Video: Big History

David Christian, a professor of history at San Diego State University, recently delivered an excellent talk at TED about "big history". The video is embedded below and the direct link is here.

Video: Michael Spencer defends skepticism and science

Journalist Michael Spencer, author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, has an excellent TEDTalk out (embedded below or click here). It's a defense of science and rationality delivered with passion, verve, humor and a touch - appropriately - of anger. Highly recommended.

Video: Ten things you didn't know about orgasm (NSFW)

Mary Roach, science writer and author of Bonk: The Curios Coupling of Science and Sex, gave an excellent and funny talk at TED earlier this year about the science of sex. (Embedded below, or click here). Warning, this is mildly NSFW.

Oh. Hold out for the pig farmers bit, it's priceless...

Video: Tarter on SETI at TED

Every year, TED (my favorite conference) picks three extraordinary individuals who are dedicated to some worthy goal, and awards each $100,000 and a 'wish' which the TED community will then help fulfill. One of this year's winners is Jill Tarter, an astronomer and SETI's director for research, who had a worthy wish and gave a fantastic talk (embedded below, or click here). While SETI has been somewhat controversial, there is no doubt that finding extraterrestrial intelligence would be one of the greatest discoveries of all time, so the search, in my view, is justified despite the low short-term probability of success. (It's a low-probability high-yield investment, in other words -- not unlike projects to defend ourselves from asteroids, except in the latter case we're trying to avoid the high cost of a low-probability event).



See also: an interview with Tarter on the TED Blog and follow the progress on her wish at her TED blog.

TED 2009

As most of my regular readers will know, I'm a huge fan of the yearly TED conference so it should come as no surprise that I was unreasonably excited about the release of the TED 2009 speaker schedule (also have a look at the program guide). The theme for this coming year's conference is "The Great Unveiling" (whatever that's supposed to mean) and there are some awesome speakers scheduled: Bill Gates (you know, the Microsoft guy), Tim Berners-Lee (a key figure in the rise of the web), Jill Tarter (the SETI astronomer), Mary Roach (author of Bonk and other cool sciency books), Dan Ariely (the noted behavioral economist and Ig Nobel Laurette) and Alex Tabarrok (the economist and Marginal Revolution co-author).

I can hardly wait. Srsly.

(Via the TED Blog)

Video: Amazing Ocean Depths

David Gallo is a pioneering oceanographer and in the TEDTalk embedded below (or click here) he surveys some of the astonishing life forms that live in the ocean's depths around hydrothermal vents.



(I've posted another of Gallo's TEDTalks before, which is most certainly also worth watching if you haven't previously seen it).

Video: Pinker on the blank slate

Steven Pinker, evolutionary psychologist extraordinaire, has given several TEDTalks; the most recently released is a 2003 presentation on his most excellent book, The Blank Slate. The video is embedded below (or click here).

Video: The Genographic Project

Spencer Wells gave a superb talk (embedded below or click here) at the 2007 TED conference about The Genographic Project. The project is a collaboration between National Geographic and IBM to build on the pioneering work of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and document human genetic variation and chart ancient migration patterns. Very highly recommended.

Video: My Year of Living Biblically

A. J. Jacobs is a New York-based journalist who works for Esquire magazine and specializes in immersing himself in odd, demanding projects and then writing about it. Jacobs spent a year reading all 32 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (resulting in The Know-It-All) and later spent a month following the principles of the Radical Honesty movement (the article he wrote about this experience is entitled "I Think You're Fat", which should give you an idea) . His latest project was to follow all the rules of the Bible for a full year, which he then documented in his book The Year of Living Biblically. In the talk embedded below (or click here) Jacobs describes his year as a fundamentalist and then draws a bunch of interesting lessons. It's well worth watching, not least because it's screamingly funny.

Video: Dawkins on militant atheism

I just realized I've never posted Richard Dawkins' fantastic 2002 TEDTalk in which he advocates not atheism, but militant atheism. Dawkins, in my opinion, is eloquent, immensely funny, correctly righteously indignant and, most importantly, right. The only thing I disagree with in this talk is Dawkins' contention that Darwinism leads to atheism: as a matter of life-history it often does, but it need not do so logically. (That is, Darwinism does not logically entail atheism, even if it lends support by deflating the argument from design and making it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist).

The video is embedded below, click here for the direct link.

Video: Susan Blackmore at TED

Susan Blackmore, the noted parapsychologist and author of The Meme Machine, gave an interesting talk on memetics at this year's TED conference. (The video is embedded below, click here to go directly to the video at the TED website). While I found her talk interesting and stimulating, overall, I must say I wasn't all that impressed. I have always been skeptical of memetics and "universal Darwinism" because it seems to me at best a potentially interesting rediscription of cultural phenomena, but not a genuine causal account of them. Blackmore does nothing to assuage my concerns in this regard, indeed, she reinforces them. Natural selection, as we all know and Blackmore explains, requires just three assumptions to work: variability, heredity and scarcity. In biological evolution, we know exactly how these mechanisms work even if the details of specific cases elude us. In memetic evolution, however, there is no proper general account of heredity (which ideas are imitated by whom and why) and the accounts of scarcity and variability are somewhat iffy as well. Moreover, I'm not sure the memetic research program has produced particularly interesting or fruitful results, in stark contrast to biological evolution. (I must admit, though, that I don't know the field at all well, I haven't even read Dennett's Breaking the Spell. I'd therefore be happy to stand corrected). In my view memetics is best employed to understand phenomena like the variations on poems like "One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night" or how languages change over time, not as a universal explanation for design.

Blackmore also asserts several blatant falsehoods and commits at least one serious logical error. She claims, for example, that humans are the only true imitators, that other organisms imitate hardly at all. That is utter hogwash: some of the most important ethological findings over the last couple of decades is just how smart some non-human animals are and how many species engage in "differential social learning". Indeed, chimps as well as whales and dolphins have culture and crows are veritable geniuses (pdf). Blackmore even offhandedly suggests humans are the only species that uses tools!

The serious logical error comes in when she argues, amazingly, that humans have big brains in order to copy memes. That is, she argues there is a "memetic drive" favoring brains that are better at copying memes completely independently of genetic evolution. Language, on this view, is a parasite which we only later "adapted to". How such a process is meant to operate I have no idea. Why would selfish genes altruistically code for proteins that build bigger brains to help selfish memes replicate? I can see how memetic evolution could take off as a by product of increased intelligence brought about by biological evolution; I simply can't see how memetic evolution could cause larger brains to evolve in the absence of a biological fitness benefit. If that's right, then it's simply illogical to argue the large human brain evolved in order to copy memes more effectively, and memetics therefore is not nearly as important as Blackmore suggests.



(See also: Blackmore's reflections on the TED conference on her blog).

Video: Jill Bolte Taylor at TED

Jill Bolte Taylor, an Indiana University School of Medicine neuroanatomist, gave a fascinating talk at TED in February. (The video is embedded below, here is the direct link). While I certainly think the video is worth watching (otherwise I wouldn't feature it here), I have a couple of serious reservations. It's clear from the video that Taylor's experience was an intensely emotional one and, let's be frank, science and intense emotions don't go so well together. It certainly made me worry when she started going on about "nirvana", it annoyed me that she dramatically oversimplified the very nuanced, complicated and still emerging picture of hemispherical specialization in the brain, and it frustrated me generally that she seems to let her emotions get in the way of her science. (To be clear: emotions are important and I have no problem with them being expressed, even at TED. But we should try our best not to let our emotions influence our intellectual positions - that's what I'm criticizing Taylor for, not the sheer fact of being emotional).



See also: Wired's article on Taylor's TEDTalk.

Video: Craig Venter and Artificial Life

Craig Venter is a scientific maven and maverick who leads a team that is on the verge of creating artificial life that, among other things, might produce artificial organisms capable of replacing the entire petro-chemical industry. This is Important Stuff.

Venter's 2008 TEDTalk is embedded below, or here is the direct link.

Video: The first video from TED 2008

Microsoft Research is doing some really cool stuff recently. One of their most inspiring projects is WorldWide Telescope, an interactive software package which lets people explore the universe through a seamless integration of the best astronomy pictures. Encouragingly, the software will be downloadable free of charge. (The video is embedded below, here is the direct link TED).

TED update II

See my earlier TED update.

Today is the last day of the TED conference and I'm still seriously depressed about not being there to see all those wonderful talks and meet all those amazing people. Ironically for a technology conference a few technical glitches have apparently cropped up: their website appears to be broken at the moment and, reportedly, the comedian Robin Williams (who was in the audience) had to save the day during a technical delay.

Wired has continued its coverage of the conference with: an interview about memes with Susan Blackmore (of paranormal psychology and Meme Machine fame); a great article on Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who reacted to the massive stroke she had in 1996 with "Wow, this is so cool" and a short piece about Microsoft's new WorldWide Telescope software.

TED update

I just found out the TED prizes will be streamed live online tonight (28 February) starting at 5:15 pm US-Pacific time, the speakers are: Karen Armstrong, Dave Eggers, and Neil Turok.

Also, Wired has released (warning: NSFW and disturbing) new photos from Abu Ghraib prison that they obtained in advance from Philip Zimbardo, who is scheduled to give TEDTalk later today. They also conducted an interview with him about people's capacity for evil and why the Abu Ghraib guards acted as they did.

On a much lighter note, Wired continues its coverage of the TED conference with a report on "surfer dude" (and physicist) Garrett Lisi's simple unified field theory.

The Encyclopedia of Life

The always wonderful Carl Zimmer has a terrific NYT article about the launch of the Encyclopedia of Life, a free online collaborative encyclopedia that aims to document every species on earth. (Visit it at www.eol.org). As anyone who regularly follows the links in this blog will know, I am a big fan of collaborative online encyclopedias (Wikipedia!): I think the model has proven itself beyond all reasonable doubt. As a result, I am extremely excited about this project, it will prove to be an invaluable resource to scientists and laypeople alike.

The project, by the way, is being spearheaded by the seemingly ubiquitous E. O. Wilson: check out his TEDTalk on the encyclopedia.

TED conference

Wired also has an article on the opening of my favorite conference: TED or Technology, Entertainment and Design. Boy do I wish I could be there, the schedule of speakers (pdf) looks very impressive. (Well, except for the dude who "radiates love" to his followers). Susan Blackmore, Philip Zimbardo, Karen Armstrong and Craig Venter's talks, especially, should be interesting. Luckily, the conference is recorded and videos are intermittently released (under a Creative Commons license no less) as TEDTalks.

Video: Dan Gilbert on Happiness

Social psychologist Daniel Gilbert is a well known researcher in the burgeoning field of happiness studies ('positive psychology') and author of the award-winning Stumbling on Happiness. In the fantastic TEDTalk embedded below (or click here to go directly to the video) Gilbert summarizes a number of interesting findings, specifically how cognitive biases such as impact bias affect common sense notions of what makes us happy.

Video: Shermer's skeptical tour de force

Michael Shermer covers a dizzying number of topics in this truly fantastic (and short!) TEDTalk, including dowsing, cereology, intelligent design, UFOs, and pareidolia. This video is really a must see - hold out for the particularly entertaining Katie Malua and Led Zepplin bits. The video is embedded below, alternatively, click here.