Are We All Wrong? -Kathryn Schulz

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html

Kathryn Schulz has a very unique way of presenting her ideas verbally. She begins her TED talk with the telling of a story of when she was on a road trip in college. She mistakenly thought that the sign for “picnic area” was actually a Chinese symbol. It is silly, yes. However, Kathryn uses her sarcastic and humorous personality to explain that not all the situations in which you are wrong are funny. In fact, some can be very serious. The trick, she explains, is how to react when you are wrong.

The main question is: Why do we obsess about being wrong? It’s over. Bam. Done with. We can never go back and fix it. And yet, we strive to make everything right! Does this even make sense?? Of course not! This is the human race we are talking about here. Even hundreds of years ago, humans have been wrong. St. Augustine said, “I err, therefore I am.” Wrongness is what makes us human. And yet, everyone continues to stress about making things up. We live our lives trying to make up for past errors. You get a bad grade on a test, you spend the rest of the year trying to bring up the grade. You mess up on one soccer game, you run it over and over again in your mind trying to find out what it is that you did badly. You say something mean to a friend and are forever trying to gain back what is lost. As the human race, we cannot just let things go without trying our darndest to get it back. Is it worth the effort if you are going through mental anguish while trying to “correct” something that has already been done? Why can’t we simply move on? Is it because we are “programmed” that way? Not everything needs to be made up for. Some things just simply are and they need to be left alone.

Secondly, why do we insist on being right? Why is that such an important factor in our lives? Is it really such a big deal? So, you win one little argument. But how does the person who “lost” feel when you are gloating and they realize they are wrong? We all know how it feels. It’s an embarrassing, dreadful, heart-dropping-to-the-bottom-of-your-gut feeling. Think of how this person felt before they realized they were wrong. It’s like they are walking on solid ground only, when they look down, they find that they are actually walking on nothing. The feelings mentioned above are the falling feelings. Now, if what they were saying still feels right to them, you might impose on them what Kathryn calls “A Series of Unfortunate Assumptions.”1. This person is just ignorant. If I bring them to the light, they will be on my side.

2. This person is obviously an idiot for not agreeing with me.

 And when neither of those are true… 3. This person is evil and out to get me.

We never even entertain the notion that this could just be what they believe and that both people might be “right”. Occasionally, we have to acknowledge that we are wrong and just accept it. Searching for rightness all the time is not healthy. But, on the other hand, it is also not healthy to just ignore the wrong completely in this desperate search. Ignorance may seem like bliss. But when you are looking for an answer to anything, you will not be able to learn from your mistakes. When there is something wrong, we seem to think that there is something wrong with us. Why is that? Have we been programmed at a young age to think that we always have to be right? Even in kindergarten, we see the slacker getting bad grades. We are automatically taught that he is the dumb kid and we shouldn’t be like him. Take a good look at that kid. Is he really wrong? Or is he just different? (I know that is cliché but it explains this very well.) He learns differently and maybe more slow than the other kids. He is not wrong. WE are wrong for looking at him in this way. Your beliefs don’t perfectly match what is happening. So why do we always feel that they do?

What do you see when you look at the night sky?

                Maybe the reason for wanting to be right is the fact that we are all searching for the answer to the question, “Why?” Why are we here? Why am I doing this? Just why? There is an upside and a downside to this search. The upside is the fact that humans will always be creative and productive while we are still looking. The downside was explained in the previous paragraph. As mentioned before, humans are natural error-makers. So why do we feel like being wrong is just an embarrassing defect? Why do we think we can overcome it? And if we could overcome it, what would this world look like if we did? There would only be small talk because we can’t argue. The search would be over and this would cause life to be boring in and of itself. We need wrongness to make our stories work. Without being wrong, books wouldn’t have twists. People would never be surprised. In this case, being wrong is an extremely good thing. Kathryn Schulz ends by telling her audience that if they want to rediscover wonder, they all have to look around and say, “Wow, I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.” I know that everyone has at least some miniscule plan for their lives. Is yours set in stone? Or could you be wrong?

The Power of Creativity -Clay Shirky

           Clay Shirky begins his talk with a story. A while ago in Kenya, there was a dispute over the presidential election. A local lawyer started a blog in which people could post anything they wanted to about the issues. Basically, it was impossible for her to publish all of this information. And thus, Ushahidi was born. Ushahidi is something that is called “crisis mapping”. Here is a photo.

When you click on the little red blips, you can read articles about what is going on in that area. By incorporating the humor of LOLcats and his personal opinions, Shirky goes on to explain the positives of a world with connected knowledge or “cognitive surplus”.

This leads to an interesting question.  What would the world be like if we all shared everything we know? After all, no single person knows what everyone knows. Take a look at the International Space Station. Would all of those advances in science have been possible if it was just the “national” space station? Mmm…probably not. It is human generosity that forms collaborations like Ushahidi and the space station.  In my opinion, there are two different types of generosity. Passive and active. Passive generosity is just writing a check to a local charity and that’s that. This is pretty lazy. Active generosity is fully committing yourself to a cause. You show up, do hard work, and then you STILL want to come back and do more. Writing a check is no substitute for actually being involved.

The internet has supplied the world with a very easy way in which to be involved. People are always looking for information or entertainment. They wouldn’t be able to find anything unless someone else had already posted it for the entire world to see. It’s easy to understand that we look up information for assignments or general knowledge and that we need entertainment to escape the previously stated assignments. But why on earth would someone post this information and/or entertainment in the first place? That just seems like a lot of work! These people aren’t even being payed to do so. Some even pay the internet in order to post. Is there some human instinct that makes us all want to create, share, and launch our ideas out into the world? Were we always like this? If we were, then it was a little harder to notice than it is now. Before, there weren’t many outlets in which to express ourselves or do things like charity work. Maybe the reason that human generosity wasn’t seen in the same way as Clay Shirky sees it is because we were never given a chance to actually do anything that was even slightly easy to access. Creativity is everywhere you look now. Even look at the computer you are reading this on right now. Someone had to come up with a way to put all of this information into one box. Someone had to design the clean lines on it. Heck, someone had to think of what color to make it in! They wouldn’t have just done that because they were being payed (even though that’s most of the reason). Some people just like to create in order to make life better. So, are we equipped with a natural sense that we need to give? I do believe so.

Clay Shirky points out that, if everyone on the entire planet was combined, they would hold over a trillion hours of free time every year. We can all give back. It doesn’t matter how you do it or how big your cause is. If you work to make the world suck a little bit less, it will be worth it. What would you do with your trillion hours?

What is this thing called "Motivation"? Dan Pink Response

Dan Pink is, to say the least, slightly insane when it comes to public speaking. He shows emotions in a very dramatic and sometimes over-hyped way. By using this technique, there is no possible way for the audience to stop paying attention to what he is saying and doing. Pink not only verbally addressed the audience but he also showed pictures and diagrams that backed up what he was saying. For example: When he was telling of a puzzle called “The Candle Problem”, he posted pictures on the giant screen in order to better the understanding of the audience.

In “The Candle Problem”, the puzzle solver must find a way to attach the candle to the wall (given tacks, matches, and a candle) without getting any wax on the table. For a while, the solver does not see the box as a material. Eventually, they figure out that they can put the candle in the box and tack the box to the wall.

                Throughout his TED talk, Dan Pink tries to explain a new kind of motivation. Research has found that if people are given a reward (i.e. money) to solve things like the above puzzle, it takes them longer for them to complete it and the task is done with less creativity and more closed-mindedness. In a short amount of time, monetary rewards can be helpful in getting a simple task completed. However, in the long run, this could ruin a person’s actual want to accomplish different tasks. Look at today’s school systems. The grading system is just like payday in the real world. Students are graded on literally everything. This will most likely cause them to wonder why in the world they are working on something for which they are not being graded. They will not know how to work in this situation and therefore will not really try. If students are just told that they are at schools in order to better themselves and grades were not given for literally everything, then maybe, just maybe, they would have a greater appreciation for learning.

                This has lead me to wonder about some things. What motivates me? Well, I think that it is a combination of many things. First, there is motivation for rewards. Grades, which I mentioned above, help me to want to finish my schoolwork. Why don’t I just do the bare minimum? Once in a while, I try extremely hard to go above and beyond. This is mostly because the teacher wants it that way. Sometimes, I do this because it feels extraordinary to turn in something that I am proud of. I can’t explain the sense of relief and serenity I get when I finish something that took lots of difficult work. That has nothing to do with wanting the teacher’s acceptance. Another term that goes with motivation is mastery or the desire to be great at what you do. I have always been interested in getting to the highest level of mastery in almost everything I do. Take the game, “Angry Birds”, for example. There is literally no reward to winning this game besides the satisfaction you get when beating it. Why do you think I practice my saxophone so much? I’m probably not going to get a job with it in the future and yet I continue to play away on the darn thing! That’s where the mastery comes in again. In order to be great, you have to woodshed the music over and over and over again, and when it finally clicks…it doesn’t get much better than that. Everyone has a drive to do something that matters to them. The only tricky part is finding what it is that matters.

Chip Conley on Happiness

Here is a link to Conley's TED talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile.html

Chip Conley is the founder and CEO of a hotel chain called “Joie de Vivre”. His business thrives on its exceptional hospitality and he hopes that all of his employees and customers can realize their full potential in life. Conley never once strayed from his point and used many outside sources to accent his views. He tells it like it is (in other words: blunt) and this manages to captivate the audience for the full time slot because people are used to speakers beating around the bush before they actually say what they came to say. Conley uses his TED talk time to explain his opinion on happiness. Or, more specifically, he talks about the difficulties that many have encountered while trying to “count” this happiness.

                “Joie de Vivre” is defined as an exuberant enjoyment of life. The point that Conley brings into the light is the fact that large businesses, countries, and even small social groups only take into account the GDP (gross domestic product) and not the GNH (gross national happiness). The world has been so focused on industrialism and investment in these past couple centuries that the leaders of the countries have overlooked a very essential part in their society: happiness. They count the tangible, not the intangible. A very famous scientist named Albert Einstein (you may know him, but if you don’t…I’m not here to judge) once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” The word sort of loses its meaning after a while, doesn’t it? (Look! It’s even in the word “country”!) But maybe that’s what we need. We need to find a new meaning to the word, or at least a new way of looking at it. Why is it that the only things that are cared about are the physical products of humanity? What happened to caring about the emotions of a society as a whole? When asked about his country’s GDP, the most recent king of Bhutan answered with this point exactly. He was extremely perplexed by the state of mind that this world has been in. Frankly, so am I. How are we supposed to know what should really be counted in life? In my opinion, you should judge your happiness on how you feel about how you spend your time each day. Time is the most limited thing right now in the world (right next to money, I assume). If there is at least one thing that puts that warm and fuzzy feeling in your core every day, then that should probably be enough. That’s the way I feel, at least. However, this can all lead back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow states that there is a pyramid that starts at the bottom with basic human needs and goes to the top with finding one’s purpose in the world. If the basic needs are met, then people slowly move up the pyramid. Eventually, happiness is going to have to amount to something more than just the small moments in life. It all depends on a person’s definition of happiness.

Conley ended his talk by asking, “What counts?” Well? What do you say?

“It’s the heart that really matters in the end” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhZ1BdMtw_Q

Sir Ken Robinson TED talk. (Dang this is long!!)

Sir Ken Robinson used his TED talk time to express his opinion on how education is killing the artistic side of children. In order to keep his audience captivated throughout his TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson integrated humor into his spiel. Long explanations were softened with stories from his life and short, simple jokes. This helped the audience to feel as if they were in his life personally, and therefore caused them to pay greater attention to the big idea. You would not have known that he was talking for almost twenty minutes. Sir Ken Robinson got right to the point when he began his talk. It only took him about five minutes to explain his major point. He spent the rest of his time going in depth with real life stories, actual facts, and relatable connections.

There are a few questions that rose in my mind after listening to this TED talk. First, how do you grow back into creativity? Ken told his audience that everyone is born an artist but, as they grow older, they are told that they can’t do certain things because they will never get a job. This creates a world full of kids who are only good at taking scantron tests. According to both Daniel Pink and Sir Ken Robinson, it will be THESE kids who have trouble finding a job in the future. The artists who said “no” to all of the disbelievers will be the ones that flourish. But how can you get in touch with that younger, more open, you? Through meditation? Spending time with small children? Letting go of a straightforward life? That last one is probably the best bet. Letting loose and keeping an open mind can help anyone realize their true potential. We have to find what has always been right beneath our noses.

            Second, what if I want to be a university professor? Let me explain. Sir Robinson argued that the only point in modern day education was to create university professors. These are the people who think of their body as just transportation for their head. Well, what happens to these people in the future? Do they have to change their entire way of living just because they can’t find a decent job? There still must be teachers in the future. Maybe they won’t be what we think of when we think about teachers today. In reality, they will probably people that stand in front of a class for the first couple minutes to teach grammar and then let their kids loose on the world for their lesson. Every great person in this world was in someone’s English class at some point in their lives. The world still needs teachers, just not in the same way that it did 50 years ago. Teaching needs to be severely changed if kids are going to succeed in the future.

            This brings me to my last point: are we all put on meds and told to calm down? I know that there was definitely a point in my life where I had to be told to settle down and do my school work. We were all posed with the threat of going to the principal’s office (or something of the sort) when we were younger. That has stuck with us all our lives. Most people are too afraid to do anything out of the ordinary because we are afraid that it will be wrong. Now, instead of laughing with my friend while a lesson is being taught, I overanalyze everything. I wasn’t even brave enough to trust my instincts while building a boat in tech ed. I had to have very systematic steps. I have had to teach myself to get out of this habit and it’s taken a very long time (still not finished, by the way). It is sad that everyone is told to conform at such a young age. Adults deny it, but they order us to act a certain way without actually saying it.

            In order to achieve the life that we want, we must revert into our younger, more open-minded selves. It might not be possible, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

First blog posts are lame...

Voila! My first blog post. There probably won't be much anything but school stuff on this site. If I'm going to rant, I'm going to write it where the school board can't see it ;) To all my English teachers (present or future), here is the stuff you have asked me to do.