#ted ideas

[ofishel]

Mobile data replacing traditional credit scores | TED:Ideas

For an article on the work of an entrepreneur named Shivani Siroya, who is using mobile phone data to replace traditional credit scores, essentially looking at different ways to assess trustworthiness as it relates to the approval of loans.

Read about it here...

Art Direction: Sacha Vega

[asyoulikeitnow]

Autism: Different, not less.

We’re moving from viewing people on the autism spectrum as failed versions of “normal” to — as the industrial designer and writer Temple Grandin (TED Talk: The world needs all kinds of minds) says — “Different, Not Less.” By going out into the community, the researchers learned that the prevalence of autism among adults is approximately the same as the prevalence among children. One of the most neglected areas of research today is what factors help autistic adults lead successful lives.

Autistic adults who don’t have an intellectual disability face nine times higher risk of committing suicide than non-autistic people. The vast majority of autistic people and their families report feeling socially isolated, and half of them say they only rarely leave the house, because when they do, they’re subjected to condemning stares, derogatory remarks, or more violent forms of bullying.

We fool ourselves into thinking that autism is a “puzzle” that will be solved by the next medical breakthrough. 

Instead, what autism really is is an enormous population of men and women with tremendous potential who are being denied what everyone deserves: the chance to live a happy, healthy, safe, secure and productive life. Viewed in this light, autistic people are one of the largest disenfranchised minorities in the world.

Imagine if society had put off the issue of civil rights until the genetics of race were sorted out, or denied wheelchair users access to schools and public buildings while insisting, “Someday, with the help of science, everyone will walk.” Designing appropriate forms of support and accommodations is not beyond our capabilities as a society, as the history of the disability rights movement proves.

Excerpt from ‘Autistic people are not failed versions of “normal.” They’re different, not less’ (TED ideas), by Steve Silberman, author of ‘NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity’

[asyoulikeitnow]

Divorce is intrinsically hard, but our cultural beliefs and attitudes make it even harder than it needs to be. Guilt, shame and a sense of failure significantly raise the emotional cost of divorce. We want to talk about love and happiness on the way into marriage, but after the exchange of rings, we demand an old-fashioned narrative, one of self-sacrifice, loyalty and hard work. These attitudes are rooted in the past, when marriage was an economic institution designed to build wealth and raise children. While it was surely the case that humans longed for love and happiness as much then as they do now, those feelings were not expected to derive from marriage. The pursuit of love and happiness was not considered to be an adequate reason for marriage, and it certainly was not an adequate reason for divorce. Can anyone commit to feel an emotion in perpetuity? No, of course not. We can force ourselves to be loyal and self-sacrificing, but we cannot force ourselves to love. We humans have little control over our hearts. This truth is so inconvenient that we try to tell ourselves stories about how love can be created through determination and hard work, but we don’t really believe our own stories. If we did, we would all still agree to arranged marriages.  If we, as a society, were honest with ourselves, we would admit that it is not reasonable to expect people to marry for love yet not to divorce for lack of love.

‘The inconvenient truth about love - and divorce’, Danielle Teller (TED ideas)

[vedantvarma]

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