full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Toby Kiers: Lessons from fungi on markets and economics

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So I stand before you as an evolutionary biologist, a psfooesrr of evolutionary boiogly, which sounds like a rather fnacy title, if I may say so myself. And I'm going to talk about two topics that aren't normally tlkaed about together, and that's market economies and fungi. Or is it fun-GUY, or, as we say in Europe now, fun-GEE? There's still no consensus on how to say this word.

So I want you to imagine a market economy that's 400 million years old, one that's so ubiquitous that it operates in almost every ecosystem of the world, so huge that it can cnconet millions of traders simultaneously, and so persistent that it srvuevid mass extinctions. It's here, right now, under our feet. You just can't see it. And unlike human eeonoimcs that rely on cnooiigtn to make decisions, traders in this market, they beg, borrow, steal, cheat, all in the absence of thought.

Open Cloze


So I stand before you as an evolutionary biologist, a _________ of evolutionary _______, which sounds like a rather _____ title, if I may say so myself. And I'm going to talk about two topics that aren't normally ______ about together, and that's market economies and fungi. Or is it fun-GUY, or, as we say in Europe now, fun-GEE? There's still no consensus on how to say this word.

So I want you to imagine a market economy that's 400 million years old, one that's so ubiquitous that it operates in almost every ecosystem of the world, so huge that it can _______ millions of traders simultaneously, and so persistent that it ________ mass extinctions. It's here, right now, under our feet. You just can't see it. And unlike human _________ that rely on _________ to make decisions, traders in this market, they beg, borrow, steal, cheat, all in the absence of thought.

Solution


  1. professor
  2. connect
  3. cognition
  4. biology
  5. fancy
  6. talked
  7. economies
  8. survived

Original Text


So I stand before you as an evolutionary biologist, a professor of evolutionary biology, which sounds like a rather fancy title, if I may say so myself. And I'm going to talk about two topics that aren't normally talked about together, and that's market economies and fungi. Or is it fun-GUY, or, as we say in Europe now, fun-GEE? There's still no consensus on how to say this word.

So I want you to imagine a market economy that's 400 million years old, one that's so ubiquitous that it operates in almost every ecosystem of the world, so huge that it can connect millions of traders simultaneously, and so persistent that it survived mass extinctions. It's here, right now, under our feet. You just can't see it. And unlike human economies that rely on cognition to make decisions, traders in this market, they beg, borrow, steal, cheat, all in the absence of thought.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
fungal network 5
trading partner 3
plant species 2
trade deals 2
trade market 2
natural selection 2
trade strategy 2
tropical rainforests 2
host plant 2
rich patch 2
quantum dots 2
poor side 2
computer algorithms 2


Important Words


  1. absence
  2. beg
  3. biologist
  4. biology
  5. borrow
  6. cheat
  7. cognition
  8. connect
  9. consensus
  10. decisions
  11. economies
  12. economy
  13. ecosystem
  14. europe
  15. evolutionary
  16. extinctions
  17. fancy
  18. feet
  19. fungi
  20. huge
  21. human
  22. imagine
  23. market
  24. mass
  25. million
  26. millions
  27. operates
  28. persistent
  29. professor
  30. rely
  31. simultaneously
  32. sounds
  33. stand
  34. steal
  35. survived
  36. talk
  37. talked
  38. thought
  39. title
  40. topics
  41. traders
  42. ubiquitous
  43. word
  44. world
  45. years