http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/opennlp-sandbox/blob/1f97041b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/140ted_a_j_jacobs_year_of_living_biblically.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diff --git a/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/140ted_a_j_jacobs_year_of_living_biblically.txt b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/140ted_a_j_jacobs_year_of_living_biblically.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1dd1e0f --- /dev/null +++ b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/140ted_a_j_jacobs_year_of_living_biblically.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ + +I thought I 'd tell you a little about what I like to write . And I like to immerse myself in my topics . I just like to dive right in and become sort of a human guinea pig . And I see my life as a series of experiments . So , I work for Esquire magazine , and a couple of years ago I wrote an article called " My Outsourced Life , " where I hired a team of people in Bangalore , India , to live my life for me . So they answered my emails . They answered my phone . They argued with my wife for me , and they read my son bedtime stories . It was the best month of my life , because I just sat back and I read books and watched movies . It was a wonderful experience . More recently , I wrote an article for Esquire called -- about radical honesty . And this is a movement -- this is started by a psychologist in Virginia , who says that you should never , ever lie , except maybe during poker and golf , his only exceptions . And , more than that , whatever is on your brain should come out of yo ur mouth . I decided I would try this for a month . This was the worst month of my life . ( Laughter ) I do not recommend this at all . To give you a sense of the experience , the article was called , " I Think You 're Fat . " ( Laughter ) So , that was hard . My most recent book -- my previous book was called " The Know-it-All , " and it was about the year I spent reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z in my quest to learn everything in the world , or more precisely from A-ak , which is a type of East Asian music , all the way to Zwyiec , which is -- well , I do n't want to ruin the ending . ( Laughter ) It 's a very exciting twist ending , like an O. Henry novel , so I wo n't ruin it . But I love that one because that was an experiment about how much information one human brain could absorb , although , listening to Kevin Kelly , you do n't have to remember anything . You can just Google it . So I wasted some time there . I love those experiments , but I think that the mo st profound and life-changing experiment that I 've done is my most recent experiment , where I spent a year trying to follow all of the rules of the Bible -- " The Year of Living Biblically . " And I undertook this for two reasons . The first was that I grew up with no religion at all . As I say in my book , I 'm Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is Italian . ( Laughter ) So , not very . But I 've become increasingly interested in religion . I do think it 's the defining issue of our time , or one of the main ones . And I have a son . I want to know what to teach him . So , I decided to dive in head first , and try to live the Bible . The second reason I undertook this is because I 'm concerned about the rise of fundamentalism , religious fundamentalism , and people who say they take the Bible literally , which is , according to some polls , as high as 45 or 50 percent of America . So I decided , what if you really did take the Bible literally ? I decided to take it to its lo gical conclusion and take everything in the Bible literally , without picking and choosing . The first thing I did was I got a stack of bibles . I had Christian bibles . I had Jewish bibles . A friend of mine sent me something called a hip-hop bible , where the 23rd Psalm is rendered as , " The Lord is all that , " as opposed to what I knew it as , " The Lord is my shepherd . " Then I went down and I read several versions , and I wrote down every single law that I could find . And this was a very long list -- over 700 rules . And they range from the famous ones that I had heard of -- The Ten Commandments , love your neighbor , be fruitful and multiply . So I wanted to follow those . And actually I take my projects very seriously because I had twins during my year , so I definitely take my projects seriously . But I also wanted to follow the hundreds of arcane and obscure laws that are in the Bible . There is the law in Leviticus -- " You cannot shave the corners of your beard . " I did n't know where my corners were , so I decided to let the whole thing grow , and this is what I looked like by the end . As you can imagine , I spent a lot of time at airport security . ( Laughter ) My wife would n't kiss me for the last two months . So , certainly the challenge was there . The Bible says you cannot wear clothes made of mixed fibers , so I thought , " Sounds strange , but I 'll try it . " You only know if you try it . I got rid of all my poly-cotton t-shirts . The Bible says that if two men are in a fight , and the wife of one of those men grabs the testicles of the other man , then her hand shall be cut off . So , I wanted to follow that rule . ( Laughter ) That one I followed by default , by not getting in a fight with a man whose wife was standing nearby , looking like she had a strong grip . ( Laughter ) So -- oh , there 's another shot of my beard . I will say it was an amazing year because it really was life-changing , and incredibly challenging . And there were two types of laws that were particularly challenging . The first was avoiding the little sins that we all commit every day . You know , I could spend a year not killing , but spending a year not gossiping , not coveting , not lying -- you know , I live in New York , and I work as a journalist , so this was 75 , 80 percent of my day I had to do it . But it was really interesting , because I was able to make some progress because I could n't believe how much my behavior changed my thoughts . This was one of the huge lessons of the year , is that I almost pretended to be a better person , and I became a little bit of a better person . So I had always thought , you know , " You change your mind , and you change your behavior , " but it 's often the other way round . You change your behavior , and you change your mind . So , you know , if you want to become more compassionate , you visit sick people in the hospital , and you will become more compassionate . You donate money to a ca use , and you become emotionally involved in that cause . So , it really was cognitive psychology -- you know , cognitive dissonance -- that I was experiencing . The Bible actually talks about cognitive psychology , very primitive cognitive psychology . In the Proverbs , it says that if you smile , you will become happier , which , as we know , is actually true . The second type of rule that was difficult to obey was the rules that will get you into a little trouble in 21st-century America . And perhaps the clearest example of this is stoning adulterers . ( Laughter ) But it 's a big part of the Bible , so I figured I had to address it . So , I was able to stone one adulterer . It happened -- I was in the park , and I was dressed in my biblical clothing -- sandals and a white robe -- you know , because again , the outer affects the inner . I wanted to see how dressing biblically affected my mind . And this man came up to me and he said , " Why are you dressed like that ? " And I exp lained my project , and he said , " Well , I am an adulterer , are you going to stone me ? " And I said , " Well , that would be great ! " ( Laughter ) And I took out a handful of stones from my pocket that I had been carrying around for weeks , hoping for just this interaction -- and , you know , they were pebbles -- but he grabbed them out of my hand . He was actually an elderly man , mid-seventies , just so you know . But he 's still an adulterer , and still quite angry . He grabbed them out of my hand and threw them at my face , and I felt that I could -- eye for an eye , I could retaliate , and throw one back at him . So that was my experience stoning , and it did allow me to talk about in a more serious way these big issues . How can the Bible be so barbaric in some places , and yet so incredibly wise in others ? How should we view the Bible ? Should we view it , you know , as original intent , like a sort of a Scalia version of the Bible ? How was the Bible written ? And actu ally , since this is a tech crowd , I talk in the book about how the Bible actually reminds me of Wikipedia because it has all of these authors and editors over hundreds of years . And it 's sort of evolved . It 's not a book that was written and came down from on high . So I thought I would end by telling you just a couple of the take-away , the bigger lessons that I learned from my year . The first is -- Thou shalt not take the Bible literally . This became very , very clear , early on . Because if you do , then you end up acting like a crazy person , and stoning adulterers , or -- here 's another example -- well , that 's another -- I did spend some time shepherding . ( Laughter ) It 's a very relaxing vocation . I recommend it . But this one is , the Bible says that you cannot touch women during certain times of the month , and more than that , you cannot sit on a seat where a menstruating woman has sat . And my wife thought this was very offensive , so she sat in every seat in our apartment , and I had to spend much of the year standing until I bought my own seat and carried it around . So , you know , I met with creationists . I went to the creationists ' museum . And these are the ultimate literalists . And it was fascinating , because they were not stupid people at all . I would wager that their IQ is exactly the same as the average evolutionist . It 's just that their faith is so strong in this literal interpretation of the Bible that they distort all the data to fit their model . And they go through these amazing mental gymnastics to accomplish this . And I will say , though , the museum is gorgeous . They really did a fantastic job . If you 're ever in Kentucky , there 's -- you can see a movie of the flood , and they have sprinklers in the ceiling that will sprinkle on you during the flood scenes . So , whatever you think of creationism , and I think it 's crazy , they did a great job . ( Laughter ) Another lesson is that thou shalt give thanks . A nd this one was a big lesson because I was praying , giving these prayers of thanksgiving , which was odd for an agnostic . But I was saying thanks all the time , every day , and I started to change my perspective , and I started to realize the hundreds of little things that go right every day , that I did n't even notice , that I took for granted -- as opposed to focusing on the three or four that went wrong . So , this is actually a key to happiness for me , is to just remember when I came over here , the car did n't flip over , and I did n't trip coming up the stairs . It 's a remarkable thing . Third , that thou shall have reverence . This one was unexpected because I started the year as an agnostic , and by the end of the year I became what a friend of mine calls a reverent agnostic , which I love . And I 'm trying to start it as a movement . So if anyone wants to join , the basic idea is , whether or not there is a God , there 's something important and beautiful about the ide a of sacredness , and that our rituals can be sacred . The Sabbath can be sacred . This was one of the great things about my year , doing the Sabbath , because I am a workaholic , so having this one day where you cannot work -- it really , that changed my life . So , this idea of sacredness , whether or not there is a God . Thou shall not stereotype . This one happened because I spend a lot of time with various religious communities throughout America because I wanted it to be more than about my journey . I wanted it to be about religion in America . So I spent time with evangelical Christians , and Hasidic Jews and the Amish . I 'm very proud because I think I 'm the only person in America to out Bible-talk a Jehovah 's Witness . ( Laughter ) After three and a half hours , he looked at his watch , he 's like , " I gotta go . " ( Laughter ) Oh , thank you very much . Thank you . Bless you , bless you . But it was interesting because I had some very preconceived notions about , for i nstance , evangelical Christianity , and I found that it 's such a wide and varied movement that it is difficult to make generalizations about it . There 's a group I met with called the Red Letter Christians , and they focus on the red words in the Bible , which are the ones that Jesus spoke -- that 's how they printed them in the old bibles . And their argument is that Jesus never talked about homosexuality . They have a pamphlet that says , " Here 's what Jesus said about homosexuality , " and you open it up , and there 's nothing in it . So , they say Jesus did talk a lot about helping the outcasts , helping poor people . So this was very inspiring to me . I recommend Jim Wallace and Tony Campolo . They 're very inspiring leaders , even though I disagree with much of what they say . Also , thou shalt not disregard the irrational . This one was very unexpected because , you know , I grew up with the scientific worldview , and I was shocked learning how much of my life is governed by irrational forces . And the thing is , if they 're not harmful , they 're not to be completely dismissed . Because I learned that -- I was thinking , I was doing all these rituals , these biblical rituals , separating my wool and linen , and I would ask these religious people " Why would The Bible possibly tell us to do this ? Why would God care ? " And they said , " We do n't know , but it 's just rituals that give us meaning . " And I would say , " But that 's crazy . " And they would say , " Well , what about you ? You blow out candles on top of a birthday cake . If a guy from Mars came down and saw , here 's one guy blowing out the fire on top of a cake versus another guy not wearing clothes of mixed fabrics , would the Martians say , 'Well , that guy , he makes sense , but that guy 's crazy ? ' " So no , I think that rituals are , by nature , irrational . So the key is to choose the right rituals , the ones that are not harmful -- but rituals by themselves are not to be dis missed . And finally I learned that thou shall pick and choose . And this one I learned because I tried to follow everything in the Bible . And I failed miserably . Because you ca n't . You have to pick and choose , and anyone who follows the Bible is going to be picking and choosing . The key is to pick and choose the right parts . There 's the phrase called cafeteria religion , and the fundamentalists will use it in a denigrating way , and they 'll say , " Oh , it 's just cafeteria religion . You 're just picking and choosing . " But my argument is , " What 's wrong with cafeterias ? " I 've had some great meals at cafeterias . I 've also had some meals that make me want to dry heave . So , it 's about choosing the parts of the Bible about compassion , about tolerance , about loving your neighbor , as opposed to the parts about homosexuality is a sin , or intolerance , or violence , which are very much in the Bible as well . So if we are to find any meaning in this book , then we have to really engage it , and wrestle with it . And I thought I 'd end with just a couple more . There 's me reading the Bible . That 's how I hailed taxi-cabs . ( Laughter ) Seriously , and it worked -- and yes , that was actually a rented sheep , so I had to return that in the morning , but it served well for a day . So , anyway , thank you so much for letting me speak . \ No newline at end of file
http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/opennlp-sandbox/blob/1f97041b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/141ted_alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diff --git a/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/141ted_alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.txt b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/141ted_alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bcc4f34 --- /dev/null +++ b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/141ted_alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ + +A great way to start , I think , with my view of simplicity , is to take a look at TED . Here you are , understanding why we 're here , what 's going on , with no difficulty at all . The best AI in the planet would find it complex and confusing , and my little dog Watson would find it simple and understandable , but would miss the point . ( Laughter ) He would have a great time . And of course , if you 're a speaker here , like Hans Rosling , a speaker finds this complex , tricky . But in Hans Rosling 's case , he had a secret weapon yesterday , literally , in his sword swallowing act . And I must say I thought of quite a few objects that I might try to swallow today and finally gave up on -- but he just did it and that was a wonderful thing . So Puck meant not only are we fools in the pejorative sense , but that we 're easily fooled . In fact what Shakespeare was pointing out is we go to the theater in order to be fooled , so we 're actually looking forward to it . We go to magic s hows in order to be fooled . And this makes many things fun , but it makes it difficult to actually get any kind of picture on the world we live in , or on ourselves . And our friend , Betty Edwards , the Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain lady , shows these two tables to her drawing class and says , the problem you have with learning to draw is not that you ca n't move your hand , but that the way your brain perceives images is faulty . It 's trying to perceive images into objects rather than seeing what 's there . And to prove it , she says , the exact size and shape of these tabletops is the same , and I 'm going to prove it to you . She does this with cardboard , but since I have an expensive computer here , I 'll just rotate this little guy around and ... . Now having seen that -- and I 've seen it hundreds of times , because I use this in every talk I give -- I still ca n't see that they 're the same size and shape , and I doubt that you can either . So what do artists do ? Well , what artists do is to measure . They measure very , very carefully . And if you measure very , very carefully with a stiff arm and a straight edge , you 'll see that those two shapes are exactly the same size . And the Talmud saw this a long time ago , saying , we see things not as they are , but as we are . I certainly would like to know what happened to the person who had that insight back then , if they actually followed it to its ultimate conclusion . So if the world is not as it seems and we see things as we are , then what we call reality is a kind of hallucination happening inside here . It 's a waking dream . And understanding that that is what we actually exist in is one of the biggest epistemological barriers in human history . And what that means : " simple and understandable " might not be actually simple or understandable , and things we think are complex might be made simple and understandable . Somehow we have to understand ourselves to get around our flaws . We can think of ourselves as kind of a noisy channel . The way I think of it is , we ca n't learn to see until we admit we 're blind . Once you start down at this very humble level , then you can start finding ways to see things . And what 's happened over the last four hundred years in particular is that human beings have invented brainlets : little additional parts for our brain , made out of powerful ideas that help us see the world in different ways . And these are in the form of sensory apparatus -- telescopes , microscopes -- reasoning apparatus , various ways of thinking , and most importantly , in the ability to change perspective on things . I 'll talk about that a little bit . It 's this change in perspective , and what it is we think we 're perceiving , that has helped us make more progress in the last four hundred years than we have in the rest of human history . And yet it is not taught in any K through 12 curriculum in America that I 'm aware of . So one of the things that goes from simple to complex is when we do more . We like more . If we do more in a kind of a stupid way , the simplicity gets complex . And in fact , we can keep on doing it for a very long time . But Murray Gell-Mann yesterday talked about emergent properties . Another name for them could be " architecture " as a metaphor for taking the same old material and thinking about non-obvious , non-simple ways of combining it . And in fact , what Murray was talking about yesterday in the fractal beauty of nature , of having the descriptions at various levels be rather similar , all goes down to the idea that the elementary particles are both sticky and stand-offish , and they 're in violent motion . Those three things give rise to all the different levels of what seem to be complexity in our world . But how simple ? So when I saw the Roslings ' Gapminder stuff a few years ago , I just thought it was the greatest thing I 'd seen in conveying complex ideas simply . But then I had a tho ught of , boy , maybe it 's too simple . And I put some effort in to try and check to see how well these simple portrayals of trends over time actually matched up with some ideas and investigations from the side , and I found that they matched up very well . So the Roslings have been able to do simplicity without removing what 's important about the data . Whereas the film yesterday that we saw of the simulation of the inside of a cell , as a former molecular biologist , I did n't like that at all . Not because it was n't beautiful or anything , but because it misses the thing that most students fail to understand about molecular biology , and that is , why is there any probability at all of two complex shapes finding each other just the right way so they combine together and be catalyzed ? And what we saw yesterday was , every reaction was fortuitous . They just swooped in the air and bound , and something happened . But in fact those molecules are spinning at the rate of about a m illion revolutions per second . They 're agitating back and forth their size every two nanoseconds . They 're completely crowded together . They 're jammed , they 're bashing up against each other . And if you do n't understand that in your mental model of this stuff , what happens inside of a cell seems completely mysterious and fortuitous . And I think that 's exactly the wrong image for when you 're trying to teach science . So another thing that we do is to confuse adult sophistication with the actual understanding of some principle . So a kid who 's 14 in high school gets this version of the Pythagorean theorem , which is a truly subtle and interesting proof , but in fact it 's not a good way to start learning about mathematics . So a more direct one , one that gives you more of the feeling of math , is something closer to Pythagoras ' own proof which goes like this . So here we have this triangle , and if we surround that C square with three more triangles and we copy that , n otice that we can move those triangles down like this , and that leaves two open areas that are kind of suspicious , and bingo . And that is all you have to do . And this kind of proof is the kind of proof that you need to learn when you 're learning mathematics in order to get an idea of what it means before you look into the , literally , 12 or 1500 proofs of Pythagoras ' theorem that had been discovered . Now let 's go to young children . This is a very unusual teacher who was a kindergarten and first-grade teacher , but was a natural mathematician . So she was like that jazz musician friend you have who never studied music , but is a terrific musician . She just had a feeling for math , and here are her six-year-olds , and she 's got them making shapes out of a shape . So they pick a shape they like -- a diamond , or a square , or a triangle , or a trapezoid -- and then they try and make the next larger shape of that same shape , and the next larger shape . And you can see the t rapezoids are a little challenging there . And [ what ] this teacher did on every project was to have the children act like first it was a creative arts project and then something like science . So they 'd created these artifacts . Now she had them look at them and do this laborious -- which I thought for a long time , until she explained to me , was to slow them down so they 'll think . So they 're cutting out the little pieces of cardboard here , and pasting them up . But the whole point of this thing is for them to look at this chart and fill it out . What have you noticed about what you did ? And so six-year-old Lauren there noticed that the first one took one , and the second one took three more , and the total was four on that one . The third one took five more , and the total was nine on that one , and then the next one . So she saw right away that the additional tiles that you had to add around the edges was always going to grow by two . So she was very confident about how s he made those numbers there . And she could see that these were the square numbers up until about six . Where she was n't sure what six times six was , and what seven times seven was . But then she was confident again . So that 's what Lauren did . And then the teacher , Gillian Ishijima , had the kids bring all of their projects up to the front of the room and put them on the floor . And everybody went batshit . Holy shit ! They 're the same ! No matter what the shapes were , the growth law is the same . And the mathematicians and scientists in the crowd will recognize these two progressions as a first order discrete differential equation , and a second order discrete differential equation . Derived by six-year-olds . Well , that 's pretty amazing . That is n't what we usually try to teach six-year-olds . So let 's take a look now at how we might use the computer for some of this . And so the first idea here is just to show you the kind of things that children do . I 'm using the s oftware that we 're putting on the 100 dollar laptop . So I 'd like to draw a little car here . I 'll just do this very quickly . And put a big tire on him . And I get a little object here , and I can look inside this object . I 'll call it a car . And here 's a little behavior : car forward . Each time I click it , car turn . If I want to make a little script to do this over and over again , I just drag these guys out and set them going . And I can try steering the car here by -- see the car turn by five here ? So what if I click this down to zero ? It goes straight . That 's a bit of a revelation for nine-year-olds . Make it go in the other direction . But of course that 's a little bit like kissing your sister as far as driving a car . So the kids want to do a steering wheel . So they draw a steering wheel . And we 'll call this a wheel . And , see this wheel 's heading here ? If I turn this wheel , you can see that number over there going minus and positive . That 's kind of an invitation to pick up this name of those numbers coming out there and to just drop it into the script here . And now I can steer the car with the steering wheel . And it 's interesting . You know how much trouble the children have with variables , but by learning it this way , in a situated fashion , they never forget from this single trial what a variable is and how to use it . And we can reflect here the way Gillian Ishijima did . So if you look at the little script here , the speed is always going to be 30. We 're going to move the car , according to that , over and over again . And I 'm dropping a little dot for each one of these things . They 're evenly spaced because they 're 30 apart . And what if I do this progression that the six-year-olds did of saying , OK , I 'm going to increase the speed by two each time , and then I 'm going to increase the distance by the speed each time ? What do I get there ? We get a visual pattern of what these nine-year-olds called acceleration . So how did the children do science ? ( Video ) Teacher : Objects that you think will fall to the earth at the same time -- Kid : This is nice . Teacher : Do not pay any attention to what anybody else is doing . Who 's got the apple ? Alan Kay : They 've got little stopwatches . Teacher : What do you get ? What did you get ? AK : Stopwatches are n't accurate enough . Girl : 0.99 seconds . Teacher : So put " sponge ball " -- Girl : There was a shot-put and a sponge ball , because they 're two totally different weights . And if you drop them at the same time , maybe they 'll drop at the same speed . Teacher : Drop . AK : So obviously Aristotle never asked a child about this particular point , because of course he did n't bother doing the experiment , and neither did St. Thomas Aquinas . And it was not until Galileo actually did it that an adult thought like a child . Only 400 years ago . We get one child like that about every classroom of 30 kids who will actually cut straight to the chase . Now , what if we want to look at this more closely ? We can take a movie of what 's going on , but even if we single stepped this movie , it 's tricky to see what 's going on . And so what we can do is , we can lay out the frames side by side , or stack them up . So when the children see this , they say , " Ah , acceleration , " remembering back four months when they did their cars sideways , and they start measuring to find out what kind of acceleration it is . And so what I 'm doing is measuring from the bottom of one image to the bottom of the next image , about a fifth of a second later , like that , and they 're getting faster and faster each time . And if I stack these guys up , then we see the differences , the increase in the speed is constant . And they say , oh , yeah , constant acceleration . We 've done that already . And how shall we look and verify that we actually have it ? So we ca n't tell much from just making the ball drop there , but if we drop the ball and run the movie at the same time , we can see that we have come up with an accurate physical model . Galileo , by the way , did this very cleverly by running a ball down backwards down the strings of his lute . I pulled out those apples to remind myself to tell you that this is actually probably a Newton and the apple-type story , but it 's a great story . And I thought I would do just one thing on the 100 dollar laptop here just to prove that this stuff works here . So once you have gravity , here 's this -- increase the speed by something , increase the ship 's speed . If I start the little game here that the kids have done , it 'll crash the space ship . But if I oppose gravity , here we go -- oops ! ( Laughter ) One more . Yeah , there we go . Yeah , OK ? I guess the best way to end this is with two quotes . Marshall McLuhan said , " Children are the messages that we send to the future . " But in fact , if you think of it , children are the future we send to the future . Forge t about messages . Children are the future . And children in the first and second world , and most especially in the third world , need mentors . And this summer we 're going to build 5 million of these 100 dollar laptops and maybe 50 million next year . But we could n't create a thousand new teachers this summer to save our life . And that means that we once again have a thing where we can put technology out , but the mentoring that is required to go from a simple new iChat instant messaging system to something with depth is missing . I believe this has to be done with a new kind of user interface . And this new kind of user interface could be done with an expenditure of about 100 million dollars . It sounds like a lot , but it is literally 18 minutes of what we 're spending in Iraq . We 're spending 8 billion dollars a month . 18 minutes is 100 million dollars . So this is actually cheap . And Einstein said , " Things should be as simple as possible , but not simpler . " Thank you . \ No newline at end of file http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/opennlp-sandbox/blob/1f97041b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/142ted_alex_tabarrok_foresees_economic_growth.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diff --git a/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/142ted_alex_tabarrok_foresees_economic_growth.txt b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/142ted_alex_tabarrok_foresees_economic_growth.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0b1394e --- /dev/null +++ b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/142ted_alex_tabarrok_foresees_economic_growth.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ + +The first half of the twentieth century was an absolute disaster in human affairs , a cataclysm . We had the First World War , the Great Depression , the Second World War , and the rise of the communist nations . And each one of these forces split the world , tore the world apart , divided the world . And they threw up walls , political walls , trade walls , transportation walls , communication walls , iron curtains , which divided peoples and nations . It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that we slowly began to pull ourselves out of this abyss . Trade walls began to come tumbling down . Here are some data on tariffs : starting at 40 percent , coming down to less than 5 percent . We globalized the world . And what does that mean ? It means that we extended cooperation across national boundaries . We made the world more cooperative . Transportation walls came tumbling down . You know in 1950 the typical ship carried 5,000 to 10,000 tons worth of goods . Today a co ntainer ship can carry 150,000 tons . It can be manned with a smaller crew , and unloaded faster than ever before . Communication walls , I do n't have to tell you , the internet , have come tumbling down . And of course the iron curtains , political walls have come tumbling down . Now all of this has been tremendous for the world . Trade has increased . Here is just a little bit of data . In 1990 exports from China to the United States -- 15 billion dollars . By 2007 , over 300 billion dollars . And perhaps most remarkably , at the beginning of the twenty-first century , really for the first time in modern history , growth extended to almost all parts of the world . So China , I 've already mentioned , beginning in 1978 , around the time of the death of Mao , growth -- ten percent a year . Year after year after year , absolutely incredible . Never before in human history have so many people been raised out of such great poverty , as happened in China . China is the world 's greates t anti-poverty program over the last three decades . India , starting a little bit later , but in 1990 , begetting tremendous growth . Incomes at that time less than 1,000 dollars per year . And over the next 18 years have almost tripled . Growth of six percent a year . Absolutely incredible . Now Africa , Sub-Saharan Africa , Sub-Saharan Africa has been the area of the world most resistant to growth . And we can see the tragedy of Africa in the first few bars here . Growth was negative . People were actually getting poorer than their parents . And sometimes even poorer than their grandparents had been . But at the end of the twentieth century , the beginning of the twenty-first century , we saw growth in Africa . And I think , as you 'll see , there 's reasons for optimism . Because I believe that the best is yet to come . Now why . On the cutting edge today it 's new ideas which are driving growth . And by that I mean it 's products for which the research and development costs are really high , and the manufacturing costs are low . More than ever before it is these types of ideas which are driving growth on the cutting edge . Now ideas have this amazing property . Thomas Jefferson , I think , really expressed this quite well . He said , " He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself , without lessening mine . As he who lights his candle at mine receives light without darkening me . Or to put it slightly differently , one apple feeds one man , but an idea can feed the world . Now this is not new . This is practically not new to TEDsters . This is practically the model of TED . What is new is that the greater function of ideas is going to drive growth even more than ever before . This provides a reason why trade and globalization are even more important , more powerful than ever before , and are going to increase growth more than ever before . And to explain why this is so , I have a question . Suppose that there are two diseases . One of them is rare , the other one is common . But if they are not treated they are equally severe . If you had to choose , which would you rather have ? The common disease or the rare disease ? Common . The common . I think that 's absolutely right . Why ? Because there are more drugs to treat common diseases than there are to treat rare diseases . The reason for this is incentives . It costs about the same to produce a new drug , whether that drug treats 1,000 people , 100,000 people , or a million people . But the revenues are much greater if the drug treats a million people . So the incentives are much larger to produce drugs which treat more people . To put this differently , larger markets save lives . In this case misery truly does love company . Now think about the following : if China and India were as rich as the United States is today , the market for cancer drugs would be eight times larger than it is now . Now we are not there yet , but it is happening . As other countries become richer the demand for these pharmaceuticals is going to increase tremendously . And that means an increase incentive to do research and development , which benefits everyone in the world . Larger markets increase the incentive to produce all kinds of ideas . Whether it 's software , whether it 's a computer chip , whether it 's a new design . For the Hollywood people in the audience , it even explains why action movies have larger budgets than comedies . It 's because action movies translate easier into other languages and other cultures . So the market for those movies is larger . People are willing to invest more , and the budgets are larger . Alright . Well if larger markets increase the incentive to produce new ideas , how do we maximize that incentive ? It 's by having one world market , by globalizing the world . The way I like to put this is , one idea , ideas are meant to be shared , so one idea can serve one world , one market . One idea , one world , one market . Well how else can we create new ideas ? That 's one reason . Globalize , trade . How else can we create new ideas ? Well , more idea creators . Now idea creators , they come from all walks of life . Artists and innovators , many of the people you 've seen on this stage . I 'm going to focus on scientists and engineers because I have some data on that , and I 'm a data person . Now , today , less than 1/10th of one percent of the world 's population are scientists and engineers . ( Laughter ) The United States has been an idea leader . A large fraction of those people are in the United States . But the U. S. is losing its idea leadership . And for that I am very grateful . That is a good thing . It is fortunate that we are becoming less of an idea leader because for too long the United States , and a handful of other developed countries , have shouldered the entire burden of research and development . But consider the following : if the world as a whole were as wealthy as the United States is now there would be more than five times as many scientists and engineers contributing to ideas which benefit everyone , which are shared by everyone . I think of the great Indian mathematician , Ramanujan . How many Ramanujans are there in India today toiling in the fields , barely able to feed themselves , when they could be feeding the world ? Now we 're not there yet . But it is going to happen in this century . The real tragedy of the last century is this : if you think about the world 's population as a giant computer , a massively parallel processor , then the great tragedy has been that billions of our processors have been off line . But in this century China is coming on line . India is coming on line . Africa is coming on line . We will see an Einstein in Africa in this century . Here is just some data . This is China . 1996 , less than one million new university students in China , per year . 2006 , over five million . Now think what this means . This means we all benefit when another country gets rich . We should not fear other countries becoming wealthy . That is something that we should embrace -- a wealthy China , a wealthy India , a wealthy Africa . We need a greater demand for ideas , those larger markets I was talking about earlier , and a greater supply of ideas for the world . Now you can see some of the reasons why I 'm optimistic . Globalization is increasing the demand for ideas , the incentive to create new ideas . Investments in education are increasing the supply of new ideas . In fact if you look at world history you can see some reasons for optimism . From about the beginnings of humanity to 1500 , zero economic growth , nothing . 1500 to 1800 , maybe a little bit of economic growth . But less in a century than you expect to see in a year today . 1900s maybe one percent . Twentieth century a little bit over two percent . Twenty-first century could easily be 3.3 even higher percent . Even at that rate by 2100 , average GDP per capita in the world will be 200,000 dollars . That 's not U. S. GDP per capita , which will be over a million . But world GDP per capita , 200,000 dollars . That 's not that far . We wo n't make it . But some of our grandchildren probably will . And I should say I think this is a rather modest prediction . In Kurzweilian terms this is gloomy . In Kurzweilian terms I 'm like the Eeyore of economic growth . ( Laughter ) Alright what about problems ? What about a great depression ? Well let 's take a look . Let 's take a look at the Great Depression . Here is GDP per capita from 1900 to 1929. Now let 's imagine that you were an economist in 1929 , trying to forecast future growth for the United States , not knowing that the economy was about to go off a cliff . Not knowing that we were about to enter the greatest economic disaster certainly in the twentieth century . What would you have predicted not knowing this ? If you had based your prediction , your forecast on 1900 to 1929 you 'd have predicted something like this . If you 'd been a little more optimistic , say based upon the roaring 20s , you 'd have said this . So what actually happened ? We went off a cliff but we recovered . In fact in the second half of the twentieth century growth was even higher than anything you would have predicted based upon the first half of the twentieth century . So growth can wash away even what appears to be a great depression . Alright . What else ? Oil . Oil . This was a big topic . When I was writing up my notes oil was 140 dollars per barrel . So people were asking a question . The were saying , " Is China drinking our milkshake ? " ( Laughter ) And there is some truth to this in the sense that we have something of a finite resource . And increased growth is going to push up demand for that . But I think I do n't have to tell this audience that a higher price of oil is not necessarily a bad thing . Moreover , as everyone knows , look it 's energy , not oil , which counts . And higher oil prices mean a greater incentive to invest in energy R&D . You can see this in the data . As oil prices go up , energy patents go up . The world is much better equipped to overcome an increase in the price of oil today , than ever in the past , because of what I 'm talking about . One idea , one world , one market . So I 'm optimistic so long as we hew to these two ideas : to keep globalizing world markets , keep extending cooperation across national boundaries , and keep investing in education . Now the United States has a particularly important role to play in this -- to keep our education system globalized , to keep our education system open to students from all over the world -- because our education system is the candle that other students come to to light their own candles . Now remember here what Jefferson said . Jefferson said , " When they come and light their candles at ours , that they gain light , and we are not darkened . " But Jefferson was n't quite right , was he ? Because the truth is , when they light their candles at ours , there is twice as much light available for everyone . So my view is be optimistic . Spread the ideas . Spread the light . Thank you . ( Applause ) \ No newline at end of file http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/opennlp-sandbox/blob/1f97041b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/143ted_amy_tan_on_creativity.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diff --git a/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/143ted_amy_tan_on_creativity.txt b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/143ted_amy_tan_on_creativity.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3f45de2 --- /dev/null +++ b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/143ted_amy_tan_on_creativity.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ + +The value of nothing : out of nothing comes something . That was an essay I wrote when I was 11 years old and I got a B+ . ( Laughter ) What I 'm going to talk about : nothing out of something , and how we create . And I 'm gonna try and do that within the 18-minute time span that we were told to stay within , and to follow the TED commandments : that is , actually , something that creates a near-death experience , but near-death is good for creativity . ( Laughter ) OK . So , I also want to explain , because Dave Eggers said he was going to heckle me if I said anything that was a lie , or not true to universal creativity . And I 've done it this way for half the audience , who is scientific . When I say we , I do n't mean you , necessarily ; I mean me , and my right brain , my left brain , and the one that 's in between that is the censor and tells me what I 'm saying is wrong . And I 'm going do that also by looking at what I think is part of my creative process , which includes a number of things that happened , actually -- the nothing started even earlier than the moment in which I 'm creating something new . And that includes nature , and nurture , and what I refer to as nightmares . Now in the nature area , we look at whether or not we are innately equipped with something , perhaps in our brains , some abnormal chromosome that causes this muse-like effect . And some people would say that we 're born with it in some other means , and others , like my mother , would say that I get my material from past lives . Some people would also say that creativity may be a function of some other neurological quirk -- van Gogh syndrome -- that you have a little bit of , you know , psychosis , or depression . I do have to say , somebody -- I read recently that van Gogh was n't really necessarily psychotic , that he might have had temporal lobe seizures , and that might have caused his spurt of creativity , and I do n't -- I suppose it does something in some part of your brain . And I will mention that I actually developed temporal lobe seizures a number of years ago , but it was during the time I was writing my last book , and some people say that book is quite different . I think that part of it also begins with a sense of identity crisis : you know , who am I , why am I this particular person , why am I not black like everybody else ? And sometimes you 're equipped with skills , but they may not be the kind of skills that enable creativity . I used to draw . I thought I would be an artist . And I had a miniature poodle . And it was n't bad , but it was n't really creative . Because all I could really do was represent in a very one-on-one way . And I have a sense that I probably copied this from a book . And then I also was n't really shining in a certain area that I wanted to be , and you know , you look at those scores , and it was n't bad , but it was not certainly predictive that I would one day make my living out of the artful arrangement of words . Also , one of the principles of creativity is to have a little childhood trauma . And I had the usual kind that I think a lot of people had , and that is that , you know , I had expectations placed on me . That figure right there , by the way , figure right there was a toy given to me when I was but nine years old , and it was to help me become a doctor from a very early age . I have some ones that were long lasting : from the age of five to 15 , this was supposed to be my side occupation , and it led to a sense of failure . But actually there was something quite real in my life that happened when I was about 14. And it was discovered that my brother , in 1967 , and then my father , six months later , had brain tumors . And my mother believed that something had gone wrong , and she was gonna find out what it was . And she was gonna fix it . My father was a Baptist minister , and he believed in miracles , and that God 's will would take care of that . But of course , they en ded up dying , six months apart . And after that , my mother believed that it was fate , or curses -- she went looking through all the reasons in the universe why this would have happened . Everything except randomness . She did not believe in randomness . There was a reason for everything . And one of the reasons , she thought , was that her mother , who had died when she was very young , was angry at her . And so I had this notion of death all around me because my mother also believed that I would be next , and she would be next And when you are faced with the prospect of death very soon , you begin to think very much about everything . You become very creative , in a survival sense . And this , then , led to my big questions . And they 're the same ones that I have today . And they are : Why do things happen , and how do things happen ? And the one my mother asked : How do I make things happen ? It 's a wonderful way to look at these questions , when you write a story . Because a fter all , in that framework , between page one and 300 , you have to answer this question of why things happen , how things happen , in what order they happen . What are the influences ? How do I , as the narrator , as the writer , also influence that ? And it 's also one that I think many of our scientists have been asking . It 's a kind of cosmology , and I have to develop a cosmology of my own universe , as the creator of that universe . And you see , there 's a lot of back and forth in trying to make that happen , trying to figure it out -- years and years , oftentimes . So when I look at creativity , I also think that it is this sense or this inability to repress my looking at associations in practically anything in life . And I got a lot of them during what 's been going on throughout this conference , almost everything that 's been going on . And so I 'm going to use , as the metaphor , this association : quantum mechanics , which I really do n't understand , but I 'm still gonna use it as the process for explaining how it is the metaphor . So in quantum mechanics , of course , you have dark energy and dark matter . And it 's the same thing in looking at these questions of how things happen . There 's a lot of unknown , and you often do n't know what it is except by its absence . But when you make those associations , you want them to come together in a kind of synergy in the story , and what you 're finding is what matters . The meaning . And that 's what I look for in my work , a personal meaning . There is also the uncertainty principle , which is part of quantum mechanics , as I understand it . ( Laughter ) And this happens constantly in the writing . And there 's the terrible and dreaded observer effect , in which you 're looking for something , and you know , things are happening simultaneously , and you 're looking at it in a different way , and you 're trying to really look for the about-ness . Or what is this story about . And if you try too h ard , then you will only write the about . You wo n't discover anything . And what you were supposed to find , what you hoped to find , in some serendipitous way , is no longer there . Now , I do n't want to ignore the other side of what happens in our universe , like many of our scientists have . And so I am going to just throw in string theory here , and just say that creative people are multi-dimensional , and there are eleven levels , I think , of anxiety . ( Laughter ) And they all operate at the same time . There is also a big question of ambiguity . And I would link that to something called the cosmological constant . And you do n't know what is operating , but something is operating there . And ambiguity , to me , is very uncomfortable in my life , and I have it . Moral ambiguity . It is constantly there . And just as an example , this is one that recently came to me . It was something I read in an editorial by a woman who was talking about the war in Iraq . And she said , " Save a man from drowning , you are responsible to him for life . " A very famous Chinese saying , she said . And that means because we went into Iraq , we should stay there until things were solved . You know , maybe even 100 years . So there was another one that I came across , and it 's " saving fish from drowning . " And it 's what Buddhist fishermen say , because they 're not supposed to kill anything . And they also have to make a living , and people need to be fed . So their way of rationalizing that is they are saving the fish from drowning , and unfortunately in the process the fish die . Now what 's encapsulated in both these drowning metaphors -- actually , one of them is my mother 's interpretation , and it is a famous Chinese saying because she said it to me : " Save a man from drowning , you are responsible to him for life . " And it was a warning -- do n't get involved in other people 's business , or you 're going to get stuck . OK . I think if somebody really was dr owning , she 'd save them . But both of these sayings , saving a fish from drowning , or saving a man from drowning , to me they had to do with intentions . And all of us in life , when we see a situation , we have a response . And then we have intentions . There 's an ambiguity of what that should be that we should do , and then we do something . And the results of that may not match what our intentions had been . Maybe things go wrong . And so , after that , what are our responsibilities ? What are we supposed to do ? Do we stay in for life , or do we do something else and justify and say , well , my intentions were good , and therefore I cannot be held responsible for all of it ? That is the ambiguity in my life that really disturbed me , and led me to write a book called Saving Fish From Drowning . I saw examples of that , once I identified this question . It was all over the place . I got these hints everywhere . And then , in a way , I knew that they had always been there . An d then writing , that 's what happens . I get these hints , these clues , and I realize that they 've been obvious , and yet they have not been . And what I need , in effect , is a focus . And when I have the question , it is a focus . And all these things that seem to be flotsam and jetsam in life actually go through that question , and what happens is those particular things become relevant . And it seems like it 's happening all the time . You think there 's a sort of coincidence going on , a serendipity , in which you 're getting all this help from the universe . And it may also be explained that now you have a focus . And you are noticing it more often . But you apply this . You begin to look at things having to do with your tensions . Your brother , who 's fallen in trouble , do you take care of him ? Why or why not ? It may be something that is perhaps more serious -- as I said , human rights in Burma . I was thinking that I should n't go because somebody said if I did , it w ould show that I approved of the military regime there . And then after a while , I had to ask myself , " Why do we take on knowledge , why do we take on assumptions that other people have given us ? " And it was the same thing that I felt when I was growing up , and was hearing these rules of moral conduct from my father , who was a Baptist minister . So I decided that I would go to Burma for my own intentions , and still did n't know that if I went there , what the result of that would be if I wrote a book -- and I just would have to face that later , when the time came . We are all concerned with things that we see in the world that we are aware of . We come to this point and say , what do I as an individual do ? Not all of us can go to Africa , or work at hospitals , so what do we do if we have this moral response , this feeling ? Also , I think one of the biggest things we are all looking at , and we talked about today , is genocide . This leads to this question , when I look a t all these things that are morally ambiguous and uncomfortable , and I consider what my intentions should be , I realize it goes back to this identity question that I had when I was a child -- and why am I here , and what is the meaning of my life , and what is my place in the universe ? It seems so obvious , and yet it is not . We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense , and yet it is also absolutely necessary . In writing a story , it is the place where I begin . Sometimes I get help from the universe , it seems . My mother would say it was the ghost of my grandmother from the very first book , because it seemed I knew things I was not supposed to know . Instead of writing that the grandmother died accidentally , from an overdose of opium while having too much of a good time , I actually put down in the story that the woman killed herself , and that actually was the way it happened . And my mother decided that that information must have come from my grandmother . There are also t hings , quite uncanny , which bring me information that will help me in the writing of the book . In this case , I was writing a story that included some kind of detail , period of history , a certain location . And I needed to find something historically that would match that . And I took down this book , and I -- first page that I flipped it to was exactly the setting , and the time period . And the kind of character I needed was the Taiping rebellion , happening in the area near Guilin , outside of that , and a character who thought he was the son of God . You wonder , are these things random chance ? Well , what is random ? What is chance ? What is luck ? What are things that you get from the universe that you ca n't really explain ? And that goes into the story too . These are the things I constantly think about from day to day . Especially when good things happen , and in particular , when bad things happen . But I do think there 's a kind of serendipity , and I do want to kno w what those elements are , so I can thank them , and also try to find them in my life . Because , again , I think that when I am aware of them , more of them happen . Another chance encounter is when I went to a place -- I just was with some friends , and we drove randomly to a different place , and we ended up in this non-tourist location , a beautiful village , pristine . And we walked three valleys beyond , and the third valley , there was something quite mysterious and ominous , a discomfort I felt . And then I knew that had to be setting of my book . And in writing one of the scenes , it happened in that third valley . For some reason I wrote about cairns -- stacks of rocks -- that a man was building . And I did n't know exactly why I had it , but it was so vivid . I got stuck , and a friend , when she asked if I would go for a walk with her dogs , that I said , sure . And about 45 minutes later , walking along the beach , I came across this . And it was a man , a Chinese man , and he was stacking these things , not with glue , not with anything . And I asked him how is it possible to do this ? And he said , well , I guess with everything in life , there 's a place of balance . And this was exactly the meaning of my story at that point . I had so many examples -- I have so many instances like this when I 'm writing a story , and I cannot explain it . Is it because I had the filter that I have such a strong coincidence in writing about these things ? Or is it a kind of serendipity that we cannot explain , like the cosmological constant ? A big thing that I also think about is accidents . And as I said , my mother did not believe in randomness . What is the nature of accidents ? And how are we going to assign what the responsibility and the causes are , outside of a court of law ? I was able to see that in a firsthand way , when I went to beautiful Dong village , in Guizhou , the poorest province of China . And I saw this beautiful place . I knew I wanted to come back . And I had a chance to do that when National Geographic asked me if I wanted to write anything about China . And I said yes , about this village of Singing people , Singing minority . And they agreed , and between the time I saw this place and the next time I went , there was a terrible accident . A man , an old man , fell asleep , and his quilt dropped in a pan of fire that kept him warm . 60 homes were destroyed , and 40 were damaged . Responsibility was assigned to the family . The man 's sons were banished to live three kilometers away , in a cow shed . And of course , as Westerners , we say , " Well , it was an accident . That 's not fair . It 's the son , not the father . " And when I go on a story , I have to let go of those kinds of beliefs . It takes a while , but I have to let go of them and just go there , and be there . And so I was there on three occasions , different seasons . And I began to sense something different about the history and what had happene d before , and the nature of life in a very poor village , and what you find as your joys , and your rituals , your traditions , your links with other families . And I saw how this had a kind of justice in its responsibility . I was able to find out also about the ceremony that they were using , a ceremony they had n't used in about 29 years . And it was to send some men -- a Feng Shui master sent men down to the underworld on ghost horses . Now you , as Westerners , and I , as Westerners , would say well , that 's superstition . But after being there for a while , and seeing the amazing things that happened , you begin to wonder whose beliefs are those that are in operation in the world , determining how things happen . So I remained with them , and the more I wrote that story , the more I got in to those beliefs , and I think that 's important for me -- to take on the beliefs , because that is where the story is real , and that is where I 'm gonna find the answers to how I feel ab out certain questions that I have in life . Years go by , of course , and the writing , it does n't happen instantly , as I 'm trying to convey it to you here at TED . The book comes and it goes . When it arrives , it is no longer my book . It is in the hands of readers , and they interpret it differently . But I go back to this question of , how do I create something out of nothing ? And how do I create my own life ? And I think it is by questioning , and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths . I believe in specifics , the specifics of story , and the past , the specifics of that past , and what is happening in the story at that point . I also believe that in thinking about things , my thinking about luck , and fate , and coincidences and accidents , God 's will , and the synchrony of mysterious forces , I will come to some notion of what that is , how we create . I have to think of my role . Where I am in the universe , and did somebody intend for me to be that way , or is it just something I came up with ? And I also can find that by imagining fully , and becoming what is imagined , and yet is in that real world , the fictional world . And that is how I find particles of truth , not the absolute truth , or the whole truth . And they have to be in all possibilities , including those I never considered before . So there are never complete answers . Or rather , if there is an answer , it is to remind myself that there is uncertainty in everything , and that is good . Because then I will discover something new . And if there is a partial answer , a more complete answer from me , it is to simply imagine . And to imagine is to put myself in that story , until there was only -- there is a transparency between me and the story I am creating . And that 's how I 've discovered that if I feel what is in the story -- in one story -- then I come the closest , I think , to knowing what compassion is , to feeling that compassion . Because for everything , in that question of how things happen , it has to do with the feeling . I have to become the story in order to understand a lot of that . We 've come to the end of the talk , and I will reveal what is in the bag , and it is the muse , and it is the things that transform in our lives , that are wonderful and stay with us . There she is . Thank you very much ! ( Applause ) \ No newline at end of file http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/opennlp-sandbox/blob/1f97041b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/144ted_barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diff --git a/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/144ted_barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.txt b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/144ted_barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4310a9c --- /dev/null +++ b/opennlp-similarity/src/test/resources/style_recognizer/txt/ted/144ted_barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ + +I 'm going to talk to you about some stuff that 's in this book of mine that I hope will resonate with other things you 've already heard , and I 'll try to make some connections myself , in case you miss them . I want to start with what I call the " official dogma . " The official dogma of what ? The official dogma of all western industrial societies . And the official dogma runs like this : if we are interested in maximizing the welfare of our citizens , the way to do that is to maximize individual freedom . The reason for this is both that freedom is in and of itself good , valuable , worthwhile , essential to being human . And because if people have freedom , then each of us can act on our own to do the things that will maximize our welfare , and no one has to decide on our behalf . The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice . The more choice people have , the more freedom they have , and the more freedom they have , the more welfare they have . This , I think , is so dee ply embedded in the water supply that it would n't occur to anyone to question it . And it 's also deeply embedded in our lives . I 'll give you some examples of what modern progress has made possible for us . This is my supermarket . Not such a big one . I want to say just a word about salad dressing . 175 salad dressings in my supermarket , if you do n't count the 10 different extra-virgin olive oils and 12 balsamic vinegars you could buy to make a very large number of your own salad dressings , in the off chance that none of the 175 the store has on offer suit you . So this is what the supermarket is like . And then you go to the consumer electronics store to set up a stereo system -- speakers , CD player , tape player , tuner , amplifier . And in this one single consumer electronics store , there are that many stereo systems . We can construct six and a half million different stereo systems out of the components that are on offer in one store . You 've got to admit that 's a lot of choice . In other domains -- the world of communications . There was a time , when I was a boy , when you could get any kind of telephone service you wanted , as long as it came from Ma Bell . You rented your phone . You did n't buy it . One consequence of that , by the way , is that the phone never broke . And those days are gone . We now have an almost unlimited variety of phones , especially in the world of cell phones . These are cell phones of the future . My favorite is the middle one -- the MP3 player , nose hair trimmer , and creme brulee torch . And if by some chance you have n't seen that in your store yet , you can rest assured that one day soon you will . And what this does is it leads people to walk into their stores asking this question . And do you know what the answer to this question now is ? The answer is " No. " It is not possible to buy a cell phone that does n't do too much . So , in other aspects of life that are much more significant than buying things , T he same explosion of choice is true . Health care -- it is no longer the case in the United States that you go to the doctor , and the doctor tells you what to do . Instead , you go to the doctor , and the doctor tells you , well , we could do A , or we could do B. A has these benefits , and these risks . B has these benefits , and these risks . What do you want to do ? And you say , " Doc , what should I do ? " And the doc says , A has these benefits and risks , and B has these benefits and risks . What do you want to do ? And you say , " If you were me , Doc , what would you do ? " And the doc says , " But I 'm not you . " And the result is -- we call it " patient autonomy , " which makes it sound like a good thing . But what it really is is a shifting of the burden and the responsibility for decision-making from somebody who knows something -- namely the doctor -- to somebody who knows nothing and is almost certainly sick and thus not in the best shape to be making decisions -- n amely the patient . There 's enormous marketing of prescription drugs to people like you and me , which , if you think about it , makes no sense at all , since we ca n't buy them . Why do they market to us if we ca n't buy them ? The answer is that they expect us to call our doctors the next morning and ask prescriptions to be changed . Something as dramatic as our identity has now become a matter of choice , as this slide is meant to indicate . We do n't inherit an identity , we get to invent it . And we get to re-invent ourselves as often as we like . And that means that every day when you wake up in the morning , you have to decide what kind of person you want to be . With respect to marriage and family , there was a time when the default assumption that almost everyone had is that you got married as soon as you could , and then you started having kids as soon as you could . The only real choice was who , not when , and not what you did after . Nowadays , everything is very much up for grabs . I teach wonderfully intelligent students , and I assign 20 percent less work than I used to . And it 's not because they 're less smart , and it 's not because they 're less diligent . It 's because they are preoccupied , asking themselves , " Should I get married or not ? Should I get married now ? Should I get married later ? Should I have kids first , or a career first ? " All of these are consuming questions . And they 're going to answer these questions , whether or not it means not doing all the work I assign and not getting a good grade in my courses . And indeed they should . These are important questions to answer . Work -- we are blessed , as Carl was pointing out , with the technology that enables us to work every minute of every day from any place on the planet -- except the Randolph Hotel . ( Laughter ) There is one corner , by the way , that I 'm not going to tell anybody about , where the WiFi works . I 'm not telling you about it because I want to use it . So what this means , this incredible freedom of choice we have with respect to work , is that we have to make a decision , again and again and again , about whether we should or should n't be working . We can go to watch our kid play soccer , and we have our cell phone on one hip , and our Blackberry on our other hip , and our laptop , presumably , on our laps . And even if they 're all shut off , every minute that we 're watching our kid mutilate a soccer game , we are also asking ourselves , " Should I answer this cell phone call ? Should I respond to this email ? Should I draft this letter ? " And even if the answer to the question is " no , " it 's certainly going to make the experience of your kid 's soccer game very different than it would 've been . So everywhere we look , big things and small things , material things and lifestyle things , life is a matter of choice . And the world we used to live in looked like this . That is to say , there were some choices , but not everything was a matter of choice . And the world we now live in looks like this . And the question is , is this good news , or bad news ? And the answer is yes . ( Laughter ) We all know what 's good about it , so I 'm going to talk about what 's bad about it . All of this choice has two effects , two negative effects on people . One effect , paradoxically , is that it produces paralysis , rather than liberation . With so many options to choose from , people find it very difficult to choose at all . I 'll give you one very dramatic example of this , a study that was done of investments in voluntary retirement plans . A colleague of mine got access to investment records from Vanguard , the gigantic mutual fund company of about a million employees and about 2,000 different workplaces . And what she found is that for every 10 mutual funds the employer offered , rate of participation went down two percent . You offer 50 funds -- 10 percent fewer employees participate than if you only o ffer five . Why ? Because with 50 funds to choose from , it 's so damn hard to decide which fund to choose that you 'll just put it off until tomorrow . And then tomorrow , and then tomorrow , and tomorrow , and tomorrow , and of course tomorrow never comes . Understand that not only does this mean that people are going to have to eat dog food when they retire because they do n't have enough money to put away , it also means that making the decision is so hard that they pass up significant matching money from the employer . By not participating , they are passing up as much as 5,000 dollars a year from the employer , who would happily match their contribution . So paralysis is a consequence of having too many choices . And I think it makes the world look like this . ( Laughter ) You really want to get the decision right if it 's for all eternity , right ? You do n't want to pick the wrong mutual fund , or even the wrong salad dressing . So that 's one effect . The second effect is t hat even if we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice , we end up less satisfied with the result of the choice than we would be if we had fewer options to choose from . And there are several reasons for this . One of them is that with a lot of different salad dressings to choose from , if you buy one , and it 's not perfect -- and , you know , what salad dressing is ? It 's easy to imagine that you could have made a different choice that would have been better . And what happens is this imagined alternative induces you to regret the decision you made , and this regret subtracts from the satisfaction you get out of the decision you made , even if it was a good decision . The more options there are , the easier it is to regret anything at all that is disappointing about the option that you chose . Second , what economists call opportunity costs . Dan Gilbert made a big point this morning of talking about how much the way in which we value things depends on what we compare them to . Well , when there are lots of alternatives to consider , it is easy to imagine the attractive features of alternatives that you reject , that make you less satisfied with the alternative that you 've chosen . Here 's an example . For those of you who are n't New Yorkers , I apologize . ( Laughter ) But here 's what you 're supposed to be thinking . Here 's this couple on the Hamptons . Very expensive real estate . Gorgeous beach . Beautiful day . They have it all to themselves . What could be better ? " Well , damn it , " this guy is thinking , " It 's August . Everybody in my Manhattan neighborhood is away . I could be parking right in front of my building . " And he spends two weeks nagged by the idea that he is missing the opportunity , day after day , to have a great parking space . Opportunity costs subtract from the satisfaction we get out of what we choose , even when what we choose is terrific . And the more options there are to consider , the more attractive featu res of these options are going to be reflected by us as opportunity costs . Here 's another example . Now this cartoon makes a lot of points . It makes points about living in the moment as well , and probably about doing things slowly . But one point it makes is that whenever you 're choosing one thing , you 're choosing not to do other things . And those other things may have lots of attractive features , and it 's going to make what you 're doing less attractive . Third : escalation of expectations . This hit me when I went to replace my jeans . I wear jeans almost all the time . And there was a time when jeans came in one flavor , and you bought them , and they fit like crap , and they were incredibly uncomfortable , and if you wore them long enough and washed them enough times , they started to feel OK . So I went to replace my jeans after years and years of wearing these old ones , and I said , " You know , I want a pair of jeans , here 's my size . " And the shopkeeper said , " Do you want slim fit , easy fit , relaxed fit ? You want button fly or zipper fly ? You want stonewashed or acid washed ? Do you want them distressed ? You want boot cut , you want tapered , blah blah blah ... " On and on he went . My jaw dropped , and after I recovered , I said , " I want the kind that used to be the only kind . " ( Laughter ) He had no idea what that was , so I spent an hour trying on all these damn jeans , and I walked out of the store -- truth be told -- with the best fitting jeans I had ever had . I did better . All this choice made it possible for me to do better . But I felt worse . Why ? I wrote a whole book to try and explain this to myself . The reason I felt worse is that , with all of these options available , my expectations about how good a pair of jeans should be went up . I had very low expectations . I had no particular expectations when they only came in one flavor . When they came in 100 flavors , damn it , one of them should 've been perfect . And what I got was good , but it was n't perfect . And so I compared what I got to what I expected , and what I got was disappointing in comparison to what I expected . Adding options to people 's lives ca n't help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be . And what that 's going to produce is less satisfaction with results , even when they 're good results . Nobody in the world of marketing knows this . Because if they did , you would n't all know what this was about . The truth is more like this . ( Laughter ) The reason that everything was better back when everything was worse is that when everything was worse , it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise . Nowadays , the world we live in -- we affluent , industrialized citizens , with perfection the expectation -- the best you can ever hope for is that stuff is as good as you expect it to be . You will never be pleasantly surprised because your expec tations , my expectations , have gone through the roof . The secret to happiness -- this is what you all came for -- the secret to happiness is low expectations . ( Laughter ) ( Applause ) I want to say -- just a little autobiographical moment -- that I actually am married to a wife , and she 's really quite wonderful . I could n't have done better . I did n't settle . But settling is n't always such a bad thing . Finally , one consequence of buying a bad-fitting pair of jeans when there is only one kind to buy is that when you are dissatisfied , and you ask why , who 's responsible , the answer is clear . The world is responsible . What could you do ? When there are hundreds of different styles of jeans available , and you buy one that is disappointing , and you ask why , who 's responsible ? It is equally clear that the answer to the question is you . You could have done better . With a hundred different kinds of jeans on display , there is no excuse for failure . And so when peop le make decisions , and even though the results of the decisions are good , they feel disappointed about them , they blame themselves . Clinical depression has exploded in the industrial world in the last generation . I believe a significant -- not the only , but a significant contributor to this explosion of depression , and also suicide , is that people have experiences that are disappointing because their standards are so high . And then when they have to explain these experiences to themselves , they think they 're at fault . And so the net result is that we do better in general , objectively , and we feel worse . So let me remind you . This is the official dogma , the one that we all take to be true , and it 's all false . It is not true . There 's no question that some choice is better than none , but it does n't follow from that that more choice is better than some choice . There 's some magical amount . I do n't know what it is . I 'm pretty confident that we have long since passed the point where options improve our welfare . Now , as a policy matter -- I 'm almost done -- as a policy matter , the thing to think about is this . What enables all of this choice in industrial societies is material affluence . There are lots of places in the world , and we have heard about several of them , where their problem is not that they have too much choice . Their problem is that they have too little . So the stuff I 'm talking about is the peculiar problem of modern , affluent , Western societies . And what is so frustrating and infuriating is this : Steve Levitt talked to you yesterday about how these expensive and difficult to install child seats do n't help . It 's a waste of money . What I 'm telling you is that these expensive , complicated choices -- it 's not simply that they do n't help . They actually hurt . They actually make us worse off . If some of what enables people in our societies to make all of the choices we make were shifted to societies in wh ich people have too few options , not only would those people 's lives be improved , but ours would be improved also . This is what economists call a Pareto-improving move . Income redistribution will make everyone better off -- not just poor people -- because of how all this excess choice plagues us . So to conclude . You 're supposed to read this cartoon , and , being a sophisticated person , say , " Ah ! What does this fish know ? You know nothing is possible in this fishbowl . " Impoverished imagination , a myopic view of the world -- and that 's the way I read it at first . The more I thought about it , however , the more I came to the view that this fish knows something . Because the truth of the matter is that if you shatter the fishbowl so that everything is possible , you do n't have freedom . You have paralysis . If you shatter this fishbowl so that everything is possible , you decrease satisfaction . You increase paralysis , and you decrease satisfaction . Everybody needs a fishbowl . This one is almost certainly too limited -- perhaps even for the fish , certainly for us . But the absence of some metaphorical fishbowl is a recipe for misery , and , I suspect , disaster . Thank you very much . ( Applause ) \ No newline at end of file
