TED Talks: War Tapes, The Direction of History, Ant Colonies, and a Passionate Life
Some more notes:
Sarah Deborah Scranton: Scenes from “The War Tapes”
Filmer of the war tapes, a personal look into the lives of soldiers in Iraq. The presentation achieves this intimacy not only through clips of the documentary, but also through the personal stories of Scranton herself. Wouldn’t it be cool if every polarized political debate be given this context, first?
Robert Wright: How cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict
Moral development, History has a direction. “Non-zero-sum-ness” as the driver for these trends, but also as the thing that links us in negative outcomes as well.
Deborah Gordon: How do ants know what to do?
Contrary to popular belief, ant colonies don’t have any central intelligence. The queen doesn’t control the behavior of the colony through chemical signals. In a series of experiments over the last 20 years, Gordon has demonstrated that colony behavior is fully emergent. Each ant, operating on a small set of rules (e.g. rate of contact with other ants), contributes a tiny part to colony-wide phenomena that ensure the survival of the whole. The experiments she describes are very cool, as are her descriptions of colony life. Ants seem to blur the line around what we designate an individual organism of a species.
Ben Dunlap: The story of a passionate life
In a talk that is more stage performance than lecture, Dunlap weaves a tightly knit story of his mentors. The experiences of all these men (coincidentally, all Hungarian) draw a picture of life well lived, an emergence from suffering with an unshakeable faith in people and a insatiable desire to learn and create.
Related Posts:
- TED Talks: African Fractals, Meditation, and the Oil Endgame (December, 2007)
- TED Talks: Humanity’s Violent History, Developing Rwanda, Redefining “Bioenergy” (December, 2007)
- The Asswipes Abroad (July, 2008)
- Video from the Mugunga Camps (January, 2008)
- Where are They Now? (January, 2008)
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