full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Tristan Harris: How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day

Unscramble the Blue Letters


(Applause)

CA: I mean, could you make the case that part of the problem here is that we've got a naïve mdoel of human nature? So much of this is justified in terms of human preference, where we've got these algorithms that do an amazing job of omiztniipg for human preference, but which pfecernree? There's the preferences of things that we really care about when we think about them versus the pfeeerrcens of what we just instinctively clcik on. If we could implant that more nuanced view of human nature in every design, would that be a step forward?

TH: Absolutely. I mean, I think right now it's as if all of our technology is basically only asking our lizard brain what's the best way to just impulsively get you to do the next tiienst thing with your time, instead of asking you in your life what we would be most time well snpet for you? What would be the perfect timeline that might include something later, would be time well spent for you here at TED in your last day here?

Open Cloze


(Applause)

CA: I mean, could you make the case that part of the problem here is that we've got a naïve _____ of human nature? So much of this is justified in terms of human preference, where we've got these algorithms that do an amazing job of __________ for human preference, but which __________? There's the preferences of things that we really care about when we think about them versus the ___________ of what we just instinctively _____ on. If we could implant that more nuanced view of human nature in every design, would that be a step forward?

TH: Absolutely. I mean, I think right now it's as if all of our technology is basically only asking our lizard brain what's the best way to just impulsively get you to do the next _______ thing with your time, instead of asking you in your life what we would be most time well _____ for you? What would be the perfect timeline that might include something later, would be time well spent for you here at TED in your last day here?

Solution


  1. spent
  2. preferences
  3. preference
  4. click
  5. optimizing
  6. model
  7. tiniest

Original Text


(Applause)

CA: I mean, could you make the case that part of the problem here is that we've got a naïve model of human nature? So much of this is justified in terms of human preference, where we've got these algorithms that do an amazing job of optimizing for human preference, but which preference? There's the preferences of things that we really care about when we think about them versus the preferences of what we just instinctively click on. If we could implant that more nuanced view of human nature in every design, would that be a step forward?

TH: Absolutely. I mean, I think right now it's as if all of our technology is basically only asking our lizard brain what's the best way to just impulsively get you to do the next tiniest thing with your time, instead of asking you in your life what we would be most time well spent for you? What would be the perfect timeline that might include something later, would be time well spent for you here at TED in your last day here?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

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business model 2
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ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
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Important Words


  1. absolutely
  2. algorithms
  3. amazing
  4. applause
  5. basically
  6. brain
  7. care
  8. case
  9. click
  10. day
  11. design
  12. human
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  14. impulsively
  15. include
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  17. job
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  20. lizard
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  22. nature
  23. naïve
  24. nuanced
  25. optimizing
  26. part
  27. perfect
  28. preference
  29. preferences
  30. problem
  31. spent
  32. step
  33. technology
  34. ted
  35. terms
  36. time
  37. timeline
  38. tiniest
  39. view