Chris Anderson's most profound TED talks

People love TED talks. I thought I would point out the four most profound TED talks according to TED curator Chris Anderson. These were listed in a Q/A with Chris via Reddit in early 2010 entitled "TED's Chris Anderson answers Reddit's questions".

In addition to providing direct links, the following provide the (cleaned-up) notes I took the time I first watched the videos.

• Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice
• Official dogma - maximize welfare of citizens - maximize freedom (we do things on our own)
• the way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice
• choice->freedom->welfare
• examples of choice 
• buying things: supermarket choice, electronics, phone services -  crazy
• health care... doctors give you choice - patent autonomy
• identity - we get to invent/reinvent ourselves
• family, used to be who, now everything - consuming questions
• work - every minute of every day, from anywhere on the planet, decide whether we should be working
• 2 negative effects
• produces paralysis rather than liberation - people cannot choose at all - don't want to make the wrong decision
• we end up less satisfied with the choice when there are more choice - could have made a different choice - regret subtracts from decision made
• we just don't want to miss the opportunity
• escalation of expectation 
• do better but feel worse
• expectations go up when there is so many options
• never pleasantly suppressed
• The secret to happiness is low expectations
• who is responsible
• you when there is a lot of choice
• if there are few options - the world is responsible
• official dogma is all wrong
• more choice is better is totally wrong, there is a sweet spot
• it's a problem of modern affluent societies 
• abundance of choice: doesn't help, actually hurts
• if everything is possible, you increase paralysis and decrease satisfaction
• David Deutsch on our place in the cosmos
• solar system is highly tailored to our survival
• spaceship earth - we're safe in here
• we're chemical scum on the outside of a typical rock, around typical star, etc.
• both at odds and both false
• typical place in the universe is emptiness - space
• intergalactic space - a typical space, nothingness, light, vacuum, etc
• we (humans) can explain things
• we can observe, track, model, explanatory model, causal structure
• our brains can create knowledge and grow it (explanations)
• not physics, we create an open ended stream of explanations
• we are very different 
• we are a hub - we can work out the structure of everything else
• amazing, given just in the laws of physics
• we do it with 3 things: matter (computation), energy, evidence
• evidence is everywhere for the taking
• out in the normal part of the universe - none of these things are there (Wrong!)
• intergalactic space does provide the prerequisites (hydrogen atoms)!
• just missing knowledge 
• cosmic knowledge based view
• we can survive, and we can fail to survive
• we just need the suitable knowledge is to survive, everything goes extinct
• we want to be the exception 
• our only hope, to create new knowledge
• global warning - too late
• been too late for a long time
• we cannot always know - disaster exists and how to solve it
• we need to focus on fixes
• problems are solvable, problems are inevitable 
• Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?
• human brain has nearly tripled in mass over last 2 million years
• we gained new structures - frontal lobe, prefrontal cortex
• prefrontal cortex is a experience simulator
• winning the lottery and being a paraplegic are equally happy with there lives
• impact bias - simulator can work badly
• different outcomes are more different than they really are
• bad things have far less impact than they actually have - major life trauma
• happiness can be synthesized
• psychological immune system
• help change views of the world to feel better about the worlds they are in
• we think happiness is a thing to be found
• 2 types of happiness
• naturally happiness - what we get when we get what we wanted
• synthetic happiness - when we are happy with what we have
• synthetic is every bit as real as natural
• synthetic happiness - actually a change in the brain
• demonstrated with people who cannot make new memories
• dogma: freedom - choose - path to natural happiness
• it is the enemy of synthesized happiness
• accept the things you cannot change
• reversible and irreversible decisions in test subjects
• people stuck/limited are happier
• people with choice are far less happy 
• people prefer to have the choice but choice will lead to be less happiness
• preferences can be good
• we can overrate the differences between options
• when unbounded we do crazy things, bounded is controlled
• Steven Pinker on the myth of violence
• recent history gives the impression that we have been horrifically violent
• we think historically things were peaceful and harmonious existence
• thesis
• history was far more violent than we believe
• there is a decline in violence over recent time
• this is/may be the most peaceful time in history 
• log time period to provide cases
• millennium scale
• hunter gatherer societies: more than likely to be killed by another
• early civilizations: looking at the bible, very violent  
• century scale
• death penalty for most things, very violent 
• log graph from middle ages to now, mass drop
• elbow of graph (drop in violence) was the early 16th century
• decade scale
• decrease in wars, etc
• decrease in deaths per year per war
• year scale
• decrease in homicide, small increase in the 60s, back down in the 90s
• so many people are so wrong about something so important
• we have much better press
• there is a cognitive illusion - we simply remember the infrequent occurrences because they're shocking
• guilt about indigenous peoples
• why has violence declined?
• anarchy - strike first out of fear 
• can have a pact with neighbours, ends in bloodshed
• the Leviathan - authority, an agency: the state
• we mainly see anarchy now mainly in failed states, marfia's, etc
• life is cheap
• life appreciated more if violence is seen (media)
• non-zero sum game
• cooperation can benefit both parties
• other people are more valuable alive than dead
• expanding circle
• empathy, naturally only applied extremely locally
• more recently the circle has expanded family..clan...etc  
• implications
• why is there war/peace
• what are we doing wrong/right

Note, that post provides many links to a host of excellent TED talks.