4 ms·
His talk is exactly what he talks about: he presents ideas at a level of understanding of those listening to him. Instead of being scientific or philosophic, he
by dangom 8y ago
His talk is exactly what he talks about: he presents ideas at a level of understanding of those listening to him. Instead of being scientific or philosophic, he gives interesting examples such that people immediately get it.
Alan's all about looking at the big picture and not getting lost in irrelevant details. He tries to get his point across right away by showing how NIMH is so focused on canonical mental health problems that they don't think about where these problems come from, nor about even bigger mental "problems"(such as the 99,77% if you watched through the talk) and what mental means in the first place.
He may not know how to fix healthcare, but he shows what is necessary for us to think about if we ever want problems to be solved. He then follows with examples from the areas he's more familiar with, namely tech and education, to show how to get to solutions without brute force.
Human critical thinking at its very best.
- bsaul 8y agoHave you looked at all the video ? This talk is actually about children education ( to build a better future). But then he brings deatchcamps, his dentist not removing plastic protection often, francis bacon new science, aristotle not knowing the number of teeth of his own wife, brings some statistics in the middle about mental disorder, etc etc. It may be human critical thinking, but then please it needs some structure and a feeling of progression in a reasonning, actually leading somewhere ( and if that something could be anything new, more than just « computers could be better learning device » that would actually help).
- justaaron 8y agoor you could put the slightest modicum of effort into trying to see the very clear picture he has painted...
- bsaul 8y agowhich is ? People make mistakes ? People are unperfect and need to improve ? i don’t see any other common point among all those examples, and the talk didn’t give me any either...
- eksemplar 8y ago”Instead of being scientific or philosophic, he gives interesting examples such that people immediately get it.” How is being scientific or philosophic exclusive from giving interesting examples that people immediately get? I’d say being able to speak in a way that your audience gets is an inherent part of philosophy. Being scientific isn’t being complicated, it’s basing what you say on a foundation of evidence. Being philosophical isn’t being abstract, it’s basing what you say in reason. If you’re neither of those things, you’re seldom worth listening to.
- kirghiz 8y agoSounds like you're used to being spoonfed. American?
- dangom 8y agoYes, you are definitely right. My point is that people refer to being scientific or philosophic as being detached from ordinary people, as if scientists or philosophers would purposely want to be seen as different and hard to understand. ( e.g., see the critique on the Deep Learning academic community by Jeremy Howard during the Fastai DL courses - an example that pops up quite often here on HN). I meant that Alan doesn't have an arrogant attitude, but I could've phrased my sentence in a better way. Thanks for the feedback.