TED Talk

Lily has been a big fan of TED talk for sometime. She recommended it to me for a number of times. But I was not quite as interested in it as she was. One reason was that,  especially for topics on life, I thought I know what they talk about already.

Recently I had an awakening - I want to read more on various topics, to listen to others' perspectives, even on topics I have a strong opinion or I am very good at. I try to achieve the goal that I will complete reading or listening even if I am opposed to the author's position, or the speaker's opinion, as long as I am interested in the subject.

TED talk, which is typically 10 ~ 15 minutes long, is a good place start this exercise. I signed on to receive daily alert from ted.com. In the past two weeks I listened to about 10 talks,  Through some of these talks I was exposed to some new ideas and concepts: what is blockchain, why artificial intelligence could be a threat to humankind, the top factor that determine a start-up's success. I have my own opinions on many of the subjects - but upon listening to the whole talks, I found that looking at the same thing from a different perspective could be very interesting and enlightening, some facts on the subjects could be very fascinating and informative - how to make vote fun again was a timely topic; technology has not changed love - a no brainer to me, but the speaker gave some interesting data to back it up; harnessing nature's power via biomimics is a common subject in academic research, but put it on a commercial scale is totally another thing; the career advice on focus on development of business acumen ....

What impressed me the most among those talks I listened to are the following three:

Dare to disagree

It is not only about dare to disagree, it is also about the capacity to accept and welcome disagreement so that we can think deeper, look wider.

Why you should talk to a stranger

I was quite suspicious of the speaker's motive at the beginning, but in the end I was convinced that we should "embrace those fleeting but profoundly beautiful moments of genuine connection" occasionally.

What enduring love looks like

This is another one I thought that I could have skipped at the beginning because I thought that the speakers were off topic. However the first half set-up made the ending very powerful and convincing.