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>> "Your argument comes down firmly on the side of one party." This would imply that climate change would also be off limits at TED, which it isn't.
It's fine as long as you don't name any political party by name I think.
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...or, the speaker is simply passionate about a topic that he believes needs to be discussed as openly as possible. Aren't you now committing the same mistake of guessing the speaker's motivations as everyone who criticized TED?
Perhaps, and I accept that it is possible that the facts as stated in the article are wrong. However, if we accept them as true, the speaker: 1. Hired a PR firm in an attempt to threaten TED into publishing his talk. 2. When that failed, he misrepresented TED (by selectively quoting private correspondence) to the media in order to create the subsequent firestorm. I will accept that the speaker may be passionate about…
How do you conclude that? The only possible dishonesty I've seen is about how the talk was handled, not the content of the talk. He seems all for open discussion of the content of the talk.
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How many TED talks revolve around global warming, despite the fact that the right treats it not just as alarmism, but a liberal hoax? TED doesn't seem to be rushing to pull those down. I can understand their reluctance to give Fox News ammunition to smear the TED brand. But it was the parties who chose to politicize ideas and issues which should belong to all humanity. Whatever happened to respectfully listening to p…
I believe this particular decision was not about the message but about the way it was delivered. My hypothesis is that the same topic presented in a wikipediish NPOV style would fare much better. And symmetrically if you spiced a talk about climate change with jabs at replublicans it would share the fate of the talk in question.
To put the shoe on the other foot: let's say someone had data which demonstrated that welfare and affirmative action are bad for the people they purport to help (just an example, I'm not making a case for or against either). How could one make that argument in a neutral, non-partisan way, when those issues have been politicized to death for decades?
You couldn't. You'd have to either state your case bluntly and take the heat, or shut up and go away. Though the talk could definitely have been better (more data, please), I'm glad the speaker chose the former, and I think he made the best attempt possible at being neutral.
The response is eloquent, but I think it sidesteps the point that concerns me and many others. Yes, for the reasons stated, this talk is not the right one to be highlighted on Ted.com. It's not censorship, it's a valid editorial decision. But I think the real point is this quote from the NJ article: "But even if the talk was rated a home run, we couldn't release it, because it would be unquestionably regarded as out…
If you read the transcript, you get the distinct sense that what you're listening to isn't intellectual discovery based on empirical data. It reads like a speech from a political candidate. It truly is not TED worthy, and this is from someone who fully believes every word that man uttered. TED is about sharing knowledge. Raw, unbiased, unignorable knowledge. Talks that are based entirely on anecdote and talking point…
Maybe I'm politically tone deaf, but the talk didn't seem particularly partisan at all. Sure, it had a particular perspective more in alignment with one party than another, but wouldn't this talk be just as relevant in India and the UK as it is in the US, and in which case, not particularly partisan at all? Don't all TED talks have some bias to one perspective on the world or philosophy or another? I don't get why th…
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"Reality has a well known liberal bias."
Are actually making that claim, or is that an attempt to archly demonstrate the point being made? Because if you're seriously making that claim as others had, I can barely count the number of fallacies and debate style errors it contains with both hands. If you weren't trying to provide an example of how explicitly partisan debates can just shut down all conversation, you still did a good job.
That would be like me pitching a show to Fox News about how white christian males are scum and should be burned for fuel. It's the wrong message, for the wrong audience.
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Did he say it first? The first page of Google hits is covered with Colbert saying it at the Correspondents' Dinner in 2006. Edit: here it is, "I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liber…
'Reality has a well known Google bias'
That's almost right; just change "less" to "full".
When a problem has overwhelmingly been created by one party, then yeah, of course you're going to have to be "partisan" to address it.