TED Community » Bart Vickers

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, freedoms of expression, religion, assembly, and self-determination. Charting the course of our own lives and encouraging personal acts of love and generosity.

Talk to me about

Creative solutions that can work in the real world by empowering the individual.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.20 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: How do you see the future of literature? Do yo think that shorter forms such as poetry and microstories will gain more weight?

  Mar 8 2011: I'm not sure Gabriela (by the way, have you come across an artist in Brooklyn by the name of John Mitchell?); what strikes me as an interesting contradiction is that the short story as a literary form seems almost dead while novels (albeit novels with two-page chapters) seem to maintain popularity....

• A comment on Conversation: Should the internet be a fundamental right?

  Mar 8 2011: Nope--fundamental rights exist intrinsically within an individual, not provided extrinsically by others. The Internet is related closely to our fundamental right to express ourselves, but it in and of itself is not a right.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Should Governments start to measure what really matters to people - their happiness? Or should they stay out of such a private matter?

  Feb 17 2011: Great question--in my personal experience, outside forces impact my happiness/unhappiness only in a transitory, temporary way. I've been happy when seriously ill and sad in the middle of some great parties.
  
  I suppose that at the crux of this is the big question of "how?" From a historical perspective here in the States, our government has mucked things up with astonishing reliability when trying to help things along. And if one is to agree with Cato's (the institute, not the philosopher) assessment of happiness data, freer (less government regulation) economies tend to correlate with higher happiness. Could Cameron use this proposed new metric as an argument for more conservative economic policy?
  
  Another question (and this gets quite heady) is this: is happiness the state of being that one should strive for? I often wrestle with that question myself. While I enjoy happiness, I find myself at my most productive when driven by a profound sense of incompleteness. Not inadequacy, but of potential unfulfilled. While not "happy" at those times, I'm certainly my most creative, engaged, and motivated.
  
  Good topic!

• A reply on Conversation: What are the effects of taxes on motivation and productivity?

  Feb 17 2011: Not to nitpick, but redistribution of wealth is different than a shift in what people earn. The fact that the wealthy are earning more (which could be argued as problematical) than the middle class is a significantly different phenomena than redistributing wealth--the direct confiscation of income from one economic strata (or individual) and giving it to another. In the US economy, "redistribution of wealth" only happens in one direction, downward.

• A comment on Conversation: We spend 3 billion hours a week as a planet playing videogames. Is it worth it? How could it be MORE worth it?

  Feb 17 2011: As a gamer, there are two core psychological traits that gaming can help cultivate: frustration tolerance and delayed gratification. League of Legends, with its forced cooperative/competitive gameplay (often times with teammates who do not share a common language is great at cultivating frustration tolerance.
  
  Games that have extended reward cycles can help players attain the ability to delay gratification. In World of Warcraft, for example, the last few levels of the various professions are painstakingly slow to attain (taking days if not weeks), typically are very expensive in terms of in-game currency, and offer little play benefit while slogging through them. However, the payoff for the delayed gratification is "epic" gear that provides a significant in-game advantage.
  
  So, to non-gamers, there are social cognitive benefits, depending on the types of games that you play.

• A comment on Conversation: Should Governments start to measure what really matters to people - their happiness? Or should they stay out of such a private matter?

  Feb 17 2011: My assumption (and please let me know if I'm wrong--it's how I learn new stuff) is that a government would want to measure something in order to control or "improve" it. I think it is impossible for any outside force to "make us happy," so an attempt to do so would ultimately be futile and thus, wasteful of limited government resources.
  
  I would look to our governments to create an environment in which we can pursue our individual experiences of happiness and contentedness (without hurting others), but nothing more beyond that.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Can people who deny science be educated? How?

  Feb 17 2011: Of course. Begin by genuinely attempting to connect with and understand their point of view. When is skepticism healthy and when is it unhealthy? When does disagreement drive better science, and when is it simply a defense mechanism for our "pet" beliefs? Acknowledge that history is filled with bad science that has been replaced by better science. Educate them on how to read data and research, how to identify the traits of neutral, data-driven science and separate it from science that serves an agenda. Educate them on the difference between science and, as Specter put it, issues of law, morality, and ethics.
  
  You may have a rare opportunity to encourage these students to become objective researchers themselves.