Podcast notes – Bjorn Lomborg – TED talk, Global priorities bigger than climate change

If we have $50B to do good, how do we spend it?
Ex: Governance corruption, Sanitation and water, Global warming, Malnutrition, etc

This question was asked at Davos

UN existed for 60 years, but we’ve never made such a list and discussed how to prioritize them
Prioritization is incredibly uncomfortable
But it’s like walking into a pizzeria but not knowing the price of each pizza

3 well-known economists were tasked to come up with such a list
“Bad projects” = invest $1, get <$1 back

Bottom of list was climate change
This offends people
But why is it a bad deal (eg, Kyoto)? It’s very inefficient – can only do very little, at very high cost
Benefits don’t accrue for many decades – and by then most of the affected people will be much richer and more prosperous (even better than 1st world citizens today)

Kyoto agreement estimated to cost $150B/year – 2-3x global development aid to Third World yearly
For half of that amount – $75B/year – we can solve all major basic problems – clean water, sanitation, etc to benefit everyone on the planet

Top priorities – the “best deals”
1. HIV/AIDS – $27B over 8 years, avoid 28M new cases, prevention > treatment
2. Malnutrition – lack of micronutrients, lacking iron zinc vitamin A, $12B
3. Free trade – cut subsidies in US and Europe, enliven global economy, $2.4T improvement in global GDP
4. Malaria – few billion cases each year, invest $13B over 4 years to cut incidence by half

We should do all of them – but we don’t – in fact aid to developing world has been decreasing not increasing

It’s not about making us feel good, about things with the most media attention

Copenhagen Consensus – mapping out right path for world, think about political triage
“Let’s do enormous amount of good at very low cost right now”

TED talk notes #5, John Lloyd: What’s invisible? More than you think

Gravity is weakest and least understood of 4 fundamental forces (strong force, weak force, nuclear)

We can’t see consciousness

Sufi masters say they’re all telepaths

Initially we thought there were 100K genes, continually revised downward, now think only 20K genes
By contrast, rice has 38K genes (!)

Every cell in your body is replaced at some point, after 7 years they’ve all been replaced

We can’t SEE beam of light, only what it hits

Think there are 100B galaxies but we can only see 5

Thomas Edison: “we don’t know one percent of one millionth about anything”

Full list of TED talk notes here.

TED talk notes #4, Charles Leadbetter: Education innovation in the slums

in slums to make things work: pull not push (they need to demand, seek learning)

make learning second, activity/interest first, “teach through” (eg, learn music theory THROUGH playing instruments)

mass education started with social entrepreneurship model in 19th century (in other words, innovative, grounds-up individuals and ideas with creative sources of funding)

current school system is largely Bismarckian system of 19th century

most education innovation today is sustaining and formal, as opposed to disruptive and informal

Full list of TED talk notes here.

TED talk notes #3, Noah Feldman: Politics and religion are technologies

politics and religion are analyzable as technologies, via conceptual design

democracy is a way to channel power from many into hands of few

Islam – means of construing universe as way to bring salvation to its followers
to achieve goals: peace, justice, equality as viewed within its doctrine

there isn’t a clear symbol for democracy or Islam, as such are subject to wide interpretation

“because they’re technologies, they’re manipulable”

democracy and Islam are portrayed as incompatible, but technologies are more malleable than that
an Egyptian activist group was blocked from forming a party which presented a combination of democracy and Islam

TED talk notes #2, Jill Tarter: Why the search for alien intelligence matters

“we live on a fragile island of life”

“if we’re alone…incredible waste of space”

discovering other cultured civilizations could enhance humanity’s bonds with each other

“we’re a billion year lineage of wandering stardust”

SETI began 50 years ago

sun is one of 400 billion stars in Milky Way, among 100 billion other galaxies (!)

the more we learn the wider our “livable space” becomes (eg, the more habitable stars we’ve discovered, the more species we’ve discovered here on Earth that live in extreme environments)

SETI is the archaeology of the future (when we look into the night sky, we’re looking into our past)

on Earth, life happened quickly, Earth spent majority of its time (90+%) developing life, not waiting for it to arise

Copernican revolution changed our thinking in many areas (astronomy, physics, theology), discovery of ETI would be comparable

Drake conducted first SETI observation of distant stars

“we all belong to one tribe, Earthlings”

Here’s my ongoing list of TED talk notes. I’m now adding some old unpublished notes. #1 was a James Cameron talk.