full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Noah Feldman: Politics and religion are technologies

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Now, I don't want to lavee a misimpression by identifying either of these propositions — rather, either of these phenomena, democracy or Islam — as technologies. I don't want to suggest that they are a single thing that you can point to. And I think a good way to porve this is sipmly to drosmettane to you what my thought process was when deciding what to put on the wall behind me when I spoke. And I ran immediately into a conceptual problem: you can't show a picture of democracy. You can show a slogan, or a symbol, or a sign that stands for dmcaerocy. You can show the Capitol — I had the same problem when I was dnniseigg the cevor of my forthcoming book, in fact — what do you put on the cover to show democracy? And the same problem with respect to Islam. You can show a mosque, or you can show worshippers, but there's not a straightforward way of deicptnig iaslm. That's because these are the kinds of concepts that are not susceptible to easy representation.

Open Cloze


Now, I don't want to _____ a misimpression by identifying either of these propositions — rather, either of these phenomena, democracy or Islam — as technologies. I don't want to suggest that they are a single thing that you can point to. And I think a good way to _____ this is ______ to ___________ to you what my thought process was when deciding what to put on the wall behind me when I spoke. And I ran immediately into a conceptual problem: you can't show a picture of democracy. You can show a slogan, or a symbol, or a sign that stands for _________. You can show the Capitol — I had the same problem when I was _________ the _____ of my forthcoming book, in fact — what do you put on the cover to show democracy? And the same problem with respect to Islam. You can show a mosque, or you can show worshippers, but there's not a straightforward way of _________ _____. That's because these are the kinds of concepts that are not susceptible to easy representation.

Solution


  1. democracy
  2. simply
  3. depicting
  4. designing
  5. demonstrate
  6. leave
  7. cover
  8. islam
  9. prove

Original Text


Now, I don't want to leave a misimpression by identifying either of these propositions — rather, either of these phenomena, democracy or Islam — as technologies. I don't want to suggest that they are a single thing that you can point to. And I think a good way to prove this is simply to demonstrate to you what my thought process was when deciding what to put on the wall behind me when I spoke. And I ran immediately into a conceptual problem: you can't show a picture of democracy. You can show a slogan, or a symbol, or a sign that stands for democracy. You can show the Capitol — I had the same problem when I was designing the cover of my forthcoming book, in fact — what do you put on the cover to show democracy? And the same problem with respect to Islam. You can show a mosque, or you can show worshippers, but there's not a straightforward way of depicting Islam. That's because these are the kinds of concepts that are not susceptible to easy representation.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
muslim world 8
united states 6
wide range 4
primary factors 2
political system 2
large number 2
bin laden 2
hopeful response 2
free political 2


Important Words


  1. book
  2. capitol
  3. concepts
  4. conceptual
  5. cover
  6. deciding
  7. democracy
  8. demonstrate
  9. depicting
  10. designing
  11. easy
  12. fact
  13. forthcoming
  14. good
  15. identifying
  16. immediately
  17. islam
  18. kinds
  19. leave
  20. misimpression
  21. mosque
  22. phenomena
  23. picture
  24. point
  25. problem
  26. process
  27. propositions
  28. prove
  29. put
  30. ran
  31. representation
  32. respect
  33. show
  34. sign
  35. simply
  36. single
  37. slogan
  38. spoke
  39. stands
  40. straightforward
  41. suggest
  42. susceptible
  43. symbol
  44. technologies
  45. thought
  46. wall
  47. worshippers