Ted Talks Summary

In this TEDTalk, Steven Pinker introduced an interesting trend in societal violence. The talk began by presenting fax that showed a dramatic decrease in the amount of violent crime beginning as far back as the earliest human hunter-gatherers. In many places during that time period, the chances of dying at the hands of another human were as high is sixty percent. Although the media and people tend to believe we are living in a time of extreme violence, we are actually living during one of the most peaceful times in human history. Even though the 20th Century witnessed tragedies such as the Holocaust, Rwanda, Stalin’s mass executions, and two World Wars, the chances of a human by violent means was less than three percent.

David Camarillo, in his speech at Ted, explains what a concussion is and why helmets do not prevent them. Camarillo, a former football player, has suffered concussions from football as well as biking. Camarillo aspires for a helmet that will prevent concussions and make risky activities safe. Camarillo adequately explains to his audience what a concussion is and why helmets do not prevent them through familiarity with the subject, awareness of audience concerns, and examples and illustrations.

The TED Talk, “The surprisingly logical minds of babies,” was presented by Laura Schulz who is an associate professor of cognitive science in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at MIT. Schulz has been studying about how babies and children learn various things very quickly. During this presentation, Schulz focused on generalization and causal reasoning during infant stage.

The topic of optimism bias, according to the Ted Talk, and overconfidence, from the textbook, are similar in the way they affect a person’s decision making. The Ted Talk conducted by Dr. Tali Sharot discusses optimism bias which is “our tendency to overestimate our likelihood of experiencing good events in our lives and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing bad events.” Overconfidence as described by the textbook is “tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgements.” Both of these affect our thought process when making a decision. Dr. Sharot describes the studies she has performed in her lab and has seen first hand the way optimism bias influences people’s answers. She observed recently married couples what their

Janine Shepherd was an Australian cross country skier who had dreams of winning a winter Olympics gold medal. While she was training on a bike with her fellow teammates. A tragic accident happened: she was hit by a speeding truck and became paralyzed from the waist down. Her life was perfect until she had gotten into that tragic accident and broken every part of her body, and she didn’t want her body anymore because it was hopeless; however, she improved and learned how to walk but also learned how to fly. “A broken body isn’t a broken person.” Janine talks about how she didn’t want her body because it was broken and there wasn’t no point, but she makes a decision to give herself a second chance even though she has to rethink everything in

In the Ted Talk, “How Augmented Reality Will Change Sports...and Build Empathy” Chris Kluwe discusses how augmented reality should be implemented in daily lives. Augmented reality allows people to see what someone else is seeing. It gives a different perspective for fans to experience what the players are going through. Chris Kluwe explains how augmented reality can be used in football. He says how it can be installed in the player’s visor, and it will provide information such as plays, and oncoming tacklers.

The text my partner and I were originally going to analyze was Robb Willer’s Ted Talk called How to have better political conversations. We decided not do analyze his speech however we did take inspiration from it. The text we analyzed in the end were article titles posted on The Washington Post written by a variety of people.

Measuring crime is based on three main measurements; criminal justice system data, crime experience surveys and other sources called administrative data (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). Firstly, crime first needs to be categorised into types of crime that is classified under the Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). Only the main and select few offences are reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in collecting annual reported crimes (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). Through ABS, it collects crime data in different ways such as crime reports, victimisations surveys, administrative data (higher courts, magistrates and policing agendas etc.,) and self-reports (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). Crime reports measure crimes such as homicide, robbery, rape, assault and more but is collected through police jurisdictions (Reid, 2012). The strength of crime reports provides additional information such as arrests, charges, officers assaults and characteristics of homicide victims (Reid, 2012). This helps to measure crime more effectively through gaining descriptions and knowledge of identifying crime and criminal behaviour more accurately (Reid, 2012). Administrative data is often helpful in collating data of sentences and jail sentences but fails to collect the ‘dark figure’ of crime (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). National Crime Victimisation Surveys (NCVS)

I decided to watch Steve Howard's Ted Talk titled: "Let's go all-in on selling sustainability."

Energy conservation is an important subject to address for many reasons. Oil resources, which most of the energy used today derives from, are depleting quickly. The more scarce these resources become, the more expensive it will cost. The production and consumption of this energy source is also bad for the environment. If nothing changes, then oil resources will be used up soon, prices will be high and global warming will be even worse. Through my presentation, I want to convey the message that action needs to take place to save the future. I want to teach the lesson that this problem will not go away by itself. I also want to talk about ways change can be done.

In “Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent,” Safwat Saleem, shows his passion and his courageous side when speaking in his Ted Talk, describing the main idea of there not being such a thing of normalcy, as well as arguing that individuals should be confident and accept who they are from their special qualities. Agreeing with Saleem (2016), however to also consider it has become common in today’s society to want to be normal. Therefore many people would not agree with wanting to be exactly known as quote on quote ‘normal’ but they may want to assimilate to norms because that person is or may be in a unique way socially accepted.

The TED Talk video that I watched was Why do we sleep by Russel Foster. This TED talk was about why we need sleep and how getting less than the suggested amount affects the brain. There are three main reasons why we need sleep; restoration, energy conservation, and brain function. Only certain genes are turned on when you sleep so you need to sleep in order for those genes to turn on and allow you other genes to be restored, while sleeping you save about 110 calories, sleep helps enhance creativity, and your brain is less likely to retain information if you’re sleep deprived and trying to cram information. On average a teen needs 9 hours of sleep, in the 1950s the average teen was getting 8 hours of sleep, today on average teens are getting 5 hours of sleep, which is half the amount that we need. If you’re not receiving the amount of sleep that you need your body will uncountable got into micro-sleeping which will happen to at least 31% of drivers in their lifetime.

When it comes to choice it always seems to be a love hate relationship: we hate making them, but we can’t live without them. Anyone can all look back to a time in our lives where they wish someone could just pick for us, or times when we wish there were more to choose from. All Americans have many choices, and it is such a part of our daily lives that we don’t even realize it. Barry Schwartz and Sheena Iyengar‘s TED talks bring up interesting ideas about choice, how people deal with them and their affects. They both state that although choice is good, it can also have negative effects. Schwartz explains what most people believe and experience with choice, while Iyengar shows cultural differences in choice making. Both Schwartz and Iyengar

In the ted talk, ¨A taboo-free way to talk about periods,¨ by Aditi Gupta explains how she lived with hiding her menstruation because it wasn't talked in her culture. Gupta talks when she got her period she wouldn't tell her father or brother and kept her period a secret. Since she was from India, buying a menstrual pad was called shameful, so she used rags. She would lock hem in a drawer so no one would find out she was menstruating. By this she would get infections and bumps because they weren't sanitary. The girls in India including Gupta, had to follow social restrictions like not being allowed to sit on a sofa. Many girls in India about 88% follow restrictions every month. Gupta didn´t want girls to suffer like her and not know anything

For this assignment, I chose to watch a Ted Talk that focused on the importance of understanding differences. It is entitled Love No Matter What and is the culmination of years of research done by Andrew Solomon. I chose this Ted Talk because I thought it would be interesting to hear about different lived experiences that people have endured. One of the huge ideas I have learned throughout this leadership course and all our topics and conversation is that we all have different lived experiences. It is our lived experiences that make us special and individual. Love No Matter What focused on this essential idea and how important differences are.