full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So we actually inevtid 80 young people from all over the world to come and solve the same prbeolm. The only two requirements were that they were studying at the university, and they spoke English. The majority of them were, first, from developing countries. They had all the same material but they could go vtlasy outside the scope of discussion, and they certainly did, to come up with their own lists. And the sispiurrng thing was that the list was very similar — with malnutrition and diseases at the top and climate change at the bottom. We've done this many other times. There's been many other seminars and uisnrteivy sdutetns, and different things. They all come out with very much the same list. And that gives me great hope, really, in saying that I do believe that there is a path ahead to get us to start thinking about priorities, and saying, what is the important thing in the world? Of course, in an ieadl world, again we'd love to do everything. But if we don't do it, then we can start thinking about where should we start?

Open Cloze


So we actually _______ 80 young people from all over the world to come and solve the same _______. The only two requirements were that they were studying at the university, and they spoke English. The majority of them were, first, from developing countries. They had all the same material but they could go ______ outside the scope of discussion, and they certainly did, to come up with their own lists. And the __________ thing was that the list was very similar — with malnutrition and diseases at the top and climate change at the bottom. We've done this many other times. There's been many other seminars and __________ ________, and different things. They all come out with very much the same list. And that gives me great hope, really, in saying that I do believe that there is a path ahead to get us to start thinking about priorities, and saying, what is the important thing in the world? Of course, in an _____ world, again we'd love to do everything. But if we don't do it, then we can start thinking about where should we start?

Solution


  1. ideal
  2. students
  3. invited
  4. university
  5. surprising
  6. vastly
  7. problem

Original Text


So we actually invited 80 young people from all over the world to come and solve the same problem. The only two requirements were that they were studying at the university, and they spoke English. The majority of them were, first, from developing countries. They had all the same material but they could go vastly outside the scope of discussion, and they certainly did, to come up with their own lists. And the surprising thing was that the list was very similar — with malnutrition and diseases at the top and climate change at the bottom. We've done this many other times. There's been many other seminars and university students, and different things. They all come out with very much the same list. And that gives me great hope, really, in saying that I do believe that there is a path ahead to get us to start thinking about priorities, and saying, what is the important thing in the world? Of course, in an ideal world, again we'd love to do everything. But if we don't do it, then we can start thinking about where should we start?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
climate change 8
billion dollars 7
start thinking 5
million people 3
copenhagen consensus 3
good projects 3
biggest problems 2
big problems 2
billion people 2
clean drinking 2
top priorities 2
substantial amount 2
bad projects 2
global warming 2
big problem 2
basic health 2
health services 2
developing world 2
rich dutch 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
basic health services 2

Important Words


  1. bottom
  2. change
  3. climate
  4. countries
  5. developing
  6. discussion
  7. diseases
  8. english
  9. great
  10. hope
  11. ideal
  12. important
  13. invited
  14. list
  15. lists
  16. love
  17. majority
  18. malnutrition
  19. material
  20. path
  21. people
  22. priorities
  23. problem
  24. requirements
  25. scope
  26. seminars
  27. similar
  28. solve
  29. spoke
  30. start
  31. students
  32. studying
  33. surprising
  34. thinking
  35. times
  36. top
  37. university
  38. vastly
  39. world
  40. young