Thursday 7 November 2019

The engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, the mating of ideas

The engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and remains "ideas having sex with each other"

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It is not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.



British author Matt Ridley argues that, through history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, "ideas having sex with each other."

Throughout history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, the mating of ideas. The sophistication of the modern world, says Ridley, lies not in individual intelligence or imagination; it is a collective enterprise. In his book The Rational Optimist, Ridley (whose previous works include Genome and Nature via Nurture) sweeps the entire arc of human history to powerfully argue that "prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else."

It is our species habit of trade, idea-sharing, and specialization that has created the collective brain which set human living standards on a rising trend. This, he says, "holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead - because ideas are having sex with each other as never before."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference and was featured by the TED editors on the home page.

“Ridley systematically builds a case through copious data and countless studies that “the vast majority of people are much better fed, much better sheltered, much better entertained, much better protected against disease and much more likely to live to old age than their ancestors have ever been."” — Scientific American.

Wednesday 23 October 2019

The danger of AI is weirder than you think

The danger of artificial intelligence isn't that it's going to rebel against us, but that it's going to do exactly what we ask it to do, says AI researcher Janelle Shane. Sharing the weird, sometimes alarming antics of AI algorithms as they try to solve human problems - like creating new ice cream flavors or recognizing cars on the road - Shane shows why AI doesn't yet measure up to real brains.




From TED Talks.
 
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