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The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

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Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#51

Post by kirsebaer »

mr_luc wrote: post #38

I absolutely loved one critique from the article: > middlebrow megachurch infotainment This hits the nail on the head on so many levels. (And maybe that's enough; maybe the college-educated need their megachurches as well). Like megachurches, TED offers highly-produced "public speaking as entertainment", but the purported content of the talks isn't entertainment, but $SERIOUS_ISSUE being told to you by $PERSON_WHO_KN…

TED speakers do take questions from the people in the audience and there is a comments section on the TED website, videos usually get lots of discussion.

Some nice things about TED/TEDx: * They have made intellectual talks "cool". * Video equivalent of a Scientific American article. * Encourages people to give short entertaining talks instead of 40 min powerpoint "presentations". * With TEDx anyone has the opportunity to get onto the TED website.

People on HN complain about the crazy cost of attending a TED conference, but this is just a networking/conspicuous-consumption event for rich people -- is that any different than $10k charity dinners?

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#52

Post by rudimental »

MCRed wrote: post #44
jerf wrote: post #6

"TED’s is the language and tone of the pitch. It’s a style that comes from corporate conference rooms, where product ideas are pitched to potential investors." Someone in HN linked this in a previous discussion about TED, but especially with that quote in the piece it's even more a dead-on satire home run from the Onion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s Part of a series though my impression was that it's t…

I criticized TED years ago on Twitter, and someone responded to me (who had gone) about how life changing it was and how she was motivated and now was going to really make a difference the world. I challenged her on this and said "honestly, what are the odds that you're going to do anything?" She was certain that TED was significant and she was empowered and she was going to make a difference. Now, I use Twitter so r…

'TED is propaganda. Propaganda of high form.'

Could you elaborate on what you mean here? E.g. propaganda trying to convince people what?

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#53

Post by mercer »

nathanallen wrote: post #31

I think we can add a few more genres to our list... Popularizations - The Paradox of Choice - The Long Tail - The Shallows - Freakonomics - Where Good Ideas Come From Podcasts - This American Life - Freakonomics Radio - 99 Percent Invisible - Stuff You Should Know Aggregators - Hacker News I'm being tongue in cheek: I grant you there's excellent content, above, but I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the followin…

Reminds me a bit of this skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA ("Did You Read It?")

I've started noticing more and more that a shockingly large amount of conversations are little more than continuous references to things both me and my conversational partner have read, seen or heard. With my brothers it's Reddit. With my fellow coders it's HN. With my college friends it's a grab-bag of New Yorker, NYTimes, Instapaper / Longreads articles, and our national 'top publications'. Whichever one has recently published a particularly thoughtful (or really, viral) article.

Sometimes I find myself in a conversation like this with multiple, and it makes me feel like I'm in a Family Guy episode (even weirder: referring to a family guy joke that is itself only funny because it's a reference).

I've started avoiding these conversations, because it's just too easy to get stuck in a 'small-talk loop' that just goes on and on. I think that says something about the subject matter, because I noticed that when discussing, say, a book we've read or a lengthy documentary, we inevitably end up in a fascinating conversation about the subject matter.

(another solution, I've found, is to pretend that I didn't also read/watch x, and get someone to explain and reason about it.)

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#54

Post by colechristensen »

visakanv wrote: post #50

The one thing I find more distasteful than TED is are smug commentaries writing about how distasteful TED is. It reminds me of of jazz musicians criticizing "watered down jazz-pop". > "What I ask myself when confronted with any TED talk is this: why do they all sound the same?" Well, why do criticisms of "mainstream, middlebrow" works all sound the same? I personally have found TED talks to be useful introductions an…

>Way better than anything you can say for a grumpy old fart who sits around criticizing other people.

And what you've done here is so much different?

Let's not have a fight between hipsters and anti-intellectuals.

Mediocrity and popularity go hand in hand. That is it's often incredibly difficult to maintain quality in an endeavor which has become wildly popular - or your motivations between creating something great and maintaining popular appeal get muddled together.

Take jazz music -- it takes a lot of listening, knowledge, and understanding to fully appreciate really great jazz. Mass audiences aren't going to have that understanding so there's a strong tendency for the subtlety which makes the genre great to be bred out -- most of the consumers can't tell the difference and simply don't care.

It's not elitism that says jazz-pop is awful, it's simple truth that jazz-pop is a shallow approximation of the real thing.

Maybe it's okay that some things are shallow and simple and fun, there's a place for such things; but let's not elevate them to greatness so we can bash folks who appreciate the real thing.

TED talks are increasingly at risk of being very much more about being engaging than having valuable substance. It turns out most of the real world doesn't have much of the pop, shine, and sparkle TED talks make it seem.

Simply TED is pretentious.

>attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed

Its heart might be in the right place, but its execution can be lacking. There are real problems between the sciences and the mainstream and people are right to criticize things that make this interaction worse by giving wrong impressions.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#55

Post by richmarr »

MCRed wrote: post #44
jerf wrote: post #6

"TED’s is the language and tone of the pitch. It’s a style that comes from corporate conference rooms, where product ideas are pitched to potential investors." Someone in HN linked this in a previous discussion about TED, but especially with that quote in the piece it's even more a dead-on satire home run from the Onion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s Part of a series though my impression was that it's t…

I criticized TED years ago on Twitter, and someone responded to me (who had gone) about how life changing it was and how she was motivated and now was going to really make a difference the world. I challenged her on this and said "honestly, what are the odds that you're going to do anything?" She was certain that TED was significant and she was empowered and she was going to make a difference. Now, I use Twitter so r…

> I think TED is unhealthy and actually corrosive and anti-intellectual.

You could also say the same about framing an anecdote as an experiment. Just sayin.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#56

Post by richmarr »

colechristensen wrote: post #54
visakanv wrote: post #50

The one thing I find more distasteful than TED is are smug commentaries writing about how distasteful TED is. It reminds me of of jazz musicians criticizing "watered down jazz-pop". > "What I ask myself when confronted with any TED talk is this: why do they all sound the same?" Well, why do criticisms of "mainstream, middlebrow" works all sound the same? I personally have found TED talks to be useful introductions an…

>Way better than anything you can say for a grumpy old fart who sits around criticizing other people. And what you've done here is so much different? Let's not have a fight between hipsters and anti-intellectuals. Mediocrity and popularity go hand in hand. That is it's often incredibly difficult to maintain quality in an endeavor which has become wildly popular - or your motivations between creating something great a…

> Take jazz music -- it takes a lot of listening, knowledge, and understanding to fully appreciate really great jazz

It takes a lot of time and practice to fully appreciate drinking methylated spirits... that doesn't make it a good idea.

> Simply TED is pretentious.

Your argument boils down to "I dont like TED because people think TED is clever, but I think I'm cleverer than TED".

Prove it. Do something better than TED.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#57

Post by 6stringmerc »

When Amanda Palmer delivered a TED talk about the "art of asking", I knew the platform was more interested in money and publicity than any sense of intellectual rigor. Mostly because they allowed a person a platform from which to spew anecdotal garbage, and secondly, because the platform presents itself as immune to criticism. It is, to me, an embodiment of the phony image that Amanda Palmer has based her entire career upon (she's not the only one, simply the most obvious), and it's that selfish faux sincerity that strikes me as f#*king disgusting.

Some might question my basis for this, but I didn't earn my National Forensics League membership easily. TED is essentially feel-good, disposable information. Compared to Nova, or pretty much any issue of National Geographic, it's a pile of profitable hot garbage.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#58

Post by 6stringmerc »

visakanv wrote: post #50

The one thing I find more distasteful than TED is are smug commentaries writing about how distasteful TED is. It reminds me of of jazz musicians criticizing "watered down jazz-pop". > "What I ask myself when confronted with any TED talk is this: why do they all sound the same?" Well, why do criticisms of "mainstream, middlebrow" works all sound the same? I personally have found TED talks to be useful introductions an…

What do you know about watered down jazz-pop? It's real. It's easy listening. Have you heard the rampant sameness that plagues new jazz? It's like a pastiche that I can hear from a mile away. Norman Brown is an excellent guitar player, but I can't stand to listen to that sugary, over-saturated production garbage that seemingly took over the industry. Real jazz doesn't have a damn wind chime stroke every third song. There's a place for criticism, and you just picked a really bad example for your case. How bad? Try this on for size:

TED talks are to intellectualism what Kenny G is to jazz.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#60

Post by 6stringmerc »

MCRed wrote: post #44
jerf wrote: post #6

"TED’s is the language and tone of the pitch. It’s a style that comes from corporate conference rooms, where product ideas are pitched to potential investors." Someone in HN linked this in a previous discussion about TED, but especially with that quote in the piece it's even more a dead-on satire home run from the Onion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s Part of a series though my impression was that it's t…

I criticized TED years ago on Twitter, and someone responded to me (who had gone) about how life changing it was and how she was motivated and now was going to really make a difference the world. I challenged her on this and said "honestly, what are the odds that you're going to do anything?" She was certain that TED was significant and she was empowered and she was going to make a difference. Now, I use Twitter so r…

Thanks for sharing your experience. It strikes a chord based on my own professional and academic background, in that I've attended conferences. The nature of conferences are to, basically, advance learning and sharing in a collective format. TED is about consuming something being pitched. Very different. In a way, TED is like watching television, and actual intellectualism is like visiting the library for a couple hours and browsing and reading. Or, as a famous movie character once said..."See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"
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