Dan Gilbert, a Psychology professor at Harvard University, begins his TED Talk by telling the audience about the development of the prefrontal cortex in the human brain, calling it an “experience simulator”. Gilbert then discloses more information about the prefrontal cortex to the viewers and elaborates on its flaws, focusing on how humans often misjudge how happy they would be in several circumstances. The example that Gilbert utilises to demonstrate the human brain’s inability to predict happiness is, if given a choice, would the average human be happier winning the lottery or losing his or her legs. Naturally, one would assume that winning the lottery would make a person happier in the long term; however, people reported being equally
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.
In Kelly McGonigal’s TED Talk, she discusses how we have been thinking about stress in the wrong way. While it is true that stress does have harmful health effects, a major deciding factor in the extent of those effects is our beliefs about stress. Studies have shown that people who experienced a lot of stress and believed it was harmful for their health had a forty-three percent increased risk of dying. However, people who experienced a lot of stress, but did not believe it was harmful to their health had the lowest risk of dying in the entire study. Their risk was even lower than people who experienced very little stress. In addition, thousands of people died prematurely in a year just from the belief that stress is harmful to you. While we commonly interpret the physical changes our body experiences during stress
In the Ted Talk, the presenter Daniel Reisel talks about how we can change both our society and mindset. Reisel demonstrates an example about prisoners in a high- security and it's filled with aggressive prisoners. He talks about what triggers that behavior that those prisoners have and what can be the cure for them. Reisel talks about the Joe the prisoner and how he tested Joe and his inmates to see their ability to categorize images of emotions. The inmates failed to show emotions and to show physical response for the images they were showed. It showed that the inmates had a deficit in their brain that was ¨amygdala” that was proven by their MRI scan. Amygdala is known for our experience of empathy in which the inmates did not have causing
This Ted Talk about how the criminal condemnation of most young adults are based on unfair circumstances. These circumstances being based upon race and background. Alice Goffman throughout the Ted Talk tells stories that persuade the audience through pathos to be tentative of injustices based on race. Goffman wants the audience to understand how these injustices are created and at then end gives some solutions. This Ted Talk will be helpful in showing some injustices and also showing some logos of criminal cases based on race. The Ted Talk will also be helpful in comparing the incarceration probability to the different
In this TED talk, the speaker is Joshua Foer, he start's the talk by having the audience close there eyes, and imagine themselves standing in their doorway. Next, he has them visualize a group of nudist bikers heading straight for the door, imaging them crashing into the front door. Then, he says to imagine stepping into your foyer, and to appreciate the light shining down on cookie monster sitting on a tan talking horse. Head into your living room, and picture Britney spears dancing on your coffee table, he then goes on to have you imagine walking into your kitchen, the floor is a yellow brick road, then you and see Dorothy, and the tin man coming towards you.
Great authors portray their ideas in multiple ways to reach out their message to the present audience. As Tim Urban in his Ted Talk ¨Inside the mind of a master procrastinator¨ he discussed what the thinking behind procrastination leads to through his own experiences, presenting in a way to make the audience laugh, and to convince them that everyone procrastinates in life. Any great writer incorporates ethos, pathos and logos within their writing, speech or even presentation. Tim did an excellent job portraying to his audience these rhetorical strategies which earn him the right to be listened to respectively.
The Ted Talk By Isacc Lidsky is an interesting speech that convey a very important message. Lidsky starts his argument with a fascinated story of a little girl talking with her dad about the gold fish. Lidsky uses this story to tell his experience in a very rhythmic way of presenting. As he says that the father of the little girl, explain that the fishes "swims backwards by wagging his head" to his little girl. Lidsky uses this phrase to show the matter of factly. This is a common fact that everyone knows that fish can not swim backwards and and absolutely not by wagging their heads. however the little girl accepted because her father told her. Lidsky uses this story to clear his point and he makes a rhythmic and powerful analogy that, people
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
Jackson Katz made some very strong arguments in his Ted Talk. Katz focused on violence against women and how it is a men’s issue. Katz explained how violence against women are blamed on women instead of men even though they are the one causing the violence. Men are considered the dominant gender which gives them power and privilege, so when they commit violent crimes against women and it goes unnoticed. More simply, when men display violent acts against women they are not confronted or held accountable for their actions.
Jane McGonigal said "I'm gonna try to increase the lifespan of everyone in this room by 7 1/2 minutes....LITERALLY!!". I was already smiling waiting for her to get to the punchline, because I figured this had to be apart of a joke."LITERALLY, YOU WILL LIVE 7 AND 1/2 MINUTES LONGER THAN YOU WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE JUST BECAUSE YOU WATCHED THIS TALK". Not hearing her full speech I pre judged her and thought she was a very arrogant person. From the beginning, I couldn't tell her talk was going to be about a video game. I could imagine hearing magicians like Whodini or David Copperfield making such bold claims then following with some magic trick to entertain their audiences. She also said she had the math data to back up her claim so my second thought was maybe she's a
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 predicting how something will make you feel in the future, you will most likely be wrong. In the book Discovering Pop Culture, edited by Anna Romasino, is the article “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness”. In the article, author Jon Gertner talks about how people think certain things bring them happiness but aren’t as fulfilling as they may think. Gertner gives examples by writing about four men that have been questioning how people predict what will make them happy and how they feel after it happens. Among these men are a psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, psychologist Tim Wilson, economist George Loewenstein, and psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Gertner uses facts from scores of
The ted talk “The Linguistic Genius of Babies” by Kuhl (2010) tells about babies are genius on language learning, and shows some results of research as proof of this idea. The article “Learning a Language as an Adult” by Pakenham, McEntire, and Williams (2013) shows an idea about the “critical period hypothesis”, children during this period learn much better than people older than this age, especially in pronunciation, because their brain activities are different than adults during this time. Personally, I totally believe the idea of children younger learn better, because the scientific research and data are shown to audiences, and they are persuasive enough. And I do see proof in my life, like four of my Korean friends who came China around
The main argument in Gilbert’s TED talk is that people have the ability to choose to be happy in lieu of external factors. I disagree with his claim for two reasons; The data Gilbert uses to defend his argument is invalid as well as the fact that trauma (an external factor) can result in mental illness. To elaborate, the tools to mathematically calculate one’s happiness do not exist. Therefore, when he uses experimental data based on the participants’ feelings of how content they are with their lives after the event occurring, it is flawed and inaccurate.