TED Community » Allan Macdougall

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• A reply on Conversation: 97% of Climate Scientists Agree Climate Change Is Man Made: Time For The Deniers To Admit The Truth ?

  2 days ago: And there was no conclusive evidence of the iceberg's presence in the last few moments of the Titanic.
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  A comment on Conversation: 97% of Climate Scientists Agree Climate Change Is Man Made: Time For The Deniers To Admit The Truth ?

  3 days ago: From New Scientist - article entitled "Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic":
  
  "A climate denier has a position staked out in advance, and sorts through the data employing "confirmation bias" - the tendency to look for and find confirmatory evidence for pre-existing beliefs and ignore or dismiss the rest."
  
  "[Denial]... is the automatic gainsaying of a claim regardless of the evidence for it - sometimes even in the teeth of evidence. Denialism is typically driven by ideology or religious belief, where the commitment to the belief takes precedence over the evidence. Belief comes first, reasons for belief follow, and those reasons are winnowed to ensure that the belief survives intact."
  
  http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.000-living-in-denial-when-a-sceptic-isnt-a-sceptic.html
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  A comment on Conversation: What are some realistic and creative ways to reduce wealth inequality?

  4 days ago: Have a serious re-think of what it really is that makes us 'wealthy'.
  
  Then we can work on 'inequality'. We may even find that inequality disappears all by itself without any prompting, if wealth had a different identity.
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  A comment on Conversation: A deceptively simple question: What is, was, and will always be impossible to occur?

  4 days ago: A particle, we are told, is also a wave.

• A comment on Conversation: Is equality feasible and is it worth achieving? Subquestion: By your definitions, is equality synonymous with fairness?

  4 days ago: Equality is probably feasible but mostly not worth achieving. For "Equality", read "Dumbing Down" of diversity. Diversity makes the world interesting, full of vitality and healthy. Diversity makes us intelligent and creative.
  
  Equality is not synonymous with fairness. However, diversity with fairness, understanding and respect is far better than the mushy, deadly boring contrivances of 'sameness'.
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  A comment on Conversation: What makes you care?

  5 days ago: The nature of my work means that I have the very genuine honour and privilege of hearing personal stories that sometimes have been 'locked up' inside - often for years, or even lifetimes. Those hitherto locked-up stories that have shaped the person sitting in front of me, are often so powerful as to induce a profound empathic reaction in me - such that I feel I have almost lived that story myself.
  
  What makes me care, is an understanding of their experience via my own lived experience. If there is any similarity or match in emotional reaction to such experiences, the more powerful the story seems to me. That power is increased a thousandfold if the person has never related the story to anyone else before, because of its raw, visceral nature. Seldom has such a story been modified by the intellect to be told as a story 'by rote'.
  
  That's not to say relating stories by rote are 'flat' by comparison. They can also be powerful if the listener can perceive that the emotion attached to it is still genuinely felt.

• A comment on Conversation: What makes a good judge?

  5 days ago: An injustice in one culture might be regarded as just in another. Therefore a good judge in one country might be a poor one in another, where even 'Natural Justice' seems to us to contradict ethical norms.
  
  It is a mistake in my opinion, for one set of laws to try and distort and modify another set of laws that have evolved over hundreds of years, and exist for good reason. For instance, Western laws imposed on a country where Sharia law endemically exists, would probably be extremely uncomfortable for that host country - and vice versa.
  
  A one-world law, and any judge who is regarded as representative of it, would be up against countries who would vigorously defend their own cultures from being eroded. Legislation, as some sort of nebulous Western blanket smothering every country would rid the world of its rich diversity and vitality.
  
  This is a somewhat long-winded way of saying that a good judge is one who is capable of being empathically disposed towards regional and cultural diversity.
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  A reply on Conversation: What do you think about Islam?

  May 17 2013: Fair enough.
  
  I would add: "Please don't go to war, and claim that God is on your side".

• A reply on Conversation: What do you think about Islam?

  May 17 2013: As your first reaction to Vahid's question, I feel it it was implied.
  
  So if the question was: "What do you think about Christianity?", you still would have said: "Please don't blow things up"...?

• A reply on Conversation: What do you think about Islam?

  May 17 2013: I admire those principles.
  
  What I'm trying to do is to get you to discuss the notion that blowing things up cannot be confined exclusively to Islam.
  
  I put to you that Christianity, and economic ideologies in the name of Christianity, are just as much to blame for world atrocities - if not more so.
  
  The roots of Christianity and Islam, and their proponents, are much more peaceful than their modern, media portrayed equivalents. Those modern equivalents seem to me to be too steeped in politics and economics for them to be regarded any more as legitimate religions. Both are as bad as each other in that respect.
  
  The upshot is that oil is not a God-given right for Western consumption, if it is at all costs. Neither are fundamentalist reactions towards such greed. Which came first, do you think?
  
  I ask you somewhat bluntly, do you think Islam would be a peace-loving religion if it wasn't for oil?