cause a lot of emotional and social problems that cause problems with studying. The medication helps with things like time-awareness and reducing impulsiveness, which may in turn help with studying. The meds will not work without coping strategies (something worked out with the caretakers/counselor, e.g. using reminders in your phone, using a bathroom break to wind down during school time), but in some cases, the coping strategies alone are not enough. In the US, ADHD may be "overdiagnosed," but in some countries, it's "underdiagnosed" - kids with ADHD are "treated" with neuroleptic medication to keep them calm, and do not receive the proper counseling from their health-care provider. This is why is important to remember that ADHD medication is really helpful in some cases (e.g. stops people from dangerous behavior) and while it's probably administered too often in the US, generalized anti-ADHD statements like the ones in this talk may be quoted as evidence in other countries to fight the introduction of stimulant medication and prevent the people who would really need from access to the meds. (By "anti-ADHD" I mean undermining the validity of ADHD as a real condition - and I will stress "generalized").
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Re-defining privacy!

  Jan 24 2013: For the good of science, I am willing to disclose some information that I consider private. I would be happy sharing my DNA, and correlating it with a medical history (although in the latter case, I would prefer to have some of it non-disclosed, which does not necessarily mean anonymous). And yes I have seen "Gattaca" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/), and I've read my science fiction, and I know what the imaginary risks are. I like to think that very often, we can pay with a little drop to our convenience or comfort, to get the potential for large gains. So that would be doing that for me - living with my imaginary fears of not getting admitted to a health plan based on some genetic potential would be the little price I would be willing to pay :-)

• A comment on Talk: Joel Burns tells gay teens "it gets better"

  Nov 23 2012: Pink shirts? Really? :/

• A reply on Talk: Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China's workers

  Sep 17 2012: Jacob - you can get the English subtitles off of Amara (www.universalsubtitles.org). This guide should help http://translations.ted.org/wiki/Playing_TEDTalks_with_subtitles_offline
• +4

  A comment on Talk: Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China's workers

  Sep 17 2012: I am surprised at some of the comments I've seen here, with people being appalled at this story, though I think these comments are well-meant. I think it's important to remember that this migrant experience is similar across cultures. I think what helps me to understand this is coming from a post-Communist country (Poland), and also having grown up not very wealthy, and grown up in the country. I also understand a lot of the motivation of the inner-country migrants because I know the experience of Polish people who started migrating inside the European Union when it became possible. Over one million of a total 38 million emigrated to "Western" states (mostly the UK) to work mostly physical jobs. University education is free in Poland, so a lot of the waiters and cleaners and factory workers in the UK are now very educated people ;). The work may have bad conditions and be meaningless (not much hope for development), but they get to save a lot of money, and come back with a lot of experiences that give them more liberty back in Poland - their mind-set changes. They will have seen more of the world, and maybe not be taken in by the demands of their parents back in their home village, thinking up ways to limit their lives towards "tradition." They will have learned at least some of the language (similar to the Mandarin-Cantonese divide in this story). They spend their time there in terrible conditions, work menial jobs, but it is a meaningful experience to them. Some of them do not succeed - 3 years ago, Ewa Sadowska spoke at TEDxKrakow about how she works on re-integrating the new Polish migrant homeless in the UK (the talk is up on YouTube). But this experience of migration should not only be seen in a negative light - there are many sides to this, and like Leslie Chang suggests in her book, it may give rise to a social transformation.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China's workers

  Sep 15 2012: Well if you read her book, it's all about workers moving to factories with better conditions, hunting for jobs at the job fair, etc. This is in stark contrast to what they would often expect at home: marry this guy, bear his kids, live in poverty, be unempowered and uneducated.

• A reply on Talk: Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China's workers

  Sep 15 2012: She meant within moving into higher jobs in the factories that make things for Apple, plus she really added that on as a little joke. She said that what Apple should do, if they wanted to do the things that the workers most care about, would be to offer them classes on some specific skills. Then, she explained that gaining those skills would mean that the workers would move to higher jobs. This means that Apple would be investing in losing its workforce. So she added "yeah hopefully higher jobs but still for Apple."
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China's workers

  Sep 15 2012: This talk was about how positively transformative the experience of migration is for these people. It's not about the factory work but what happens around it and what the move means to them.

• A comment on Talk: Becci Manson: (Re)touching lives through photos

  Aug 6 2012: This is a talk that fans of William Gibson could relate to - thinking of "Pattern Recognition"
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Ami Klin: A new way to diagnose autism

  Jun 21 2012: One thing that I really dislike about this talk - not enough detail on the "treatment" side. 90% of the talk sounds like autism can be cured, and that we can create a theory of mind in autistic children (we can argue that it's possible in high-functioning autism or Asperger's, i.e. to a point where ToM tests can be passed, but currently probably not in the kind of autism that he talks about at the beginning). Then at the end, we learn that it can't. So we get a talk about detecting autism at 6 months. This is great. However, the problem in some communities would be ignorance about autism and lack of access to treatment. I wish that a talk that may give caretakers so much hope because of the way it is phrased would reward those caretakers with more details on what they can expect and how this can be accomplished. For example, what can we improve by starting treatment at 6 months? What does that have to do with the child eventually becoming verbal or "engaging socially"? What of the common regression that happens in autistic children around 2-3, where they lose some or all of the vaguely social abilities that they had? I'm not saying that he should have the answers, but he should have at least alluded to these things, to balance out the parts of his talk that sound like autism is preventable ("how it creates itself" and so on). Because of that kind of phrasing, I would say this talk is unfair, because it may give people false hope, whereas in fact there is real hope in the treatment, and reliable early detection really should bolster up that kind of hope.