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🟢Can you solve the logician's rave riddle?
#TED_Ed #Education #Math #Animation #Dance
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#TED_Ed #Education #Math #Animation #Dance
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🟢Can you solve the logician's rave riddle?
Once each year, thousands of logicians descend into the desert for Learning Man, a week-long event they attend to share their ideas, think through tough problems... and mostly to party. And at the center of that gathering is the world’s most exclusive club, where under the full moon, the annual logician’s rave takes place. The entry is guarded by the Demon of Reason, and the only way to get in is to solve one of his dastardly challenges.
You’re attending with 23 of your closest logician friends, but you got lost on the way to the rave and arrived late. They're already inside, so you must face down the demon alone. He poses you the following question:
When your friends arrived, the demon put masks on their faces and forbade them from communicating in any way. No one at any point could see their own masks, but they stood in a circle where they could see everyone else’s. The demon told the logicians that he distributed the masks in such a way that each person would eventually be able to figure out their mask’s color using logic alone. Then, once every two minutes, he rang a bell. At that point, anyone who could come to him and tell him the color of their mask would be admitted.
Here’s what happened: Four logicians got in at the first bell. Some number of logicians, all in red masks, got in at the second bell. Nobody got in when the third bell rang. Logicians wearing at least two different colors got in at the fourth bell. All 23 of your friends played the game perfectly logically and eventually got inside. Your challenge, the demon explains, is to tell him how many people gained entry when the fifth bell rang.
Can you get into the rave?
Pause here to figure it out yourself.
Answer in 3
Answer in 2
Answer in 1
It’s initially difficult to imagine how anyone could, using just logic and the colors they see on the other masks, deduce their own mask color. But even before the first bell, everyone will realize something critical. Let’s imagine a single logician with a silver mask. When she looks around, she’d see multiple colors, but no silver. So she couldn’t ever know that silver is an option, making it impossible for her to logically deduce that she must be silver. That contradicts rule five, so there must be at least two masks of each color.
Once each year, thousands of logicians descend into the desert for Learning Man, a week-long event they attend to share their ideas, think through tough problems... and mostly to party. And at the center of that gathering is the world’s most exclusive club, where under the full moon, the annual logician’s rave takes place. The entry is guarded by the Demon of Reason, and the only way to get in is to solve one of his dastardly challenges.
You’re attending with 23 of your closest logician friends, but you got lost on the way to the rave and arrived late. They're already inside, so you must face down the demon alone. He poses you the following question:
When your friends arrived, the demon put masks on their faces and forbade them from communicating in any way. No one at any point could see their own masks, but they stood in a circle where they could see everyone else’s. The demon told the logicians that he distributed the masks in such a way that each person would eventually be able to figure out their mask’s color using logic alone. Then, once every two minutes, he rang a bell. At that point, anyone who could come to him and tell him the color of their mask would be admitted.
Here’s what happened: Four logicians got in at the first bell. Some number of logicians, all in red masks, got in at the second bell. Nobody got in when the third bell rang. Logicians wearing at least two different colors got in at the fourth bell. All 23 of your friends played the game perfectly logically and eventually got inside. Your challenge, the demon explains, is to tell him how many people gained entry when the fifth bell rang.
Can you get into the rave?
Pause here to figure it out yourself.
Answer in 3
Answer in 2
Answer in 1
It’s initially difficult to imagine how anyone could, using just logic and the colors they see on the other masks, deduce their own mask color. But even before the first bell, everyone will realize something critical. Let’s imagine a single logician with a silver mask. When she looks around, she’d see multiple colors, but no silver. So she couldn’t ever know that silver is an option, making it impossible for her to logically deduce that she must be silver. That contradicts rule five, so there must be at least two masks of each color.
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Now, let’s think about what happens when there are exactly two people wearing the same color mask. Each of them sees only one mask of that color. But because they already know that it can’t be the only one, they immediately know that their own mask is the other. This must be what happened before the first bell: two pairs of logicians each realized their own mask colors when they saw a unique color in the room.
What happens if there are three people wearing the same color? Each of them—A, B and C— sees two people with that color. From A’s perspective, B and C would be expected to behave the same way that the orange and purple pairs did, leaving at the first bell. When that doesn’t happen, each of the three realizes that they are the third person with that color, and all three leave at the next bell. That was what the people with red masks did— so there must have been three of them. We’ve now established a basis for inductive reasoning. Induction is where we can solve the simplest case, then find a pattern that will allow the same reasoning to apply to successively larger sets. The pattern here is that everyone will know what group they’re in as soon as the previously sized group has the opportunity to leave.
After the second bell, there were 16 people. No one left on the third bell, so everyone then knew there weren’t any groups of four. Multiple groups, which must have been of five, left on the fourth bell. Three groups would leave a solitary mask wearer, which isn’t possible, so it must’ve been two groups. And that leaves six logicians outside when the fifth bell rings: the answer to the demon’s riddle. Nothing left to do but join your friends and dance.
#TED_Ed #Education #Math #Animation #Dance
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What happens if there are three people wearing the same color? Each of them—A, B and C— sees two people with that color. From A’s perspective, B and C would be expected to behave the same way that the orange and purple pairs did, leaving at the first bell. When that doesn’t happen, each of the three realizes that they are the third person with that color, and all three leave at the next bell. That was what the people with red masks did— so there must have been three of them. We’ve now established a basis for inductive reasoning. Induction is where we can solve the simplest case, then find a pattern that will allow the same reasoning to apply to successively larger sets. The pattern here is that everyone will know what group they’re in as soon as the previously sized group has the opportunity to leave.
After the second bell, there were 16 people. No one left on the third bell, so everyone then knew there weren’t any groups of four. Multiple groups, which must have been of five, left on the fourth bell. Three groups would leave a solitary mask wearer, which isn’t possible, so it must’ve been two groups. And that leaves six logicians outside when the fifth bell rings: the answer to the demon’s riddle. Nothing left to do but join your friends and dance.
#TED_Ed #Education #Math #Animation #Dance
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🟢The power of passion and perseverance
#Business #Education #Psychology #Success
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#Business #Education #Psychology #Success
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🟢The power of passion and perseverance
When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests. I gave out homework assignments. When the work came back, I calculated grades.
What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well. And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible, and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough.
After several more years of teaching, I came to the conclusion that what we need in education is a much better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological perspective. In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is IQ. But what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?
So I left the classroom, and I went to graduate school to become a psychologist. I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings, and in every study my question was, who is successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year, and of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students? We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.
A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors to take grit questionnaires, and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate. Turns out that grittier kids were significantly more likely to graduate, even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure, things like family income, standardized achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school. So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out.
To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, "How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?" The honest answer is, I don't know.
What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent.
When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests. I gave out homework assignments. When the work came back, I calculated grades.
What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well. And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible, and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough.
After several more years of teaching, I came to the conclusion that what we need in education is a much better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological perspective. In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is IQ. But what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?
So I left the classroom, and I went to graduate school to become a psychologist. I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings, and in every study my question was, who is successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year, and of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students? We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.
A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors to take grit questionnaires, and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate. Turns out that grittier kids were significantly more likely to graduate, even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure, things like family income, standardized achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school. So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out.
To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, "How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?" The honest answer is, I don't know.
What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent.
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So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called "growth mindset." This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.
So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks, because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.
In other words, we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier.
Thank you.
#Business #Education #Psychology #Success
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So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks, because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.
In other words, we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier.
Thank you.
#Business #Education #Psychology #Success
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❤9👏1
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🟢3 steps to getting what you want in a negotiation
#Work #Success #Work_Life_Balance
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#Work #Success #Work_Life_Balance
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🟢3 steps to getting what you want in a negotiation
When we think about negotiations, we think about being tough. We charge in like it's a battle, brandishing our influence and our power moves. But a negotiation doesn't have to be a fight with winners and losers. Think of it more like a dance, two or more people moving fluidly in sync.
We constantly negotiate at work. We negotiate for higher pay, promotions, vacations and even greater autonomy. In fact, every day we negotiate just to get our job done and to secure resources for ourselves and our teams. And yet when we go in with the wrong mindset, with a fist up ready to fight, we aren't as successful. You know why? Because negotiation is not about dominating. It's about crafting a relationship. And relationships thrive when we find ways to give and to take and move together in unison. And to do that, you have to be well prepared.
First, do your research. Figure out whether what you're asking for is realistic. What is your aspiration? What do you want, and what will make you walk away from the table? This might seem obvious, but too many people don’t think it through. Let's say you're negotiating for a salary in a new job. Some people, they determine they ask based on their past salary. That isn't a good yardstick. You may end up asking for too much or too little. Instead, find out the range of what is possible. Look at industrial reports, websites. Talk to people in your professional network to find out the lowest, average and the highest salary for a similar role, and then make your ask closer to that upper limit. Build a solid rationale for why you are above average and thus deserving of that ask.
Let's say you're negotiating for something less black and white, like the ability to work from home to care for an aging parent. You need to study your company's policies on remote work. Ask yourself when and why were these policies developed in the first place? Talk to trusted mentors to understand how working from home might affect issues that aren't on your radar. And think about how changing to working from home might actually affect others in your team. In fact, make a table summarizing the parts of your job that can be done remotely and the parts that require face-to-face interaction. This may sound like a lot to do, but when the person you're negotiating with sees that you've done all this homework, you're more likely to get that "yes." It also helps you avoid being lied to while building the person's respect.
Second, prepare mentally for the negotiation. Asking for things can get emotional. There are real and complex feelings at play: fear, anxiety, anger, even hurt. It's essential to have strategies in place to manage those feelings. One strategy is to adopt a mindset of defensive pessimism. That just means that you accept obstacles and failures are likely in a negotiation. So it's better to put your energy in imagining the ways to overcome those obstacles. That way, you’re ready to respond when you face it. Another strategy is emotional distancing. That is the idea of being less attached to any specific outcome. I know it's easier said than done. We all feel emotions like anger and hurt when our core identities are being threatened. When your manager may be challenging a truth that you hold dear about yourself, like you’re a hard worker and you deserve this, try and avoid thinking of negotiations as the ultimate test of your worth. Go in knowing that your request might be met, that it might be denied, and that none of this is a measure of your worth. Also know that if you feel yourself getting upset, hurt during a negotiation, it's OK to step back. You can leave the dance floor and move up to the balcony. Just say, "Let me think about this a little more. Could we press pause and continue this tomorrow?"
When we think about negotiations, we think about being tough. We charge in like it's a battle, brandishing our influence and our power moves. But a negotiation doesn't have to be a fight with winners and losers. Think of it more like a dance, two or more people moving fluidly in sync.
We constantly negotiate at work. We negotiate for higher pay, promotions, vacations and even greater autonomy. In fact, every day we negotiate just to get our job done and to secure resources for ourselves and our teams. And yet when we go in with the wrong mindset, with a fist up ready to fight, we aren't as successful. You know why? Because negotiation is not about dominating. It's about crafting a relationship. And relationships thrive when we find ways to give and to take and move together in unison. And to do that, you have to be well prepared.
First, do your research. Figure out whether what you're asking for is realistic. What is your aspiration? What do you want, and what will make you walk away from the table? This might seem obvious, but too many people don’t think it through. Let's say you're negotiating for a salary in a new job. Some people, they determine they ask based on their past salary. That isn't a good yardstick. You may end up asking for too much or too little. Instead, find out the range of what is possible. Look at industrial reports, websites. Talk to people in your professional network to find out the lowest, average and the highest salary for a similar role, and then make your ask closer to that upper limit. Build a solid rationale for why you are above average and thus deserving of that ask.
Let's say you're negotiating for something less black and white, like the ability to work from home to care for an aging parent. You need to study your company's policies on remote work. Ask yourself when and why were these policies developed in the first place? Talk to trusted mentors to understand how working from home might affect issues that aren't on your radar. And think about how changing to working from home might actually affect others in your team. In fact, make a table summarizing the parts of your job that can be done remotely and the parts that require face-to-face interaction. This may sound like a lot to do, but when the person you're negotiating with sees that you've done all this homework, you're more likely to get that "yes." It also helps you avoid being lied to while building the person's respect.
Second, prepare mentally for the negotiation. Asking for things can get emotional. There are real and complex feelings at play: fear, anxiety, anger, even hurt. It's essential to have strategies in place to manage those feelings. One strategy is to adopt a mindset of defensive pessimism. That just means that you accept obstacles and failures are likely in a negotiation. So it's better to put your energy in imagining the ways to overcome those obstacles. That way, you’re ready to respond when you face it. Another strategy is emotional distancing. That is the idea of being less attached to any specific outcome. I know it's easier said than done. We all feel emotions like anger and hurt when our core identities are being threatened. When your manager may be challenging a truth that you hold dear about yourself, like you’re a hard worker and you deserve this, try and avoid thinking of negotiations as the ultimate test of your worth. Go in knowing that your request might be met, that it might be denied, and that none of this is a measure of your worth. Also know that if you feel yourself getting upset, hurt during a negotiation, it's OK to step back. You can leave the dance floor and move up to the balcony. Just say, "Let me think about this a little more. Could we press pause and continue this tomorrow?"
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The third and the final way you can prepare for negotiations is by putting yourself in the other person's shoes. Taking the time to anticipate the other's needs and challenges. What pressures may they be under? What risks would they be taking? Do they even have the power to give you what you're asking for? What ripple effects might a "yes" mean? When you make that request, look to balance assertiveness about your own needs with a concern for the other. As you lay out your case, use phrases like, “I’m asking for this because I know it’s good for my team. That I want to achieve X and Y goals, and I know this is what will enable it.” Arguments like that show that you are ambitious, you know what you want, but you also care for others.
So many of our negotiation missteps, they don't actually come from disagreements but misunderstanding the other person. So it's important to listen well, to ask why and why not? And you will surely find unexpected opportunities for win-win solutions.
#Work #Success #Work_Life_Balance
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So many of our negotiation missteps, they don't actually come from disagreements but misunderstanding the other person. So it's important to listen well, to ask why and why not? And you will surely find unexpected opportunities for win-win solutions.
#Work #Success #Work_Life_Balance
🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜
🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜
👍8❤2
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🟢How to recover from activism burnout?
#Communication #TED_Residency #Activism #Social_Change #Society #TED_Fellows #Art #Creativity
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#Communication #TED_Residency #Activism #Social_Change #Society #TED_Fellows #Art #Creativity
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❤4👍1
🟢How to recover from activism burnout?
In the summer of 2017, a woman was murdered by her partner in Sofia. The woman, let's call her "V," was beaten for over 50 minutes before she died. The morning after, her neighbors told the press that they heard her screams, but they didn't intervene. You see, in Bulgaria and many other societies, domestic violence is typically seen as a private matter. Neighbors, however, are quick to react to any other kind of noise.
We wanted to expose and affect the absurdity of this. So we designed an experiment. We rented the apartment just below V's for one night. And at 10pm, Maksim, the artist in our group, sat on the drum set we had assembled in the living room and started beating it. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. Fifty seconds. A minute. A light came on in the hallway. One minute and 20 seconds. A man was standing at the door, hesitant to press the bell. One minute and 52 seconds. The doorbell rang, a ring that could have saved a life.
"Beat." is our project exploring the ominous silence surrounding domestic violence. We filmed the experiment, and it became instantly viral. Our campaign amplified the voices of survivors who shared similar stories online. It equipped neighbors with specific advice, and many committed to taking action. In a country where every other week, the ground quietly embraces the body of a woman murdered by a partner or a relative, we were loud, and we were heard.
I am an activist, passionate about human rights innovation. I lead a global organization for socially engaged creative solutions. In my work, I think about how to make people care and act. I am here to tell you that creative actions can save the world, creative actions and play. I know it is weird to talk about play and human rights in the same sentence, but here is why it's important. More and more, we fear that we can't win this. Campaigns feel dull, messages drown, people break. Numerous studies, including a recent one published by Columbia University, show that burnout and depression are widespread amongst activists. Years ago, I myself was burned out. In a world of endless ways forward, I felt at my final stop.
So what melts fear or dullness or gloom? Play. From this very stage, psychiatrist and play researcher Dr. Stuart Brown said that nothing lights up the brain like play, and that the opposite of play is not work, it's depression. So to pull out of my own burnout, I decided to turn my activism into what I call today "play-tivism."
When we play, others want to join. Today, my playground is filled with artists, techies and scientists. We fuse disciplines in radical collaboration. Together, we seek new ways to empower activism. Our outcomes are not meant to be playful, but our process is. To us, play is an act of resistance. For example, "Beat.," the project I talked about earlier, is a concept developed by a drummer and a software engineer who didn't know each other two days before they pitched the idea. "Beat." is the first winner in our lab series where we pair artists and technologists to work on human rights issues. Other winning concepts include a pop-up bakery that teaches about fake news through beautiful but horrible-tasting cupcakes --
or a board game that puts you in the shoes of a dictator so you get to really grasp the range of tools and tactics of oppression.
We did our first lab just to test the idea, to see where it cracks and if we can make it better. Today, we are so in love with the format that we put it all online for anyone to implement. I cannot overstate the value of experimentation in activism. We can only win if we are not afraid to lose.
In the summer of 2017, a woman was murdered by her partner in Sofia. The woman, let's call her "V," was beaten for over 50 minutes before she died. The morning after, her neighbors told the press that they heard her screams, but they didn't intervene. You see, in Bulgaria and many other societies, domestic violence is typically seen as a private matter. Neighbors, however, are quick to react to any other kind of noise.
We wanted to expose and affect the absurdity of this. So we designed an experiment. We rented the apartment just below V's for one night. And at 10pm, Maksim, the artist in our group, sat on the drum set we had assembled in the living room and started beating it. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. Fifty seconds. A minute. A light came on in the hallway. One minute and 20 seconds. A man was standing at the door, hesitant to press the bell. One minute and 52 seconds. The doorbell rang, a ring that could have saved a life.
"Beat." is our project exploring the ominous silence surrounding domestic violence. We filmed the experiment, and it became instantly viral. Our campaign amplified the voices of survivors who shared similar stories online. It equipped neighbors with specific advice, and many committed to taking action. In a country where every other week, the ground quietly embraces the body of a woman murdered by a partner or a relative, we were loud, and we were heard.
I am an activist, passionate about human rights innovation. I lead a global organization for socially engaged creative solutions. In my work, I think about how to make people care and act. I am here to tell you that creative actions can save the world, creative actions and play. I know it is weird to talk about play and human rights in the same sentence, but here is why it's important. More and more, we fear that we can't win this. Campaigns feel dull, messages drown, people break. Numerous studies, including a recent one published by Columbia University, show that burnout and depression are widespread amongst activists. Years ago, I myself was burned out. In a world of endless ways forward, I felt at my final stop.
So what melts fear or dullness or gloom? Play. From this very stage, psychiatrist and play researcher Dr. Stuart Brown said that nothing lights up the brain like play, and that the opposite of play is not work, it's depression. So to pull out of my own burnout, I decided to turn my activism into what I call today "play-tivism."
When we play, others want to join. Today, my playground is filled with artists, techies and scientists. We fuse disciplines in radical collaboration. Together, we seek new ways to empower activism. Our outcomes are not meant to be playful, but our process is. To us, play is an act of resistance. For example, "Beat.," the project I talked about earlier, is a concept developed by a drummer and a software engineer who didn't know each other two days before they pitched the idea. "Beat." is the first winner in our lab series where we pair artists and technologists to work on human rights issues. Other winning concepts include a pop-up bakery that teaches about fake news through beautiful but horrible-tasting cupcakes --
or a board game that puts you in the shoes of a dictator so you get to really grasp the range of tools and tactics of oppression.
We did our first lab just to test the idea, to see where it cracks and if we can make it better. Today, we are so in love with the format that we put it all online for anyone to implement. I cannot overstate the value of experimentation in activism. We can only win if we are not afraid to lose.
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When we play, we learn. A recent study published by Stanford University about the science of what makes people care reconfirms what we have been hearing for years: opinions are changed not from more information but through empathy-inducing experiences. So learning from science and art, we saw that we can talk about global armed conflict through light bulbs, or address racial inequality in the US through postcards, or tackle the lack of even one single monument of a woman in Sofia by flooding the city with them, and, with all these works, to trigger dialogue, understanding and direct action.
Sometimes, when I talk about taking risks and trying and failing in the context of human rights, I meet raised eyebrows, eyebrows that say, "How irresponsible," or, "How insensitive." People often mistake play for negligence. It is not. Play doesn't just grow our armies stronger or spark better ideas. In times of painful injustice, play brings the levity we need to be able to breathe. When we play, we live.
I grew up in a time when all play was forbidden. My family's lives were crushed by a communist dictatorship. For my aunt, my grandfather, my father, we always held two funerals: one for their bodies, but, years before that, one for their dreams. Some of my biggest dreams are nightmares. I have a nightmare that one day all the past will be forgotten and new clothes will be dripping the blood of past mistakes. I have a nightmare that one day the lighthouses of our humanity will crumble, corroded by acid waves of hate.
But way more than that, I have hope. In our fights for justice and freedom, I hope that we play, and that we see the joy and beauty of us playing together. That's how we win.
Thank you.
#Communication #TED_Residency #Activism #Social_Change #Society #TED_Fellows #Art #Creativity
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Sometimes, when I talk about taking risks and trying and failing in the context of human rights, I meet raised eyebrows, eyebrows that say, "How irresponsible," or, "How insensitive." People often mistake play for negligence. It is not. Play doesn't just grow our armies stronger or spark better ideas. In times of painful injustice, play brings the levity we need to be able to breathe. When we play, we live.
I grew up in a time when all play was forbidden. My family's lives were crushed by a communist dictatorship. For my aunt, my grandfather, my father, we always held two funerals: one for their bodies, but, years before that, one for their dreams. Some of my biggest dreams are nightmares. I have a nightmare that one day all the past will be forgotten and new clothes will be dripping the blood of past mistakes. I have a nightmare that one day the lighthouses of our humanity will crumble, corroded by acid waves of hate.
But way more than that, I have hope. In our fights for justice and freedom, I hope that we play, and that we see the joy and beauty of us playing together. That's how we win.
Thank you.
#Communication #TED_Residency #Activism #Social_Change #Society #TED_Fellows #Art #Creativity
🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜
🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜
👍6❤2
🔥تحصیل، کار و زندگی در فنلاند شادترین کشور دنیا🇫🇮
عضویت از طریق لینک زیر👇👇
https://t.me/StudyLiveFinland
عضویت از طریق لینک زیر👇👇
https://t.me/StudyLiveFinland
👍2❤1
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🟢What happens in your brain when you pay attention?
#Brain #Algorithm #Cognitive_Science #Machine_Learning #Mental_Health #Technology #Neuroscience #Mindfulness
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#Brain #Algorithm #Cognitive_Science #Machine_Learning #Mental_Health #Technology #Neuroscience #Mindfulness
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🟢What happens in your brain when you pay attention?
Paying close attention to something: Not that easy, is it? It's because our attention is pulled in so many different directions at a time, and it's in fact pretty impressive if you can stay focused.
Many people think that attention is all about what we are focusing on, but it's also about what information our brain is trying to filter out.
There are two ways you direct your attention. First, there's overt attention. In overt attention, you move your eyes towards something in order to pay attention to it. Then there's covert attention. In covert attention, you pay attention to something, but without moving your eyes. Think of driving for a second. Your overt attention, your direction of the eyes, are in front, but that's your covert attention which is constantly scanning the surrounding area, where you don't actually look at them.
I'm a computational neuroscientist, and I work on cognitive brain-machine interfaces, or bringing together the brain and the computer. I love brain patterns. Brain patterns are important for us because based on them we can build models for the computers, and based on these models computers can recognize how well our brain functions. And if it doesn't function well, then these computers themselves can be used as assistive devices for therapies. But that also means something, because choosing the wrong patterns will give us the wrong models and therefore the wrong therapies. Right? In case of attention, the fact that we can shift our attention not only by our eyes but also by thinking -- that makes covert attention an interesting model for computers.
So I wanted to know what are the brainwave patterns when you look overtly or when you look covertly. I set up an experiment for that. In this experiment there are two flickering squares, one of them flickering at a slower rate than the other one. Depending on which of these flickers you are paying attention to, certain parts of your brain will start resonating in the same rate as that flickering rate. So by analyzing your brain signals, we can track where exactly you are watching or you are paying attention to.
So to see what happens in your brain when you pay overt attention, I asked people to look directly in one of the squares and pay attention to it. In this case, not surprisingly, we saw that these flickering squares appeared in their brain signals which was coming from the back of their head, which is responsible for the processing of your visual information. But I was really interested to see what happens in your brain when you pay covert attention. So this time I asked people to look in the middle of the screen and without moving their eyes, to pay attention to either of these squares. When we did that, we saw that both of these flickering rates appeared in their brain signals, but interestingly, only one of them, which was paid attention to, had stronger signals, so there was something in the brain which was handling this information so that thing in the brain was basically the activation of the frontal area. The front part of your brain is responsible for higher cognitive functions as a human. The frontal part, it seems that it works as a filter trying to let information come in only from the right flicker that you are paying attention to and trying to inhibit the information coming from the ignored one.
The filtering ability of the brain is indeed a key for attention, which is missing in some people, for example in people with ADHD. So a person with ADHD cannot inhibit these distractors, and that's why they can't focus for a long time on a single task. But what if this person could play a specific computer game with his brain connected to the computer, and then train his own brain to inhibit these distractors?
Paying close attention to something: Not that easy, is it? It's because our attention is pulled in so many different directions at a time, and it's in fact pretty impressive if you can stay focused.
Many people think that attention is all about what we are focusing on, but it's also about what information our brain is trying to filter out.
There are two ways you direct your attention. First, there's overt attention. In overt attention, you move your eyes towards something in order to pay attention to it. Then there's covert attention. In covert attention, you pay attention to something, but without moving your eyes. Think of driving for a second. Your overt attention, your direction of the eyes, are in front, but that's your covert attention which is constantly scanning the surrounding area, where you don't actually look at them.
I'm a computational neuroscientist, and I work on cognitive brain-machine interfaces, or bringing together the brain and the computer. I love brain patterns. Brain patterns are important for us because based on them we can build models for the computers, and based on these models computers can recognize how well our brain functions. And if it doesn't function well, then these computers themselves can be used as assistive devices for therapies. But that also means something, because choosing the wrong patterns will give us the wrong models and therefore the wrong therapies. Right? In case of attention, the fact that we can shift our attention not only by our eyes but also by thinking -- that makes covert attention an interesting model for computers.
So I wanted to know what are the brainwave patterns when you look overtly or when you look covertly. I set up an experiment for that. In this experiment there are two flickering squares, one of them flickering at a slower rate than the other one. Depending on which of these flickers you are paying attention to, certain parts of your brain will start resonating in the same rate as that flickering rate. So by analyzing your brain signals, we can track where exactly you are watching or you are paying attention to.
So to see what happens in your brain when you pay overt attention, I asked people to look directly in one of the squares and pay attention to it. In this case, not surprisingly, we saw that these flickering squares appeared in their brain signals which was coming from the back of their head, which is responsible for the processing of your visual information. But I was really interested to see what happens in your brain when you pay covert attention. So this time I asked people to look in the middle of the screen and without moving their eyes, to pay attention to either of these squares. When we did that, we saw that both of these flickering rates appeared in their brain signals, but interestingly, only one of them, which was paid attention to, had stronger signals, so there was something in the brain which was handling this information so that thing in the brain was basically the activation of the frontal area. The front part of your brain is responsible for higher cognitive functions as a human. The frontal part, it seems that it works as a filter trying to let information come in only from the right flicker that you are paying attention to and trying to inhibit the information coming from the ignored one.
The filtering ability of the brain is indeed a key for attention, which is missing in some people, for example in people with ADHD. So a person with ADHD cannot inhibit these distractors, and that's why they can't focus for a long time on a single task. But what if this person could play a specific computer game with his brain connected to the computer, and then train his own brain to inhibit these distractors?
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Well, ADHD is just one example. We can use these cognitive brain-machine interfaces for many other cognitive fields. It was just a few years ago that my grandfather had a stroke, and he lost complete ability to speak. He could understand everybody, but there was no way to respond, even not writing because he was illiterate. So he passed away in silence. I remember thinking at that time: What if we could have a computer which could speak for him? Now, after years that I am in this field, I can see that this might be possible. Imagine if we can find brainwave patterns when people think about images or even letters, like the letter A generates a different brainwave pattern than the letter B, and so on. Could a computer one day communicate for people who can't speak? What if a computer can help us understand the thoughts of a person in a coma? We are not there yet, but pay close attention. We will be there soon.
Thank you.
#Brain #Algorithm #Cognitive_Science #Machine_Learning #Mental_Health #Technology #Neuroscience #Mindfulness
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Thank you.
#Brain #Algorithm #Cognitive_Science #Machine_Learning #Mental_Health #Technology #Neuroscience #Mindfulness
🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜
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👍6❤5
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🟢3 ways to measure your adaptability and how to improve it
#Leadership #Business #Entrepreneur #Personal_Growth #Investing
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#Leadership #Business #Entrepreneur #Personal_Growth #Investing
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🟢3 ways to measure your adaptability and how to improve it
I met 273 start-up founders last year. And each one was looking for money. As a tech investor, my goal was to sort through everyone that I met and make a quick determination about which ones had the potential to make something really big.
But what makes a great founder? This is a question I ask myself daily. Some venture capitalists place bets based on a founder's previous background. Did they go to an Ivy League school? Have they worked at a blue-chip company? Have they built out a big vision before? Effectively, how smart is this person?
Other VCs asses a founder's emotional quotient, or EQ. How well will this person build teams and build rapport across customers and clients?
I have a different methodology to assess start-up founders, though, and it's not complicated. I look for signs of one specific trait. Not IQ, not EQ. It's adaptability: how well a person reacts to the inevitability of change, and lots of it. That's the single most important determinant for me. I subscribe to the belief that adaptability itself is a form of intelligence, and our adaptability quotient, or AQ, is something that can be measured, tested and improved.
AQ isn't just useful for start-up founders, however. I think it's increasingly important for all of us. Because the world is speeding up. We know that the rate of technological change is accelerating, which is forcing our brains to react. Whether you're navigating changing job conditions brought on by automation, shifting geopolitics in a more globalized world, or simply changing family dynamics and personal relationships. Each of us, as individuals, groups, corporations and even governments are being forced to grapple with more change than ever before in human history.
So, how do we assess our adaptability? I use three tricks when meeting with founders. Here's the first. Think back to your most recent job interview. What kind of questions were you asked? Probably some variation of, "Tell me about a time when," right? Instead, to interview for adaptability, I like to ask "what if" questions. What if your main revenue stream were to dry up overnight? What if a heat wave prevented every single customer from being able to visit your store? Asking "what if," instead of asking about the past, forces the brain to simulate. To picture multiple possible versions of the future. The strength of that vision, as well as how many distinct scenarios someone can conjure, tells me a lot.
Practicing simulations is a sort of safe testing ground for improving adaptability. Instead of testing how you take in and retain information, like an IQ test might, it tests how you manipulate information, given a constraint, in order to achieve a specific goal.
The second trick that I use to assess adaptability in founders is to look for signs of unlearning. Active unlearners seek to challenge what they presume to already know, and instead, override that data with new information. Kind of like a computer running a disk cleanup. Take the example of Destin Sandlin, who programed his bicycle to turn left when he steered it right and vice versa. He called this his Backwards Brain Bike, and it took him nearly eight months just to learn how to ride it kind of, sort of normally. The fact that Destin was able to unlearn his regular bike in favor of a new one, though, signals something awesome about our adaptability. It's not fixed. Instead, each of us has the capacity to improve it, through dedication and hard work.
On the last page of Gandhi's autobiography, he wrote, "I must reduce myself to zero." At many points in his very full life, he was still seeking to return to a beginner's mindset, to zero. To unlearn. In this way, I think it's pretty safe to say Gandhi had a high AQ score.
I met 273 start-up founders last year. And each one was looking for money. As a tech investor, my goal was to sort through everyone that I met and make a quick determination about which ones had the potential to make something really big.
But what makes a great founder? This is a question I ask myself daily. Some venture capitalists place bets based on a founder's previous background. Did they go to an Ivy League school? Have they worked at a blue-chip company? Have they built out a big vision before? Effectively, how smart is this person?
Other VCs asses a founder's emotional quotient, or EQ. How well will this person build teams and build rapport across customers and clients?
I have a different methodology to assess start-up founders, though, and it's not complicated. I look for signs of one specific trait. Not IQ, not EQ. It's adaptability: how well a person reacts to the inevitability of change, and lots of it. That's the single most important determinant for me. I subscribe to the belief that adaptability itself is a form of intelligence, and our adaptability quotient, or AQ, is something that can be measured, tested and improved.
AQ isn't just useful for start-up founders, however. I think it's increasingly important for all of us. Because the world is speeding up. We know that the rate of technological change is accelerating, which is forcing our brains to react. Whether you're navigating changing job conditions brought on by automation, shifting geopolitics in a more globalized world, or simply changing family dynamics and personal relationships. Each of us, as individuals, groups, corporations and even governments are being forced to grapple with more change than ever before in human history.
So, how do we assess our adaptability? I use three tricks when meeting with founders. Here's the first. Think back to your most recent job interview. What kind of questions were you asked? Probably some variation of, "Tell me about a time when," right? Instead, to interview for adaptability, I like to ask "what if" questions. What if your main revenue stream were to dry up overnight? What if a heat wave prevented every single customer from being able to visit your store? Asking "what if," instead of asking about the past, forces the brain to simulate. To picture multiple possible versions of the future. The strength of that vision, as well as how many distinct scenarios someone can conjure, tells me a lot.
Practicing simulations is a sort of safe testing ground for improving adaptability. Instead of testing how you take in and retain information, like an IQ test might, it tests how you manipulate information, given a constraint, in order to achieve a specific goal.
The second trick that I use to assess adaptability in founders is to look for signs of unlearning. Active unlearners seek to challenge what they presume to already know, and instead, override that data with new information. Kind of like a computer running a disk cleanup. Take the example of Destin Sandlin, who programed his bicycle to turn left when he steered it right and vice versa. He called this his Backwards Brain Bike, and it took him nearly eight months just to learn how to ride it kind of, sort of normally. The fact that Destin was able to unlearn his regular bike in favor of a new one, though, signals something awesome about our adaptability. It's not fixed. Instead, each of us has the capacity to improve it, through dedication and hard work.
On the last page of Gandhi's autobiography, he wrote, "I must reduce myself to zero." At many points in his very full life, he was still seeking to return to a beginner's mindset, to zero. To unlearn. In this way, I think it's pretty safe to say Gandhi had a high AQ score.
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The third and final trick that I use to assess a founder's adaptability is to look for people who infuse exploration into their life and their business. There's a sort of natural tension between exploration and exploitation. And collectively, all of us tend to overvalue exploitation. Here's what I mean. In the year 2000, a man finagled his way into a meeting with John Antioco, the CEO of Blockbuster, and proposed a partnership to manage Blockbuster's fledgling online business. The CEO John laughed him out of the room, saying, "I have millions of existing customers and thousands of successful retail stores. I really need to focus on the money."
The other man in the meeting, however, turned out to be Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix. In 2018, Netflix brought in 15.8 billion dollars, while Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, directly 10 years after that meeting. The Blockbuster CEO was too focused on exploiting his already successful business model, so much so that he couldn't see around the next corner. In that way, his previous success became the enemy of his adaptability potential.
For the founders that I work with, I frame exploration as a state of constant seeking. To never fall too far in love with your wins but rather continue to proactively seek out what might kill you next. When I first started exploring adaptability, the thing I found most exciting is that we can improve it. Each of us has the capacity to become more adaptable. But think of it like a muscle: it's got to be exercised. And don't get discouraged if it takes a while. Remember Destin Sandlin? It took him eight months just to learn how to ride a bike.
Over time, using the tricks that I use on founders -- asking "what if" questions, actively unlearning and prioritizing exploration over exploitation can put you in the driver's seat -- so that the next time something big changes, you're already prepared.
We're entering a future where IQ and EQ both matter way less than how fast you're able to adapt. So I hope that these tools help you to raise your own AQ.
Thank you.
#Leadership #Business #Entrepreneur #Personal_Growth #Investing
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The other man in the meeting, however, turned out to be Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix. In 2018, Netflix brought in 15.8 billion dollars, while Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, directly 10 years after that meeting. The Blockbuster CEO was too focused on exploiting his already successful business model, so much so that he couldn't see around the next corner. In that way, his previous success became the enemy of his adaptability potential.
For the founders that I work with, I frame exploration as a state of constant seeking. To never fall too far in love with your wins but rather continue to proactively seek out what might kill you next. When I first started exploring adaptability, the thing I found most exciting is that we can improve it. Each of us has the capacity to become more adaptable. But think of it like a muscle: it's got to be exercised. And don't get discouraged if it takes a while. Remember Destin Sandlin? It took him eight months just to learn how to ride a bike.
Over time, using the tricks that I use on founders -- asking "what if" questions, actively unlearning and prioritizing exploration over exploitation can put you in the driver's seat -- so that the next time something big changes, you're already prepared.
We're entering a future where IQ and EQ both matter way less than how fast you're able to adapt. So I hope that these tools help you to raise your own AQ.
Thank you.
#Leadership #Business #Entrepreneur #Personal_Growth #Investing
🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜
🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜
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🟢How close are we to uploading our minds?
#Animation #TED_Ed #Science #Human_Body #Brain #Technology #Medicine #Computers #Education
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#Animation #TED_Ed #Science #Human_Body #Brain #Technology #Medicine #Computers #Education
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🟢How close are we to uploading our minds?
Imagine a future where nobody dies— instead, our minds are uploaded to a digital world. They might live on in a realistic, simulated environment with avatar bodies, and could still call in and contribute to the biological world.
Mind uploading has powerful appeal— but what would it actually take to scan a person’s brain and upload their mind? The main challenges are scanning a brain in enough detail to capture the mind and perfectly recreating that detail artificially.
But first, we have to know what to scan. The human brain contains about 86 billion neurons, connected by at least a hundred trillion synapses. The pattern of connectivity among the brain’s neurons, that is, all of the neurons and all their connections to each other, is called the connectome. We haven’t yet mapped the connectome, and there’s also a lot more to neural signaling. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of different kinds of connections, or synapses. Each functions in a slightly different way. Some work faster, some slower. Some grow or shrink rapidly in the process of learning; some are more stable over time. And beyond the trillions of precise, 1-to-1 connections between neurons, some neurons also spray out neurotransmitters that affect many other neurons at once. All of these different kinds of interactions would need to be mapped in order to copy a person’s mind. There are also a lot of influences on neural signaling that are poorly understood or undiscovered. To name just one example, patterns of activity between neurons are likely influenced by a type of cell called glia. Glia surround neurons and, according to some scientists, may even outnumber them by as many as ten to one. Glia were once thought to be purely for structural support, and their functions are still poorly understood, but at least some of them can generate their own signals that influence information processing.
Our understanding of the brain isn’t good enough to determine what we’d need to scan in order to replicate the mind, but assuming our knowledge does advance to that point, how would we scan it? Currently, we can accurately scan a living human brain with resolutions of about half a millimeter using our best non-invasive scanning method, MRI. To detect a synapse, we’ll need to scan at a resolution of about a micron— a thousandth of a millimeter. To distinguish the kind of synapse and precisely how strong each synapse is, we’ll need even better resolution. MRI depends on powerful magnetic fields. Scanning at the resolution required to determine the details of individual synapses would requires a field strength high enough to cook a person’s tissues. So this kind of leap in resolution would require fundamentally new scanning technology. It would be more feasible to scan a dead brain using an electron microscope, but even that technology is nowhere near good enough– and requires killing the subject first.
Assuming we eventually understand the brain well enough to know what to scan and develop the technology to safely scan at that resolution, the next challenge would be to recreate that information digitally. The main obstacles to doing so are computing power and storage space, both of which are improving every year. We’re actually much closer to attaining this technological capacity than we are to understanding or scanning our own minds. Artificial neural networks already run our internet search engines, digital assistants, self-driving cars, Wall Street trading algorithms, and smart phones. Nobody has yet built an artificial network with 86 billion neurons, but as computing technology improves, it may be possible to keep track of such massive data sets.
At every step in the scanning and uploading process, we’d have to be certain we were capturing all the necessary information accurately— or there’s no telling what ruined version of a mind might emerge.
Imagine a future where nobody dies— instead, our minds are uploaded to a digital world. They might live on in a realistic, simulated environment with avatar bodies, and could still call in and contribute to the biological world.
Mind uploading has powerful appeal— but what would it actually take to scan a person’s brain and upload their mind? The main challenges are scanning a brain in enough detail to capture the mind and perfectly recreating that detail artificially.
But first, we have to know what to scan. The human brain contains about 86 billion neurons, connected by at least a hundred trillion synapses. The pattern of connectivity among the brain’s neurons, that is, all of the neurons and all their connections to each other, is called the connectome. We haven’t yet mapped the connectome, and there’s also a lot more to neural signaling. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of different kinds of connections, or synapses. Each functions in a slightly different way. Some work faster, some slower. Some grow or shrink rapidly in the process of learning; some are more stable over time. And beyond the trillions of precise, 1-to-1 connections between neurons, some neurons also spray out neurotransmitters that affect many other neurons at once. All of these different kinds of interactions would need to be mapped in order to copy a person’s mind. There are also a lot of influences on neural signaling that are poorly understood or undiscovered. To name just one example, patterns of activity between neurons are likely influenced by a type of cell called glia. Glia surround neurons and, according to some scientists, may even outnumber them by as many as ten to one. Glia were once thought to be purely for structural support, and their functions are still poorly understood, but at least some of them can generate their own signals that influence information processing.
Our understanding of the brain isn’t good enough to determine what we’d need to scan in order to replicate the mind, but assuming our knowledge does advance to that point, how would we scan it? Currently, we can accurately scan a living human brain with resolutions of about half a millimeter using our best non-invasive scanning method, MRI. To detect a synapse, we’ll need to scan at a resolution of about a micron— a thousandth of a millimeter. To distinguish the kind of synapse and precisely how strong each synapse is, we’ll need even better resolution. MRI depends on powerful magnetic fields. Scanning at the resolution required to determine the details of individual synapses would requires a field strength high enough to cook a person’s tissues. So this kind of leap in resolution would require fundamentally new scanning technology. It would be more feasible to scan a dead brain using an electron microscope, but even that technology is nowhere near good enough– and requires killing the subject first.
Assuming we eventually understand the brain well enough to know what to scan and develop the technology to safely scan at that resolution, the next challenge would be to recreate that information digitally. The main obstacles to doing so are computing power and storage space, both of which are improving every year. We’re actually much closer to attaining this technological capacity than we are to understanding or scanning our own minds. Artificial neural networks already run our internet search engines, digital assistants, self-driving cars, Wall Street trading algorithms, and smart phones. Nobody has yet built an artificial network with 86 billion neurons, but as computing technology improves, it may be possible to keep track of such massive data sets.
At every step in the scanning and uploading process, we’d have to be certain we were capturing all the necessary information accurately— or there’s no telling what ruined version of a mind might emerge.
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