TEDx Talks
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2015–2024
5:56 · 16M views · Jan 15, 2015
Will Stephen's humorous six-minute TEDx talk shows presentation techniques that make you sound brilliant while saying essentially nothing.
HN recommends it as a funny deconstruction of TED talk style, and as a favorite example of the appearance of meaning without content.
6 comments from Hacker News
Pseudo-intellectual consumerism, as I like to call it. How many people do you know who turn on the news on TV, sit in front and take notes? Who put on some music, relax in the sweet spot and immerse themselves? Who read a book, stop and ponder, continue? Versus people who turn on the TV while cooking, who put on headphones with music while working out for background noise, who put on sped up version of audiobook while driving to tick off another checkmark? It's form over substance all over the place. I absolutely love this TED talk: this video The more pseudo-intellectual consumerism infiltrates our collective psyche, the more the substance becomes irrelevant. Nuance requires thinking. "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" -- HL Mencken. But knowing this answer makes you feel smart.
That's why the "Ted Talk about Nothing" is one of my favorites: this video Their manner of speaking reminds me of American Dad making fun of Ira Glass. Why is pausing??! Doesn't he know what he's going to say next??? AAAAHH. [LINK]
Obligatory meta TED talk: this video Personally the TED talk I liked the most. It's funny but I actually find it interesting, showing that appearance of meaning is not actual meaning.
I used to binge watch Ted Talks and then ran across How to sound Smart in your Ted Talk[1] Ted Talk where William Stephen spent 6 minutes talking about nothing. [1] this video
There are some great TED[x] talks, like "Ducks Go Quack, Chickens Say Cluck": [LINK] And "How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk": this video