Stewart Brand is a futurist, counterculturist and visionary with a very wide-ranging mind. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Brand discusses … just about everything: human nature, bringing back the wooly mammoth, geoengineering, rewilding and science as organized skepticism — plus the story of an acid trip on a San Francisco rooftop in the '60s that sparked a perspective-shifting idea. "The story we're told is that we're the next meteor," Brand says, but "things are capable of getting better."
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Futurists are surely very creative and optimistic, but I can’t help but think of them as a little naive too.
zdulcun They aim unrealistically high so they land as high as possible. It’d suck if they set their sights lower when reality could have showed the landing to be a bit higher. There’s no reason not to set high goals.
But you’re totally right
i caught the slight goddamn. At his age, it gives a good idea where he stands.
“never allow yourself to be too certain”…unless it’s Climate Change.
maintain skepticism…unless it’s climate change.
Did you even watch?
The guy made an argument in favor of climate change and the host’s head was about to explode. He also said the “mass extinction” cause by humanity was a great exaggeration and not a big deal at all.
John Trauger the amount of evidence that supports the conclusion of Climate Change is a mountain compared to the small piles of dust that are the evidence against it. Its a lie to say people aren’t skeptical about it because if they weren’t we wouldn’t have that evidence.
You don’t get to pick and choose reality.
You can’t change society by changing its tools, you can only give society tools to stay the same. What changes how people act is changing the way they interact with society, and the way to do that is to change what society demands of people. Currently we demand Greed and Scarcity, and in the future we could demand Equality and Advancement. Change the values, change the world.
Shada think about it more maybe
I puked a little after reading this
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. A few things stood out:
1. The number of species he cites is not relevant. We don’t have enough data on most of the populations to say they are or aren’t in danger of going extinct, but based on the ones we DO have data on, we can extrapolate. If a certain percentage of species we have data on is experiencing a collapse, we can reliably say that most likely a comparable percentage among those we don’t have enough data on is also experiencing a collapse.
2. Fish species going extinct isn’t a matter of faith, but facts. There is a minimum sustainable size of a population and when you go below that, there is no recovery, whether it’s because of the impact on the environment or the ability of the species to reproduce.
3. His take on whether or not elephants like snow is a completely nonsensical. He doesn’t understand that “like” in this case means ability to thrive in a cold climate, not an elephant’s eagerness to make fucking snowballs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recently_extinct_fishes
What’s the point of that question? Are you going to demonstrate that you only think that species are either doing fine or are all gone?
I guess we are in a “mass extinction”. What gives you credibility random internet person?
If I was presenting myself as an authority whose word must not be questioned, then maybe I’d be concerned about credibility. But as it stands, I make statements that are backed by non-controversial facts that are very easy to verify, which means that my credibility is a non-issue and you have the options of either taking a random internet person’s word for it, accept on pure faith the disputed claims of another random person, or actually do some thinking and a bit of reading on your own. The first two options I do not recommend.
Fair enough. But on the point that we are not in a mass extinction he is still correct, I think that you are missing the point that he is talking about scale of magnitudes that you can not find in recent history
He is not correct on that point. First off, there’s the extinction rate. Second, there’s the collapse in population size. Third, there’s the rate of habitat loss. This guy does not know what he’s talking about, he doesn’t understand how ecology works, he lacks all sense of scale and for a futurologist, he is remarkably blind to the train heading straight towards us when everything is considered.
Ok since this talk seems to go over the head of most people(at least in the comments..) just take this away from this.
Don’t try to change human behavior. Change the environment we live in instead to foster better thinking and less aggression.
Aggressive and fearful tendencies(and yes they are intimately connected) are a tool given to us by evolution, so see to it that we don’t need to use it and offer something better instead.
Isn’t that literally what terrorists say
DeoMachina *chuckles* Trust me. They wouldnt.
You just completely missed the point.
Also, please stop using the word literally when it doesn’t apply.
No extinct fish in 50 years? That’s just straight up bullshit
Mari Noir I
Don’t trust any futurists about how the future is really going ot be in full accuracy when such futurists are enemies of God, the only one who is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnicompetent, omnijudex, omnipantokrátōr sole Creator and knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end.
How ridiculous i sound? According to you? A ghost account? You can hear me? You mustn’t be that intelligent if you can’t tell this is digital text and we can’t hear one another. Try to use the right word to describe what you are attempting to articulate since you obviously suffer a severe false sense of high intelligence, typical of post 1990s born majority first world type self-entitled, supremely self deluded, ultra-narcissistic silver spoon and platter raised spoiled rotten very inexperienced in life little fools. Convenient ghost account you have huh little morosophite? You can throw rocks while you are concealed in pitch black darkness but yet attempt to claim at the same time your views shoud be taken as credible when your account is obviously a pigeon-hearted incognito account which lives in cowardice. Do you still live with your parent(s)? Go read Pinocchio? to even bring in Pinocchio into this truly shows the nadir of your intellectual acumen. Learn what the word ‘church’ actually means because it has nothing to do with a physical building. You clealy are demonstrating the epitome first world majority mendacious macaronic microcephalous maleficent mentally malignant morosis melanoma mischievous monumental mumpsimus millennials who also imagines he’s or she’s historically, linguistically, intellectually, lexically and vocabulary acute and sharp when clearly they are not. Here’s some wise advice ok little devil? Before you even begin to decide to leave a comment for someone on-line, make sure not to demonstrate how intensely self-deluded that you are someone you are not, such you imagine you are mature and intelligent, when you are infantile and emblematic of the summit and pinnacle of those who characters in the movie ‘idiocracy’, all by your own self-admission.
Awakened2Truth – Disciple of Jesus the Christ triggered bible tard?
+T3 Gaming Still live at home with yoru parent(s) eh? Of course those with twitter 140 character bird brain minds as shallow as a bird bath would believe i’m ‘triggered’ when clearly you live in a virtual world, not the real one.
Like the real one you live in? All mighty enlightened one. By your “shallow” logic, a long response = intelligence? That’s so very articulate and observant of you, I can’t begin to fathom the level of your depth- it must rival the cloud fairy.
you’re awful bitter for a Disciple, but that how you people are. haha.
Spectacular
This sounds like bullshit, yep, thinking outside of the box, but I am not convinced in anyway regarding these generalizations.
old man is talking nonsense, at least what is regarding the amount of the extinct species, it looks like he is not really up to date.
*A lot of the most interesting TED videos these days don”t actually have that much to do with their title.*
ted Ashley Judd is just a batshit crazy sjw I think I have depression and I play video games to protect myself from my thoughts
Obsequious geriatric.
Western however willing worry external space favor painter expect other star.
2 words ~ Nuclear War! SAD WAY TO GO!!
Watching at double speed and it still feels slow. Pacing is everything my goodness.
This man paints a bleak picture of the future. There is a whole lot more to think about than whether CO2 makes greener. All those greener plants will not survive drought, extreme weather, too hot, too cold. And his argument about species not going extinct or it doesn’t matter is pure BS. Each species is unique to the entire universe and should be preserved at all cost. Biodiversity is what makes the world go ‘round. And no- I do not want to see mammoth running around destroying the tundra.
Did anyone else find his opinion on Climate Science shockingly uninformed? His comment about fish populations also seemed very naive, as if he can’t foresee the obvious consequences for humans when the fish populations are depleted. Maybe they won’t be extinct per se but that’s not the point at all, the negative impact on human society is obviously the issue people care about haha, what a silly old man.