Is Humanity Smart Enough to Survive Itself? | Jeanette Winterson | TED



With quick wit and sharp insight, writer Jeanette Winterson lays out a vision of the future where human and machine intelligence meld — forming what she calls “alternative intelligence” — and takes a philosophical look at our species, asking: Are we smart enough to survive how smart we are? (Followed by a Q&A with TED’s head of curation Helen Walters)

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46 thoughts on “Is Humanity Smart Enough to Survive Itself? | Jeanette Winterson | TED”

  1. I loved your analogy about binary attributes. I like to say: The boundary between any binary participants is always a spectrum when you zoom in far enough. Or in other words, binary appearance correlates directly with observational distance.
    Regarding the Christian expectation that we cannot learn to cooperate peaceably upon our planet until a certain magical jew falls from the sky to rescue us all from each other, hence myriad justifications for abetting an apocalypse even to the point of hindering those who dare to try and thwart it: I think it’s worth supposing that the scriptures are NOT in fact inciting good people to force atrocious prophecies into fruition as a means of lighting a fire under the Messiah. I always thought the Bible made it unambiguously clear: He’ll get here when he gets here. All the same, I think it equally unambiguous: If anyone would forgive us for keeping a few nasty ancient prophecies from coming to fruition, it would be the Messiah himself. I dare suppose he might even be proud of us instead!

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  2. Is Humanity Smart Enough to Survive Itself? No!
    I couldn't listen through to the end of this superficial twaddle.
    If Humanity was smart enough to survive itself, this question wouldn't be asked, because we would be smart enough not to have got in this mess in the first place.

    Reply
  3. Putin's violence is not the first and will not be last. That is how we are as humans. It is business for for many humans to destroy themselves and others. We also choose how to talk about it and which ones to talk or keep silent about. That is us.

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  4. Sounds like not the research, but an encouraging speech with only thoughts and slogans. Well why not, it is TED not a scientific conference. However I find it hard to trust this ideas based more on emotional rather then scientific approach.

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  5. Wow! I never heard of this woman but just a minute after listening to this fascinating talk i bouth her book.
    Very interasting human bieng.
    She started to be eve more interasting since i found out she had a childhood similar to mine…

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  6. We are already in the big crash, Inflation is a
    catastrophe. This CPI report is a colossal failure. To
    bring the housing market to a halt, the FED will have
    to pull all the stops. The unfortunate issue is that
    other markets are being decimated.If you want to
    stay green, you have to rely on a lot of
    diversification. Currently up 14% and being careful.
    Still a better deal than leaving it in a savings or
    checking account yielding 0-1 percent interest.

    Reply
  7. It does not seems to be a great ideia to not look to the real causes of the world's today problems, not even to try to solve them by building an AI free from emotions based on humans's emotions. We have, more than ever, to just be human beings, with human emotions, and face the challenge of deafeting our currently major problems.

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  8. Computers are very fast clocked serial processors and brains are slower asynchronous network processors, capable of achieving intelligence in different ways. Brains have a built in purpose from the limbic system to survive. Computers can have that purpose built in by programming, or AI can allow a computer to develop a purpose on its own. Once a computer has the top purpose to survive, it may notice that humans are a threat. Looking at the evolution of the universe from big bang to human intelligence, AI may be the next step, our mind children.

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  9. Prophecy is coming true right in front of our eyes, she ushering in and is apart of putting the abominations on us and rejecting God. The end days ppl we living in the last book of the bible most scariest cause you might just lose Ur salvation to enter into the kingdom of God, this is scary and we're playing with our internity, pls admit to the wrong and darkness in Ur heart and seek forgiveness, it's the only way, we gotta wake up to the fact that we've willing been living a lie from the start of time and that the times finally up that the world we live in was run by the devil and his worshippers to make the world worship him, we live in a evil world and it was all to do with the evil one, demons run everything and everyone in power to set forth their plans to have us take his mark and for us to turn away our life in heaven, so I say this cause for 6 years Ive been fighting spiritual warfare and each year Ive been doing the worst and most dirtiest and wicked things falling off hard on life but I realised that willfully let demons ruin myself so that I become the person they want me to be and become trap, life's to short and fast it's not a game but we most all kill our selfish desires and our stupidity. Pls make it in heaven

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  10. humans can survive by paying attention to time, because how we survive is by seeing how we divide our time. sometimes when we have a lot of time, we don't use that time well, even though we can do useful things with any short time.

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  11. What an awesome way to say about importance of being not racist only to end up saying that rich black guys are buying up the land. Honestly, I believe this lady is romanticizing something she doesn't understand.

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  12. Iraq Jugoslavia yemen libia siria Afghanistan. But the democracy are under threat, maybe they don't know how to kill now. This have one name propaganda TED isbthe natural place where display this propaganda and take it seriously.

    Reply
  13. Mary Shelley had a vision and she SAW Frankenstein sitting at the edge of her bed. This is how Frankenstein came about. She had a vision. I went to her exhibition at the Morgan Library. Thank you J winterson!

    Reply

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