Ever wanted some “grim inspiration”, or to hear from someone whose “optimism is based on cynicism”? Then this talk is for you.

Official Spiel: Author Robert Wright explains “non-zero-sumness,” a game-theory term describing how players with linked fortunes tend to cooperate for mutual benefit. This dynamic has guided our biological and cultural evolution, he says — but our unwillingness to understand one another, as in the clash between the Muslim world and the West, will lead to all of us losing the “game.” Once we recognize that life is a non-zero-sum game, in which we all must cooperate to succeed, it will force us to see that moral progress — a move toward empathy — is our only hope.

My Spiel:

The speaker Robert Wright is a fairly morose fellow with what I thought a very inspirational message. Being a bit dark he sees the danger and threat around us, but particularly coming after Steve Pinker’s talk I think there is cause for optimism, that man is moving closer to increased happiness and not the apocalypse as Wright fears.

A zero sum game is a game where one team wins every time the other team loses. This would be basketball or boxing. By contrast, a non-zero sum game is where the players win or lose together, like in dancing or raising a family. Most games of life are non-zero sum games.

His main point is that we need to get better about understanding each other, because violence and hatred hurt all parties involved.

He has a great quote (paraphrased), “I don’t want us to bomb Japan because they built my car.” This is why he says he is cynically hopeful- he fundamentally believes in people’s urge to help themselves, even if it means helping others. He is worried that current events show a decay in understanding between East and West that will result in decreased survival and a ‘lose-lose’ for both groups.

Now, for my brief rambling. I love the contrast between a non-zero sum game and a zero sum game. In a zero sum game you are trying to win against an opponent. In a non-zero sum game you play with teammates toward a common goal. In business you will occasionally see the career climber, “only out for No. #1″. Enough of these people damage the company, weakening the overall structure as the career climbers fight for position instead of productivity.

Even in sports, the classic zero sum game, there is an aspect of cooperation between the two teams that makes the game playable and fun. No weapons, cheating, poor sportsmanship or violence even if you could get away with it and increase your own odds. Those that break these rules damage the entire sport (steroids commentary insert here).
Life, in general, is a non zero sum game. Play to win.

If you connect this concept with the statistical evidence behind Steve Pinker it looks like part of the reason the world has improved over the centuries (in terms of reduced war and violence) has been due to increased communication and interconnectedness between nations and groups. As trade improves the benefit to self of helping others becomes more obvious- we don’t like anything bad happening to the guy we do business with, making our movies or buying our produce. It implies that the way to more peace, more understanding and less violence is by increased and more open communication.

While you might hope the Internet would be the obvious answer to this problem you run into the unfortunate element mentioned in a prior post about Anonymity + Audience… People display even less tolerance and more bigotry in online forums than in face to face encounters. But on the plus side, the business side of the Internet has done wonders for the

Every few days I read some newspaper article which says “in this age of senseless violence” or some such nonsense.  I always wonder what age in between the trenches of WWI and the race riots of the 60’s they are comparing the present to.  Was there perhaps some period before industrialization I am unaware of when everyone got along in Utopian harmony?  Or are things better now than they used to be, or indeed have ever been?

Official Spiel: In a preview of his next book, Steven Pinker takes on violence. We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we’ve come to believe. Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.

My Spiel: Steven Pinker and I don’t exactly hold eye to eye on some issues, but here we line up perfectly.  Things are apparently better than they used to be, all the way back since the hunter gatherer cultures in terms of safety, peace and personal danger.  It is simply very, very safe these days.  Anyone who says differently is selling something.  (Quick aside: the only thing which is substantially worse than it has been in centuries past is the environment, which is not related to safety but to long term survival of a species.  Still, it is a problem worthy of many other TED talks.)

Free speech, human rights, religious freedom and average lifespan are all up.  Deaths by murder and war are way down.  Pinker has a great observation on this, which paraphrased is that the better interconnected and in communication you are with your peers the less harm you will tend to do them and the more you will treat them the way you would like to be treated.  

In Oregon a thousand years ago you would only have to go a few hundred miles to find “others”, or another tribe of Indians that was not part of yours and considered dangerous or an enemy.  How far outside of Oregon would you have to go now before you can find someone from an opposing society?  Californians might be ‘different’ but they’re still on the same side- even the Canadians are considered pretty friendly.

Unfortunately, this relative peace is only true as an average across the whole of humanity.  There are large pockets of inequality, hatred and war that fill our screens and our hearts with dismay, allowing the merchants of death a way to fix our attention, cut our enthusiasm and hide the otherwise positive trend of improvement across humanity.  We have a long, long way to go, but we are on the right path- so says the history book of times far worse than now.

LA does not have what you would call “seasons”, but occasionally weather does wander through on its way somewhere else.

These are two views from the street above my house. Note the snow on the mountain in the background left down from the night before.

House with snow, and Flowers bloomed everywhere.

Safe for work. Count the passes the team in white makes. Very funny, good luck.

I find passion absolutely fascinating.

Dave Eggers: Once Upon a School

Official Spiel: Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs. But you don’t need to go that far, he reminds us — it’s as simple as asking a teacher “How can I help?” He asks that we share our own volunteering stories at his new website, Once Upon a School.

My Spiel:

I’ve read Dave’s book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and what really struck me was that a) it was well written, b) I didn’t like it but c) that it showed true passion. I have nothing but admiration for someone who cares that much about something, anything.

The more talks I listen to and books I read by educators the more I am struck by the fact that the successes had passion delivered by the teachers into the students. It almost doesn’t matter what you teach as long as you teach it like you care. From football coaches who build discipline and character to dance instructors who inspire a sense of manners to Shakespeare for inner city kids the common element is that the teachers who make a difference have a passion for their subject.

The trick of education, then, is to combine students with teachers of passion until some common interest between teacher and student is found. For me it was books, and my teachers were authors. Easy enough, all they had to do was introduce me to the library. For many of my engineering peers there was one or two science teachers along the way that set the spark. This is why I think TED is such a good educational tool- somewhere among those many lecturers there is a speaker with your student’s passion coursing through their veins, waiting to be heard.

I am envious, deeply envious, of the enthusiasm that these speakers can inspire in others.

In a business there is always a balance to be struck between offering enough choices to your customers and overwhelming them.  There are two great TED talks that in their contrast describe the merits and dangers of choice.  First, in favor of more choice-

Their spiel: In this witty monologue, Malcolm Gladwell follows the career of a food industry consultant who uncovered a key secret to what eaters like. Running huge focus groups to find customers’ truest tastes, Gladwell’s hero draws a radical conclusion, an epiphany that has defined food marketing ever since. Note: The theme of the 2004 conference was “The Pursuit of Happiness” — hence the talk’s quirky presence.

The brilliant observation that Gladwell and his food consultant hero make is that people like distinct categories of things, and an effort to find the “perfect” combination ends in mediocrity.  For spagetti sauce there are categories based on spice, viscosity, “visual chunkiness”, etc.  Depending on their mood or preference people can like a rather bland and thin sauce or a meaty, thick and smooth sauce.  There is no “perfect” sauce.  The food industry embraced this with a passion and made a fortune.

This applies to all tastes, all activities for which people can have a preference.  It is genius.  Example- Entertainment.  Certain types of entertainment can be combined to good results, like a football-comedy movie.  But try and combine the joy of watching your daughter perform in her very first play and the rowdy pleasure of a Superbowl party and both will predictably suffer. 

The problem comes in choosing which categories to present to the customer, finding which “types of sauce” are popular as distinct categories.  You may miss a category altogether and miss out on some business, combine two categories improperly and ruin both or you can bury the customer in a sea of choices.  Which brings us to Talk #2-

Their spiel-Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz’s estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. We set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too many choices undermine happiness.

I think Barry missed an important point, which is that it is not the freedom of choice which makes you miserable, it is the uncertainty of making the right choice which makes you unhappy.  More choices to some degree makes it harder to be right, but it does not scale directly with choice.  In his opening example he describes how jeans used to come in only one basic style and even though they did not fit all that well he felt content in his selection.  One day he goes to buy jeans and there are a dozen styles.  He ends up buying a pair that fit better than before but is miserable because he isn’t sure that he really bought the ‘right pair’.  The contrast I want to make is that a sixteen year old hipster would not only have been delighted at all the new options but would have bought multiple outfits, for the first time finding exactly what they had always wanted. 

The trick in my mind seems to be providing the most popular categories of your product while making it as clear as possible what the differences between each product are so that every customer can choose their selection with confidence.  Windows Vista Ultimate/Basic/Premium/Business/Enterprise, you have failed this test.