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> There are only so many incredible Harvard professors I feel the same about TED

by yonixw 5y ago

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
I never understood what's so special about TED. In my language segment of the internet it's always been portrayed as one of the things you'd learn English for. So I learned the language — more or less — and started watching it. Absolutely disappointing. The vast majority of presentations I've seen are a very light form of popular science — any decent book written by an actual scientist will serve you much better. It's usually a guy (or gal) clowning around before the audience and spending 40 minutes on a subject that can be summarized in two short paragraphs of text. Have I just been doing it wrong? are there any decent presentations out there?
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yeah I think TED talks are usually way too shallow. Videos in general really.. And they're generally pretty slow to make sure even the slowest person in the audience can keep up so it's pretty frustrating. I prefer written content over video most of the time. The only kind of presentations I like are the ones at hacker conferences. They tend to be for a highly technical audience and very non-commercial. Just about the tech, not trying to sell anything. You can find recordings on https://media.ccc.de https://media.ccc.de for example. They have a lot of German content but most of the event presentations are in English.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
    Sure, technical conferences are another beast entirely (I also enjoy many things at linux.conf.au, including the accent that many of the speakers have for obvious reasons). Although most conferences are about as shallow as TED talks. TED's been portrayed to me as some kind of a revelation, that's why I'm asking. Maybe they just got worse with time, like almost anything tends to do.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Your assessment of TED talks is accurate. They spread because they make you feel smart. Books don’t make you feel smart as quickly or as easily. People are very bad at estimating how much they learn from a particular source… instead, when you ask someone “How much did you learn from watching a TED talk?” They answer the question as if you had asked, “How good did you feel watching a TED talk?” The same problem pervades research into teaching. You can’t use student surveys to evaluate teacher performance.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    When I read a book once I learn from it, but I miss a lot (understatement!), too. Why would it be any different from a video? What I should like about a TED talk is that its to the point (lunchbreak amount of time so not requiring long attention) and uses a form of humor or cleverness to bring a (or multiple) point(s) across. Such helps with information sticking, forming a long-term memory. Some books do this too, many don't. There's a lot of bad books out there, and a lot of bad videos. The good thing about a video which contains noise is that you can combine the content with something else, and focus on the good parts, but it doesn't help with forming long-term memory because you can only focus attention on one thing (there's no such thing as multi-tasking, just like how a CPU quickly switches; we're single core.). I do this all the time with podcasts, Netflix, etc but not with a book (nor audiobook). A book requires my full attention, even when its boring. I can't put myself to skipping stuff in it, even if its boring, even if its fiction (I'm missing stuff regardless, but not knowingly). Knowingly skipping feels wrong, except quitting. Quitting is always OK, unless its mandatory content from some authority (boss, teacher, mom, child, etc). I feel like a reference to Learning How To Learn (Coursera course) is also appropriate given its a solid foundation on the subject of how to learn, how learning works, and how to improve such. When I went to private high school, the first course day contained similar content, and its valuable. Anyway, a TED talk is IMO meant as a short summary to learn about a subject. If it interests you, you dive deep into it, and people who watch a lot of TED talks are akin to generalists who want to know a little bit about a lot of things (akin to refusing to specialize). Which has its pros and cons. The world needs both, e.g. both 1st and 2nd line helpdesk.
- dagw 5y ago
  spending 40 minutes Are you sure you are thinking about TED talks (or perhaps they've changed the format)? Because the selling point of TED talks (not TEDx Talks, which is something different) is that they are 10-12 minutes and to the point. And no matter what you might think of the subject most of them are great masterclasses of clear and precis presentation techniques. You can learn a lot about public speaking and presentation from them. All that being said TED has gone massively downhill over past few years. When they first started TED really did manage to get some of the biggest names in their fields to give really unique talks. However as they've massively expanded the number of shows they do they've become less and less picky as to who they let on stage. This has led to their 'brand' declining and fewer and fewer prestigious people want to be associated with TED. any decent book written by an actual scientist will serve you much better. The whole point of TED talks was never to replace that book. Rather to get you excited enough to pick up that book, especially in a subject you initially had no interest in. In fact most scientists with books use TED as a platform to convince you to read that book.
  - Graffur 5y ago
    I find the presentation style to be unbearable now. It's so... corporate.
    - antihipocrat 5y ago
      It's very tedious to watch live as well. The speaking cadence, tone and inflexions are all micromanaged for the entire presentation. If a sentence is expressed incorrectly the speaker will repeat it again and again until it's perfect. It makes for a high quality video, but the live audience has to suffer through it.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
    Makes sense, thanks. I probably got into it way too late.
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    I think it was a wrong move to brand TEDx after TED. Back in 2012 I watched my first TED video about a guy teaching how to use a paper towel. I didn't realize that was TEDx and not TED, so I avoided all TED videos for several years, and surely missed worthwhile content.
- foogazi 5y ago
  > any decent book written by an actual scientist will serve you much better. Also worth learning English for

> There are only so many incredible Harvard professors I feel the same about TED

by yonixw 5y ago

> There are only so many incredible Harvard professors I feel the same about TED

I never understood what's so special about TED. In my language segment of the internet it's always been portrayed as one of the things you'd learn English for. So I learned the language — more or less — and started watching it. Absolutely disappointing. The vast majority of presentations I've seen are a very light form of popular science — any decent book written by an actual scientist will serve you much better. It's usually a guy (or gal) clowning around before the audience and spending 40 minutes on a subject that can be summarized in two short paragraphs of text. Have I just been doing it wrong? are there any decent presentations out there?

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yeah I think TED talks are usually way too shallow. Videos in general really.. And they're generally pretty slow to make sure even the slowest person in the audience can keep up so it's pretty frustrating. I prefer written content over video most of the time. The only kind of presentations I like are the ones at hacker conferences. They tend to be for a highly technical audience and very non-commercial. Just about the tech, not trying to sell anything. You can find recordings on https://media.ccc.de https://media.ccc.de for example. They have a lot of German content but most of the event presentations are in English.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  Sure, technical conferences are another beast entirely (I also enjoy many things at linux.conf.au, including the accent that many of the speakers have for obvious reasons). Although most conferences are about as shallow as TED talks. TED's been portrayed to me as some kind of a revelation, that's why I'm asking. Maybe they just got worse with time, like almost anything tends to do.
klodolph 5y ago
Your assessment of TED talks is accurate. They spread because they make you feel smart. Books don’t make you feel smart as quickly or as easily. People are very bad at estimating how much they learn from a particular source… instead, when you ask someone “How much did you learn from watching a TED talk?” They answer the question as if you had asked, “How good did you feel watching a TED talk?” The same problem pervades research into teaching. You can’t use student surveys to evaluate teacher performance.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  When I read a book once I learn from it, but I miss a lot (understatement!), too. Why would it be any different from a video? What I should like about a TED talk is that its to the point (lunchbreak amount of time so not requiring long attention) and uses a form of humor or cleverness to bring a (or multiple) point(s) across. Such helps with information sticking, forming a long-term memory. Some books do this too, many don't. There's a lot of bad books out there, and a lot of bad videos. The good thing about a video which contains noise is that you can combine the content with something else, and focus on the good parts, but it doesn't help with forming long-term memory because you can only focus attention on one thing (there's no such thing as multi-tasking, just like how a CPU quickly switches; we're single core.). I do this all the time with podcasts, Netflix, etc but not with a book (nor audiobook). A book requires my full attention, even when its boring. I can't put myself to skipping stuff in it, even if its boring, even if its fiction (I'm missing stuff regardless, but not knowingly). Knowingly skipping feels wrong, except quitting. Quitting is always OK, unless its mandatory content from some authority (boss, teacher, mom, child, etc). I feel like a reference to Learning How To Learn (Coursera course) is also appropriate given its a solid foundation on the subject of how to learn, how learning works, and how to improve such. When I went to private high school, the first course day contained similar content, and its valuable. Anyway, a TED talk is IMO meant as a short summary to learn about a subject. If it interests you, you dive deep into it, and people who watch a lot of TED talks are akin to generalists who want to know a little bit about a lot of things (akin to refusing to specialize). Which has its pros and cons. The world needs both, e.g. both 1st and 2nd line helpdesk.
dagw 5y ago
spending 40 minutes Are you sure you are thinking about TED talks (or perhaps they've changed the format)? Because the selling point of TED talks (not TEDx Talks, which is something different) is that they are 10-12 minutes and to the point. And no matter what you might think of the subject most of them are great masterclasses of clear and precis presentation techniques. You can learn a lot about public speaking and presentation from them. All that being said TED has gone massively downhill over past few years. When they first started TED really did manage to get some of the biggest names in their fields to give really unique talks. However as they've massively expanded the number of shows they do they've become less and less picky as to who they let on stage. This has led to their 'brand' declining and fewer and fewer prestigious people want to be associated with TED. any decent book written by an actual scientist will serve you much better. The whole point of TED talks was never to replace that book. Rather to get you excited enough to pick up that book, especially in a subject you initially had no interest in. In fact most scientists with books use TED as a platform to convince you to read that book.
- Graffur 5y ago
  I find the presentation style to be unbearable now. It's so... corporate.
  - antihipocrat 5y ago
    It's very tedious to watch live as well. The speaking cadence, tone and inflexions are all micromanaged for the entire presentation. If a sentence is expressed incorrectly the speaker will repeat it again and again until it's perfect. It makes for a high quality video, but the live audience has to suffer through it.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  Makes sense, thanks. I probably got into it way too late.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  I think it was a wrong move to brand TEDx after TED. Back in 2012 I watched my first TED video about a guy teaching how to use a paper towel. I didn't realize that was TEDx and not TED, so I avoided all TED videos for several years, and surely missed worthwhile content.
foogazi 5y ago
> any decent book written by an actual scientist will serve you much better. Also worth learning English for