Thinking Big Just one human brain recording its thoughts.

Throughout Morozov’s critique, he heavily warns against the manner in which TED talks with the  motto  “Ideas worth spreading” has transformed into “ideas no footnotes can support”. Morozov spends the majority of his article analyzing the work of Parag and Ayesha Khanna, the authors of Hybrid Reality, a short TED published book. Morozov uses Khannas’ superficial and loop-holed argument on the benefits of technology in society, to illustrate how our supposed intellectual-elite have a tendency to succumb to generalizations when arguing and analyzing. Morozov argues, the Khannas’ and many other TED talkers use of  reoccurring generalizations has lead to a masquerade of the complexity of reality and could be considered a product of the present pressure to find solutions quickly rather than honestly or panoramically.  While mocking Khannas’ theory of the Hybrid Age, Morozov effectively reveals the theory’s distortions in their definitions, “perhaps this is what the Hybrid Age is all about: marketing masquerading as theory, charlatans masquerading as philosophers, a New Age cult masquerading as a university, business masquerading as redemption, slogans masquerading as truths”. With so much literature jargon surrounding media, it is hard for audiences to decipher the credibility of really anything. It is a sad but common occurrence and as Morozov points out “charlatans are masquerading as philosophers” or in other words, people are purely selling ideas for money and fooling the public into thinking they are in the midst of altering the universe.

While reading Morozov’s article, I agreed with his points so thoroughly that I felt as if he was ripping the honesty out of me and forcing me to face the fact that I sporadically bullshit arguments.  Morozov uses philosopher and Princeton professor,  Harry Frankfurt to establish the definition of a bullshitter,  “[a bullshitter] is not interested in reality at all. The bullshitter “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.'” Often drowning in the complexity of arguments and pressed on time, I have noticed a sad tendency to take the easy way out and ignore the logic puzzle that my brain is itching to crack, if only I would give it the opportunity. Instead I pick and choose facts to obtusely fit my simple regurgitation of something I and the reader already know. Not cotempt but tired, I submit it anyway, hoping my GPA remains at least high enough to get me to the next rung in the ladder.

Trying my best to not bullshit now is actually really hard, and requires deep thought (imagine that) rather than simple words. It is three  in the morning, and  with a paper, 2 presentations, and 2 tests coming up, it is tempting to put thinking on the back burner and simply write.  With the continual push to perform my “best” and the constant fear of falling behind, I sporadically bull shit just to keep up, denying myself  the necessary time to actually reflect on the complex issues that are in front of me.

I fear, because I know this method of speed-writing comes off as narrow-minded when I truly fear worn out. I wish I had time to stop and think. Forbes magazine  recently published their “Top 10 Worst College Majors” and ranked #4 was philosophy with the justification that the median earnings for recent grads is $30,000.  But perhaps more philosophy majors is what we need in today’s world. People who dedicate their lives to thinking complexly and endlessly, without the pressure to produce or the  extrinsic economical motivator.

The pattern of lack of complexity coinciding with a lack of time routinely shows up in TED talks, as Morozov points out. Here is a prime example of oversimplifying, with Jenna McCarthy’s discussion on “What you don’t know about marriage”. In the eleven minute talk McCarthy attempts to encompass the huge of question of what does and does not make a marriage work, succeed, or survive. This is an overwhelming topic and she is not an expert nor should be even be considered a reliable source. The only credibility she holds onto is the fact that she is married. She uses humor throughout her talk  which prevents her speech from becoming preachy but ultimately confuses her audience because we cannot tell if her humor is just a mechanism to cover-up her generalized statistics she tries to apply to the married-public.  One specific trend she attempts  to apply is that “in the happiest marriages,  the wife is thinner and better looking than the husband”. She provides no further explanation to this trend other than a chuckle with a “It is obvious, right?” She never defines what a “happy marriage” embodies, nor does she explain how a study comparing the better looks between husband and wife was conducted. She ends up generalizing saying this makes sense because “women care about being good looking while men care about sex”. There was some hope that she might be using this  stereotype satirically, but as the talk continues the audience realizes that that is not the case. These generalizations are dangerous and I could imagine offensive, even if they were said in light humor. If attempting to talk about a massive topic like “what makes a marriage work” one should at least have a message that stretches further than  supporting stereotypes with unreliable statistics. Overall, my initial reaction after watching this was “that was a waste of time”.  Maybe I missed the point because I am not married, but I doubt it. She tries but fails to answer the complexity of original question and instead spends eleven minutes over-simplifying and generalizing.  This makes me question the TED talk company and I wonder if someone somewhere genuinely thought that Jenna McCarthy’s message was an “idea worth spreading”? How exactly do TED talkers ger picked? Would she have had a stronger speech if we let her explain herself in 22 minutes instead of 11?Where do we draw the line of bullshit? http://www.ted.com/talks/jenna_mccarthy_what_you_don_t_know_about_marriage.html

Having just criticized and mainly agreed with Morozov’s criticism’s, I wonder if  these criticisms of the TED talks may limit potential remarkable 10 minute speakers from performing: is it better to encourage bullshit or silence?

With assignments, encouraging silence is generally not an option.  But with this upcoming assignment, I am afraid my lack of skill and experience will result in “bullshit” no matter how dedicated I am to doing the opposite.

A challenge I will probably face is  becoming comfortable with not necessarily being able to solve an entire problem in 3 minutes. I can openly admit that I have probably been in Jenna McCarthy’s shoes multiple times. If anyone tries to cram  finding a solution to a complex issue into 3 minutes, he or she will almost always over-simplify and generalize. I need to take this into account moving forward and find a balance between illustrating something of importance without attempting to provide an simple solution to a complex problem.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2012 at 4:44 am and is filed under RCL, Uncategorized. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.