TED Community » James Ginther

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• A reply on Talk: Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders

  May 13 2013: I think our society benefits from more women leadership. Not because women strive to dominate, like we men do, but because women are better collaborators. Of course this is a generalization, but my observations suggest that men respond better to hierarchies and dominance based organizational structures and women tend to thrive in egaliarian, task based structures where communication and cooperation have more traction. Is it because I am a man that I hate to be told what to do and am always looking for a way to get on top? I can't generalize this tendancy, I didn't take a poll to see if other men felt the same way.
  
  This question, what is the difference in thinking of men and women has been a recurring one in my quest to understand women, the concrete differences between men and women, society and the nature of truth. (How can we know truth without knowing our own minds? Our mind is the lense through which we observe and understand.)
  
  In trying to understand my own mindset and comparing to the way women think the closest I have gotten are general tendancies. One thing that may help to understand WHY men prefer to work within hierarchies and women are better suited to talking it out as equals may be found in the structure of our brains.
  
  Women's brains have 7X more connections between left and right hemispheres. This makes a woman's brain more limber in going from logic to feelings and back again.
  
  For men, because we have fewer connections, we tend to stay in one hemisphere longer, working out ways create a cohesive and comprehensive paradigm that covers all the details and rules that reality demand of us. A limitation becomes a strength. We create more extensive adn comprehensive paradigms. If it works we are a genius. If it misses the mark, we are idiots.
  
  Once that paradigm has been worked out, it becomes a common language and a source of decision making factors. Men like this because instead of being dominated by Joe, we are instead dominated by an idea.
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  A comment on Talk: Angela Lee Duckworth: The key to success? Grit

  May 13 2013: I am a big fan of Dr. Dweck's book 'Mindset'. I was a talented kid, people called me smart, but failed big time after school. It left me wondering what was wrong with me. I searched NLP, took self development courses, listened to self improvement audio tapes, but that key insight, the growth mindset, eluded me. It was an epiphany to learn about the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. I had a fixed mindset and was striving to learn how to change that.
  
  Other books have helped me a lot. The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and the Enlightened Warrior Training Course put out by Peak Potentials stand out in helping me understand my mind and to develop grit and the growth mindset.
  
  I have learned to praise myself for hard work, diligence and persistence and I am slowly improving. My approach to hard work is more constructive. I chunk down learning tasks better. If I have an achilles heel it is my tendency to come up with a 100 new ideas to distract me from my current course. With the help of some of the practices gleaned from 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen I give myself permission to brainstorm these new ideas and then file them away in the 'someday maybe' file until the task in front of me is completed.
  
  I liked this talk. I am glad Ms. Duckworth referred to Dr. Dweck. As soon as she started talking about grit my little voice was screaming 'you have got to read Mindset!' I am glad she did.

• A reply on Talk: Andreas Schleicher: Use data to build better schools

  Feb 22 2013: I am not seeing epidemiology here. Statistics, maybe. Epidemiology is not the only science that uses statistics. Mr. Schleicher is comparing teacher salaries, classroom sizes, etc, and is looking for a correlation to successful education outcomes, reading levels, math skills, etc. Looks more like economics to me.
  
  Deming and Drucker, management experts, agree what gets measured improves. The work at PISA gets government, parents and teachers to challenge their assumptions, look beyond themselves to other models of success, and ask that important and fruitful question, "How can we do better?" Measurements like these allow those concerned to sift through the noise and see patterns that might be otherwise missed.
  
  I liked the talk. I found it enlightening.

• A reply on Talk: Sanjay Pradhan: How open data is changing international aid

  Nov 2 2012: I agree that building teams, and being part of a team is important. Sharing knowledge, remaining open to change, engaging the community, and building a reputation for trustworthiness are all crucial to building a better future.
  
  I get nervous when people talk about the 'collective'. I wonder why. It reminds me of that book 'The Crysalids' with the mind control children for some reason.
  
  I think learning is done by individuals with help from those around them. In his book 'The Talent Code' Daniel Coyle talks about 'ignition', that is where the student becomes a passionate learner and works harder than any other person could possibly expect. I highly recommend it.

• A reply on Talk: Sanjay Pradhan: How open data is changing international aid

  Nov 2 2012: The cell phone with a web connection has more communication power than the phone President Ronald Reagan used.
  
  Wikipedia, Khanacademy.org and Google, combined with curiosity is the formula. Billions of minds can start to connect the pieces.
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  A reply on Talk: Sanjay Pradhan: How open data is changing international aid

  Nov 2 2012: It didn't become a sound bite in the US election which is focusing on the economy. This talk shows the Obama government is making strides in this area.
  
  http://www.ted.com/talks/beth_noveck_demand_a_more_open_source_government.html
  
  
  Also you can check out www.Whitehouse.gov.
  
  P.S. I am Canadian, and a big fan of Obama. I think he may be one of the US's best presidents. Most of the accomplishments of his administration are below the radar, long term, collaborative and, well, adult. They do not translate well into the language of instant gratification or sound bites.
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  A comment on Talk: Faith Jegede: What I’ve learned from my autistic brothers

  Nov 2 2012: 'The pursuit of normality is the ultimate sacrifice of potential'.
  
  I have never heard it said better.
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  A comment on Talk: Sanjay Pradhan: How open data is changing international aid

  Oct 30 2012: The son is a living eulogy to the father.
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  A comment on Talk: Marco Tempest: A cyber-magic card trick like no other

  Oct 26 2012: Great magic, and great story telling. He managed to include every card in the deck. I think.
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  A comment on Talk: Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

  Oct 26 2012: This is a very important talk. I have friends on facebook I strongly disagree with on certain subjects. It is tempting to argue with them but I do not like to argue when emotions are high. When emotions go up, intelligence goes down, and some of these topics are very emotional. I do appreciate hearing contrary points of view, though.