full transcript
From the Ted Talk by George Whitesides: Toward a science of simplicity
Unscramble the Blue Letters
The point is that you get into trouble when you ask a single question with a single box for an answer, in which that single qtueiosn actually is many qsuteonis with quite different meanings, but with the same words. Asking, "What is simplicity?" I think fllas in that category. What is the state of science? And, interestingly, complexity is very highly evolved. We have a lot of interesting information about what complexity is. Simplicity, for roneass that are a little bit obscure, is almost not pursued, at least in the academic world.
We aidecmacs — I am an academic — we love cplomixety. You can write papers about complexity, and the nice thing about complexity is it's fundamentally iltcatanbre in many ways, so you're not responsible for outcomes. (Laughter) Simplicity — all of you really would like your Waring Blender in the morning to make whatever a Waring Blender does, but not explode or play Beethoven. You're not interested in the limits of these things. So what one is interested in has a lot to do with the rewards of the system. And there's a lot of rawedrs in tiinhnkg about complexity and emergence, not so much in thinking about simplicity. One of the things I want to do is to help you with a very important task — which you may not know that you have very often — which is to understand how to sit next to a physicist at a dinner party and have a corvaenoitsn. (Laughter) And the words that I would like you to focus on are complexity and emergence, because these will enable you to start the conversation and then daydream about other things.
Open Cloze
The point is that you get into trouble when you ask a single question with a single box for an answer, in which that single ________ actually is many _________ with quite different meanings, but with the same words. Asking, "What is simplicity?" I think _____ in that category. What is the state of science? And, interestingly, complexity is very highly evolved. We have a lot of interesting information about what complexity is. Simplicity, for _______ that are a little bit obscure, is almost not pursued, at least in the academic world.
We _________ — I am an academic — we love __________. You can write papers about complexity, and the nice thing about complexity is it's fundamentally ___________ in many ways, so you're not responsible for outcomes. (Laughter) Simplicity — all of you really would like your Waring Blender in the morning to make whatever a Waring Blender does, but not explode or play Beethoven. You're not interested in the limits of these things. So what one is interested in has a lot to do with the rewards of the system. And there's a lot of _______ in ________ about complexity and emergence, not so much in thinking about simplicity. One of the things I want to do is to help you with a very important task — which you may not know that you have very often — which is to understand how to sit next to a physicist at a dinner party and have a ____________. (Laughter) And the words that I would like you to focus on are complexity and emergence, because these will enable you to start the conversation and then daydream about other things.
Solution
- academics
- intractable
- questions
- question
- conversation
- complexity
- rewards
- falls
- thinking
- reasons
Original Text
The point is that you get into trouble when you ask a single question with a single box for an answer, in which that single question actually is many questions with quite different meanings, but with the same words. Asking, "What is simplicity?" I think falls in that category. What is the state of science? And, interestingly, complexity is very highly evolved. We have a lot of interesting information about what complexity is. Simplicity, for reasons that are a little bit obscure, is almost not pursued, at least in the academic world.
We academics — I am an academic — we love complexity. You can write papers about complexity, and the nice thing about complexity is it's fundamentally intractable in many ways, so you're not responsible for outcomes. (Laughter) Simplicity — all of you really would like your Waring Blender in the morning to make whatever a Waring Blender does, but not explode or play Beethoven. You're not interested in the limits of these things. So what one is interested in has a lot to do with the rewards of the system. And there's a lot of rewards in thinking about complexity and emergence, not so much in thinking about simplicity. One of the things I want to do is to help you with a very important task — which you may not know that you have very often — which is to understand how to sit next to a physicist at a dinner party and have a conversation. (Laughter) And the words that I would like you to focus on are complexity and emergence, because these will enable you to start the conversation and then daydream about other things.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
| collocation |
frequency |
| health care |
3 |
| potter stewart |
2 |
| coffee cup |
2 |
| birth control |
2 |
| teapot problem |
2 |
| hot water |
2 |
| single question |
2 |
| waring blender |
2 |
| bill gates |
2 |
| put lots |
2 |
| integrated circuits |
2 |
| cell phone |
2 |
| real world |
2 |
| basic technology |
2 |
Important Words
- academic
- academics
- answer
- beethoven
- bit
- blender
- box
- category
- complexity
- conversation
- daydream
- dinner
- emergence
- enable
- evolved
- explode
- falls
- focus
- fundamentally
- highly
- important
- information
- interested
- interesting
- interestingly
- intractable
- laughter
- limits
- lot
- love
- meanings
- morning
- nice
- obscure
- outcomes
- papers
- party
- physicist
- play
- point
- pursued
- question
- questions
- reasons
- responsible
- rewards
- science
- simplicity
- single
- sit
- start
- state
- system
- task
- thinking
- trouble
- understand
- waring
- ways
- words
- world
- write