Man, I hate TED talks. I know there are some good ones, but like anything, 99% of them are crap, and the garbage gets gobbled up with the same fervor as the jewels.
So I get this blurb from a book publisher, promoting a new book coming out about evolution, by some guy whose main claim to fame seems to be that he’s a “TED all-star” (I looked a little deeper: he’s also a businessman who runs a biotech investment company). The email was titled “George Clooney’s wedding isn’t just unfair, it’s unnatural selection”, which set off alarms all over the place — klaxons and those whoop-whoop howling noises I’d hear from the fireboats on Puget Sound. (Actually, every morning my inbox produces a cacophony of bullshit, so this is nothing suprising.)
I was curious, though, so I read it instead of hitting delete.
When Amal Alamuddin, Lebanese-British lawyer and activist, married Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor George Clooney, it did more than signify the official merger of one of the world’s most powerful couples. The latest Clooney marriage is an example of unnatural selection and the changing course of human evolution at play.
Wait. What? What’s unnatural about that wedding? People often choose who they want to marry, and this man, who happens to be rich and popular, and this woman, who happens to be intelligent and well-educated, chose to get married to each other. What’s unnatural about it? What’s novel about this one mate choice that indicates that the course of human evolution is changing?
Nothing at all, of course. Except, maybe, that some guy has decided to jump on the same tabloid bandwagon that all the cheesy magazines are on, only with the twist that somehow this says something about “evolution”.
And it just gets more and more mundane.
In a new book EVOLVING OURSELVES (on-sale March 10) TED all-star Juan Enriquez and former Harvard professor Steve Gullans, show how our choice to pick smarter, more attractive mates and other decisions like having fewer kids or eating wider diets, have shifted the drivers of human evolution. Like George and Amal, we are no longer driven by the need to reproduce and survive. It may sound silly, but it is our choices and technologies that are rapidly changing the fate of not just our kids and grandkids, but our entire species. We are already seeing symptoms of rapid evolution in the exponentially increased outbreaks of autism, allergies, and obesity in children.
>
OK, so 10,000 years ago, our ancestors had no interest in picking smart or attractive mates? There’s this whole gigantic literature on mate selection in chimpanzees and beetles and birds, but apparently Enriquez has just discovered this remarkable property of modern human beings, that unlike their distant ancestors, they actually take an interest in who they copulate with.
I really don’t understand the nonsense about we are no longer driven by the need to reproduce and survive
. You don’t need to do either; you can lie down and die, or never have children, and you won’t leave descendants to contribute to the species in the future. That was true in the past, it’s true now.
He also seems to be using “evolution” as an empty buzzword. Why are exponentially increased outbreaks of autism, allergies, and obesity in children
symptoms of rapid evolution
? For one thing, I don’t think “exponential” means what he thinks it means, and for another, I don’t know that there is any evidence that these represent any changes in the frequency of alleles in our population.
This was all noise. So I thought I’d tune in to the all-star TED talk by Juan Enriquez to see if he said anything worthwhile there.
No, he doesn’t.
He rambles. He talks about the economy. He briefly touches on a series of new biological techniques, robotics, and engineering. None of it is coherent, or addresses the title of his talk, The next species of human
. But then, like all TED talks, it has to wrap up with some grand, sweeping techno-triumphalism so the wealthy audience can applaud themselves.
I think what we’re going to see is we’re going to see a different species of hominid. I think we’re going to move from a Homo sapiens into a Homo evolutis. And I think this isn’t 1,000 years out. I think most of us are going to glance at it, and our grandchildren are going to begin to live it. And a Homo evolutis brings together these three trends into a hominid that takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of his species, her species and other species. And that, of course, would be the ultimate reboot.
We’ve always been an evolving species, as has every species on earth. Every generation changes slightly from the previous one. Every generation of humans has complained about how the damned kids aren’t following in the footsteps of their forefathers. When people invented horse collars or horseless carriages, or switched from bronze spears to iron, there were gushing gung-ho advocates who shouted that this will change everything and humanity will never be the same.
Nope, it won’t. It takes a TED talk to elevate to the status of visionary someone who looks at one stretch of a river and declares, “Look! It’s flowing!”
This bullshit has 2.5 million views.
My email asked if I wanted to interview Enriquez. No, I don’t. Thanks.
Ah, aimed for visionary and hit hallucinatory instead.
… like anything, 99% of them are crap…
Myers’s Law: Sturgeon’s Law, applied twice in a row.
When Amal Alamuddin, Lebanese-British lawyer and activist, married Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor George Clooney, … an example of unnatural selection …
According to a tabloid headline I saw last week, Alamuddin & Clooney are divorcing already. Does this mean Darwin is re-asserting himself from beyond the grave, or are we regressing?
Back to the trees, then back to the seas!!!
The only good TED talks I’ve heard were those that were either demonstrating some technology/science or were very specific in the problem they were addressing. For example, two of my favorite TED talks are Jeremy Kasdin’s talk about how to use a starshade to find exoplanets, and a talk about the problems with eyewitness testimony.
One particularly vocal anti-feminist likes to point out that she’s a “TED fellow”, so there’s that…
And every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.
That TED talk is less insightful than a thirty-year-old pop song and nowhere near as catchy.
Holy shitballs, what a pile of steaming horseshit….
If you did it would probably be a far more interesting interview than the usual “so can you tell us more about your ideas?” or “what would you say to your critics?” toddler beanbag tosses which are usual when dealing with this sort of thing. You’re not going to be put off or distracted by fine rhetoric which pushes the happy button.
And why’d he have to throw in “autism” with that balderdash of it being evolution’s reprimand for our anti-evolution ways?? Is “autism” the goto disease to get back at anything one hates? Hasn’t Jenny trademarked the ” __________ results in Autism” bullshit (fill in the blank).
So autism did not exist in paleo times and we caused evolution to slap it on our kids just recently, by advancing our technology too fast??
I can’t stand TED talks. Every now and again there’s one that’s worthwhile, but they seem to usually be somebody or another waxing euphorically poetic about some unproven thing or another for twenty minutes. There’s also so many of them. My university has a TEDx, and generally it’s rich alumni patting themselves on the back, along with one or two student performers. The couple of stand-out ridiculous ones for me were someone’s TED talk about how playing lots of WoW makes the world a better place and we should be playing more MMORPGs (it takes 10,000 hours to learn something! They’ve played WoW for over 10,000 hours apiece! They must have become experts at a useful skill!) and Aubrey De Grey saying that people are going to live for 1000 years…
@The Mellow Monkey
And medicine is magical and magical is art.
Man, I didn’t even KNOW there was a music video for that song.
Of course you want to interview him, and rip him to shreds.
I want to present a TED talk, filled with whatever sciencey sounding claptrap I can dream up, and end it with “as philosopher John Lydon said, ‘Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?'” Just to see how many people get the reference.
If it’s from a tabloid it means that she found out that Clooney’s an alien.
kevinalexander
Or her alien overlords told her to ditch him because he’s not genetically pure enough, no suitable alienbabies to take over the world from this union. Or something.
TED is a brilliant idea. People can be entertained and feel like they’re being socially conscious at the same time. It’s much better than television!
And if it’s from a righty tabloid, it’s because he’s an illegal alien! “AMAL ANGRY OVER JORGE CLOONEY REVELATION!!! DEMANDS DIVORCE MUY RAPIDO!””
show how our choice to pick smarter, more attractive mates and other decisions like having fewer kids or eating wider diets, have shifted the drivers of human evolution
TEDiocracy!
Good God, PZ. You’re a college professor during your “spare time”, right? And you write this blog? AND you watch all these nonsense videos, and read all these crazy emails? Plus debates? Not to mention traveling? How do you find the TIME? I work in friggin BILLING, and I can barely find the time to vacuum my house. You’re kind of astounding.
thanks mellow monkey that song always touches me one of his bests
uncle frogy
Wasn’t George Clooney dating Stacey Kiebler, the very tall wrestler? Wouldn’t that relationship have done more for evolution than him marrying a lawyer?
Now I feel better. I never got off on the TED talks, and figured that I was missing something. Apparently not.
Is it possible to sprain one’s eye muscles from over-rolling? Homo evolutis, jeezus jones.
edmond:
Clones. You read it here first.
Rey Fox 22:
Yes. Yes it is. My ophthalmologist has me on 24/7 bed rest right now.
TED actually stands for Terrible Endless Drivel, so…
;)
He fails at Latin, too: evolutis would mean “to/for/by the unwrapped ones”. It’s dative/ablative plural, FFS.
The tagline for TED Talks is “Ideas Worth Spreading”. Makes one think that perhaps someone should be vetting these talks before hand. Y’know, making sure there’s an actual idea there at least, worth spreading or not.
You should take your ophthalmologist’s advice more seriously. You can still eyeroll when stretched out in bed if you do too much internet.