full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Eric Berlow: Simplifying complexity

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Do you ever feel completely overwhelmed when you're fcaed with a complex problem? Well, I hope to cganhe that in less than three meutnis. So, I hope to convince you that complex doesn't always euqal complicated. So for me, a well-crafted baguette, fresh out of the oven, is complex, but a curry onion green olive poppy cheese bread is complicated. I'm an ecologist, and I study coietmlpxy. I love complexity. And I study that in the natural world, the interconnectedness of species.

So here's a food web, or a map of feeding lkins between species that live in Alpine Lakes in the mtunnaois of California. And this is what happens to that food web when it's stocked with non-native fish that never lived there before. All the grayed-out species dsieaappr. Some are actually on the bnirk of extinction. And lakes with fish have more msqootuis, even though they eat them. These effects were all unanticipated, and yet we're discovering they're predictable.

Open Cloze


Do you ever feel completely overwhelmed when you're _____ with a complex problem? Well, I hope to ______ that in less than three _______. So, I hope to convince you that complex doesn't always _____ complicated. So for me, a well-crafted baguette, fresh out of the oven, is complex, but a curry onion green olive poppy cheese bread is complicated. I'm an ecologist, and I study __________. I love complexity. And I study that in the natural world, the interconnectedness of species.

So here's a food web, or a map of feeding _____ between species that live in Alpine Lakes in the _________ of California. And this is what happens to that food web when it's stocked with non-native fish that never lived there before. All the grayed-out species _________. Some are actually on the _____ of extinction. And lakes with fish have more _________, even though they eat them. These effects were all unanticipated, and yet we're discovering they're predictable.

Solution


  1. faced
  2. links
  3. change
  4. minutes
  5. mosquitos
  6. complexity
  7. brink
  8. equal
  9. disappear
  10. mountains

Original Text


Do you ever feel completely overwhelmed when you're faced with a complex problem? Well, I hope to change that in less than three minutes. So, I hope to convince you that complex doesn't always equal complicated. So for me, a well-crafted baguette, fresh out of the oven, is complex, but a curry onion green olive poppy cheese bread is complicated. I'm an ecologist, and I study complexity. I love complexity. And I study that in the natural world, the interconnectedness of species.

So here's a food web, or a map of feeding links between species that live in Alpine Lakes in the mountains of California. And this is what happens to that food web when it's stocked with non-native fish that never lived there before. All the grayed-out species disappear. Some are actually on the brink of extinction. And lakes with fish have more mosquitos, even though they eat them. These effects were all unanticipated, and yet we're discovering they're predictable.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


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collocation frequency
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popular support 2


Important Words


  1. alpine
  2. baguette
  3. bread
  4. brink
  5. california
  6. change
  7. cheese
  8. completely
  9. complex
  10. complexity
  11. complicated
  12. convince
  13. curry
  14. disappear
  15. discovering
  16. eat
  17. ecologist
  18. effects
  19. equal
  20. extinction
  21. faced
  22. feeding
  23. feel
  24. fish
  25. food
  26. fresh
  27. green
  28. hope
  29. interconnectedness
  30. lakes
  31. links
  32. live
  33. lived
  34. love
  35. map
  36. minutes
  37. mosquitos
  38. mountains
  39. natural
  40. olive
  41. onion
  42. oven
  43. overwhelmed
  44. poppy
  45. predictable
  46. problem
  47. species
  48. stocked
  49. study
  50. unanticipated
  51. web
  52. world