Philosophy
Over the past few years, TED has grown into a household name due to the amazing lectures and presentations that they've made publicly available to the entire world. TEDTalks are presentations about ideas that are worth spreading.
Well, Nick Hanauer decided to give a talk about an idea he considered worth spreading: how we've been brainwashed to believe, despite all the massive evidence to the contrary, that taxing the wealthy is what drives unemployment and economic collapse, and that therefore we should actually give the so-called 'job creators' big tax breaks. I think he's exactly right, but for some strange reason that they've been getting into pretzels over the past week, TED made the strange choice not to share Hanauer's talk, and when the story hit the light, it hit the fan...
The rationalization was that it was too politically charged, partisan and controversial, but when you consider previous presentations they've aired, controversial is not something that's ever been a problem for them. Anyway, here is the 'banned' presentation:
And here are The Young Turks discussing this weird turn of events.
What kind of weird world do we live in when stating facts is considered controversial or partisan?
Update: The story seems to be more complicated and overblown than at first appeared (thanks Xavier!). Here is Chris Anderson defending TED's decision not to air the video (and making a distinction between not airing and censoring or banning), and clarifying the issue, as he sees it. It is worth saying, however, that when Anderson claims that the audience wasn't particularly impressed with the presentation, that doesn't sound quite genuine since the video itself shows that a number of audience members did give him a bit of a standing ovation, but whatever.
For what it's worth, my interest in posting the video is about spreading the idea itself rather than with focusing on whether it was banned or censored.
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Philosophy
The Banned TED Talk - Rich People Don't Create Jobs
Well, Nick Hanauer decided to give a talk about an idea he considered worth spreading: how we've been brainwashed to believe, despite all the massive evidence to the contrary, that taxing the wealthy is what drives unemployment and economic collapse, and that therefore we should actually give the so-called 'job creators' big tax breaks. I think he's exactly right, but for some strange reason that they've been getting into pretzels over the past week, TED made the strange choice not to share Hanauer's talk, and when the story hit the light, it hit the fan...
The rationalization was that it was too politically charged, partisan and controversial, but when you consider previous presentations they've aired, controversial is not something that's ever been a problem for them. Anyway, here is the 'banned' presentation:
And here are The Young Turks discussing this weird turn of events.
What kind of weird world do we live in when stating facts is considered controversial or partisan?
Update: The story seems to be more complicated and overblown than at first appeared (thanks Xavier!). Here is Chris Anderson defending TED's decision not to air the video (and making a distinction between not airing and censoring or banning), and clarifying the issue, as he sees it. It is worth saying, however, that when Anderson claims that the audience wasn't particularly impressed with the presentation, that doesn't sound quite genuine since the video itself shows that a number of audience members did give him a bit of a standing ovation, but whatever.
For what it's worth, my interest in posting the video is about spreading the idea itself rather than with focusing on whether it was banned or censored.
- Richard Feynman On The Scientific Method
When it comes to backward, mystical, conspiratorial, pseudoscientific thinking, I'm actually pretty forgiving of people in the past: apart from a small intellectual elite, most people didn't always have the technological and conceptual tools...
- Dan Ariely - The Truth About Dishonesty
If I were to ask you if you are an honest person, chances are that you'd say yes. Yet, if we look at the details of your everyday behavior with a magnifying glass, we'd most likely discover all sorts of ways in which you lie, cheat and steal,...
- Robert Sapolsky - Are Humans Just Another Primate?
Every time scientists have tried to come up with a set of defining characteristics of what it means to be human, subsequent observation has revealed that there are other species who share those features previously thought to be unique to us... We are...
- Changing Views Of Pluto
If you haven't checked out Neil deGrasse Tyson's best-selling book The Pluto Files, or heard one of his presentations explaining why Pluto got demoted to dwarf planet--or promoted to king of the Kuiper Belt, depending on how you look at it--you...
- Socializing Physicists?...why Not
"Are Physics Conferences A Waste ? An Ethical Issue" by dorigo March 25th, 2013 Science 2.0 The number of conferences held every year around the world to present and discuss topics in frontier particle physics is surprisingly large: over a hundred per...