TED Global Oxford Day 2

The second day was, if anything, even more interesting than the first.

Barry Schwartz was funny, insightful and on a roll with the audience. Starting at the end, his "secret to happiness is low expectations" (said before?). But Barry made a strong case that we simply have too much choice in the world (at least in the developed world, as the developing world needs more choice). This 1) causes paralysis and inaction; 2) makes us miserable because we regret, confuse the opportunity cost, escalate our expectations unnecessarily and then end up blaming oursleves anyway!

His cartoons were funny - but so was his description of the choices facing the USA. You can have any of 175 different types of salad dressing in a small supermarket, but you only get to choose between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee for the highest office ...... hmmmm.

So, unlike the accepted paradigm of freedom - choice - happiness, we all need to live in some kind of goldfish bowl which constrains our choices for our own good - the question is, how big should it be?

Steven Pinker was equally insightful on the subject of language, in the "Bugged Minds" session. Language allows us a container for our ideas, and he demonstrated the logics of space, causality, time and movement as they play out as fundamentals to all languages. He also highlighted the "competitive" nature of our expressions (how is "invading Iraq" different to "liberating Iraq"?).

In essence his case was that language either conceptualizes our realities, or it provides the room for negotiation ("would you mind passing the guocamole - that would be awesome") without being directive. Vagueness may indeed be the key tool of diplomacy and getting to mutual solutions.

Erik Spiekermann stressed the importance of the fonts we use to express our ideas, and suggested that this will become an ever more useful way of "branding" ourselves (and our e-mails?). "Type is what language looks like" was his mantra.

Iqbal Quadir once more demonstrated the brilliance of his Grameen Phone venture - using network effects and good old fashioned business savvy to get women out of poverty in Bangladesh. What an inspirational story. He is (rightly) suspicious of Aid to Governments, although recognises the role of partnerships between clever sustainable business ideas and responsible NGO's - provided it is all built "from the ground up" with the real interests of the poor centre stage.

Dan Gilbert offered a simple piece of advice to the audience - "How to do the right thing every time". Easy, Huh? It is all based on Bernouli - weighing the odds of making a gain with the value of the gain.

Problem is, we all define the odds wrong, or make errors in the value of the gain. And in calculating the odds, we tend to do use what we know of best from our experience - i.e. we choose to use the past and not the possible.

He used great examples. We all seem to prefer immediate results, even if waiting would get a better result. $50 now, or $60 in 12 months - we take the $50. Yet we would take $60 in 13 months rather than $50 in 12 months .... go figure. And we would cross town to save $100 on a $200 stereo, but not $100 on a $30,000 car. It is the same $100, but we attache relative value to it.

Ze Frank was hilarious - I will never be able to look at either an air sickness bag or the aeroplane safety card again without smiling ....

Peter Donnelly made us all look silly by demonstrating that we so easiliy misinterpret statistical truths. Whilst humourous (in the case of which is more likely: Heads-Tails-Heads or Heads-Tails-Tails - we all guessed wrong), misinterpretation can have terrible effects. Witness the case of Sally Clark wrongly imprisoned on murder charges on bad statistical evidence when the children actually really died of "Cot death". She won her second appeal, fortunately.

Too often we fall into the "fallacy of the expert" or "compounding probabilities without establishing the right context".

Dawn Danby made an impassioned plea for designers to look at the total system they are working with - the delivery of a stand alone "sustainable / green" product is essentially impossible. And only when we apply multiple "green" technologies to the same product will we start seeing real success - witness the PC Printer business.

Carl Honore learnt the hard way that we all need to slow down to get better health and in fact get better results. This applies to cooking, reading to our kids, reflecting, having sex or simply living life rather than letting life live us.

Of course, everyone wanted some quick tips on how to slow down (!) - how about e-mail free days, 10 minutes thinking time every day, joining the Slow Movement for support, or simply reading your kids bedtime stories properly and with your full attention. No more playing football with the kids whilst juggling a cell phone ....

Wow .... and I unfortunately missed the last session.

Now off to the Natural History Museum for dinner, and then the Sheldonian theatre. TED certainly packs stuff in ...

Talvin Singh entertained us, with his unique crossover improvisations. The intensity in his face was itself inspiring, and the music fillled one of the finest halls anywhere. A great performance - very "TED", very Talvin.

Chris then led an energized and inspiring debate on "Making Poverty History", with many different views expressed by the panel and from the floor - although with only one goal. To help do it. Let's see what action will emerge from TED ....

The debate spilled onto the streets, into the QI Club, and onto the Randolph Hotel until the small hours ....

TED GLOBAL

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