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Imagination: It’s Not What You Think. It’s How You Think | Charles Faulkner | TEDxIIT
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- Published on Jul 31, 2017
- Imagination is not what you think. It’s how you think. Cognitive research reveals that images, metaphors and stories are the basis of our mental operating system: the origin of our intuitions and our irrationality. Counterintuitively, more accurate insights do not come from increasing information or reason, but educating our imagination.
Charles Faulkner is an independent researcher on language and its effects on communication, decision-making and change. He has worked in the Silicon Valley, ‘the City’ of London and 3M, HP, IBM, HSBC and Cargill. His decision-making work is featured in books including The New Market Wizards. His popular works include the audio programs: The New Technology of Achievement, Success Mastery, and Creating Irresistible Influence. His original work on metaphoric communication and change is documented in three programs. He has lectured in 15 countries including at the University of Chicago, Columbia College NYC, the Sorbonne, and London School of Economics.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
“We do not see the world the way it is, we see the world according to our instruments.” So true!
@Nowand Then
Yes. You are correct. This lecturer is incorrect. His arguments actually are as fallacious as you think.
You saw right through his word salad. I have a formal education in philosophy, logic, and syllogistic structure.
The flaw you are referring to is two fold.
A presuppositional fallacy (pre-assuming the truth of that which you attempt to demonstrate)
A false equivocation fallacy (equation of two logically negating ideas or terms in order to produce a seemingly valid conclusion)
Yeah, but its not.
We see the world way our mental faculties and schemas are
@Nowand Then as long as you take into consideration the whole of reality, the energies that are present but not observable by senses. Like gravity. We know it's there. We can only perceive 10% of the light spectrum.
@ Always Optimistic - I add a comment to yours, because, as he made this statement I saw a bit of a flaw. In that it is never, (and I take note that I use an absolute, which is generally very bad),
a good practice to make a statement with a flaw in it because of possible errors in the following thoughts going forward.
So, that’s the thought.
“We do not see the world, “necessarily”, the way it is, we see the world according to our instruments.”
I think we have to operate on the assumption that the world is a certain way whether we can discover it or not.
Therefore it is possible to see the world the way it is.
I’m certain we’ll be better off going with logic, reason and the scientific method.
Seems unlikely we’ll ever be certain of everything.
But it is what it is.
One of the smartest people I've had the pleasure of working with. Also one of the nicest. An endless supply of useful information that helps personally and professionally.
He's one of those knowlegeable person all over the world.
Very Useful
how's the pay?
Michael Carter So wonderful your comment of your experience & your kindness in sharing it.
I had to come back and comment here that this TED talk has got to be one of the best explanations of sympathetic magic and imagination I've ever heard. It was very clear... Mid way I began to experience a sense of synchronicity with everything said and all things around me...
Imagination leads. Our realities are affected by words and by our perceptions, thus affect our judgment. This is profound. In the dance between technology and imagination, imagination ultimately leads. Thanks!
@Tomas Zazach Yeah, and this is where science will never be able to find the real truth. because they cannot imagine that things that are not measurable with some instruments (instruments measure forces) can exist. So everytime when they try to find explanations for some thing, they blend out whole universes of other possibilities. That makes sense methodically, but arguing that the scientific state of knowledge about anything does even closely resemble the "truth" without saying that thare are endless other possible truths which were systematically not given credit / energy to investigate is just lying/conspiracy. I work at a tech company and it is sad to see fellow students not being even able to imagine that the universe/life is more than they can capture and rationalize with their instruments. science is mostly blind by purpose, but it pretends to see clearly.
@Stevie Lynn YW. We are both the captor and liberator of ourselves.
Two years since, the information in this talk, I feel more and more as true. In a sense, we make our own world by what we think of it, at least within the limits of what we have seen or learned or experienced and most importantly what we are willing to go for as far as possible and beyond with imagination. Destiny is our own making. Thanks.
Many Thanks Jay and Tomas Z.!! I come from a state where there isn't much of a boundary with politics and religion. Religion has dominated, split my kids up and held back so many people. We are taught to listen, follow, obey and study (within the realm of the teachings)!! I feel there are just robots all around me and for me to be the divergent one has cost me. However the awakening once I was free and able to Imagine is the greatest gift !
...and this is where cult, religions and Gurù take great advantage on week people😫
This is one of the better and simpler Ted Talks I’ve had the pleasure of watching. 🥰 I Love this breakdown of how our imagination is influencing us all the time even when we’re convinced it’s “reality!”
What a great tedtalk. Lots of golden nuggets in this talk. Keep expanding our imagination!
As a Math & English Phrasal Verb mastery tutor to children of affluent parents in Moscow, Russia Charles Faulkners 17 minute TED Talk will help me be a better teacher today than I was before I listened to his talk. I save and review all TED Talks I listen to and look forward to researching his verbal footnotes that are unfamiliar to me now but not for much longer. I teach English ojectively like I taught statistics on a graduate school fellowship at Villanova Univ. Now I will consciously add imagination to my teaching methods. Many thanks Charles Faulkner.
By the way it's amazing when you meet a person in life who can see things you see and you both share the same view, the things others do not see .
You have to explore and be courageous enough to express your creative energy. This creative energy comes to us unsettled, wild - as an unknown input which we have to channel to this world in the most "understandable" way for everyone. Creators are translators.
Creators are translators, they translate their creativity for their respective audience
takeaway I suppose is rather than being 100% certain about your knowledge, adopt a "what's possible" view using your imagination to make your knowledge better, which can ultimately benefit you and the world in pursuit of evolution
Charles Faulkner - inspiring and motivating to make more imagination become reality! Awesome
Yea,,agreeee. With you
Just fantastic. Absolute insight into the progressive dance of imagination and knowledge. "The absence of something is the presence of something," as the rationale for incorporating the concept of zero into our world view. Of course. I want to hear more of what he thinks.
Such an amazing and a thought inspiring speech. However, I would like to correct what he stated about 0 being invented by Fibonacci first and other civilisations did not. Firstly, the concept of 0 or nothingness originated in early Mayan Mesopotamia. Later it was solidified separately by an Indian Astronomer by the name Aryabhata in India. Later the notation or 0 was invented by another astronomer Brahmagupta.
Wow this is actually very profound. My second time watching this video with a new understanding of reality and the words still Ring true. This is such a great message
This was a awesome TedX Talk!! Faulkner's a great presenter, and really make his subject matter interesting.
Truly "Last the best of all" ! I have listened to so many of these about Imagination or power of intention, that I was about done. This man is by far the best Ted Talk Ive heard and I've now shared with many. Thank You Charles Faulkner !!
This is an exceedingly accessible rationale for encouraging leaders and their teams to learn about mindset development and practice metacognition. Outstanding. Thank you.
What a brilliant talk! Love it!
Interestingly humble explanation of how magical and invested our world is..
We are the creators of our future through our imagination,,just look back to all the impossibilities and where we are now,,imagination is like a seed that needs cultivation,,peace,,
This dude is smart, I've saved the talk to listen and listen again.
Thanks Charles Faulkner.
Imagination is a highly effective weapon
Only great people really saw that in it
@ياسر موفق - Imagine if logic, reason and evidence guided ones thinking.
If those thinkers saw an error in others and wanted to correct it; I don’t think they would describe their efforts to correct it as a weapon.
Nor would they want to be called great.
Have I misinterpreted your cryptic comment?
Power of imagination ! Amazing great inspiring story . Thank you, bless you, All your dreams come true.
I love the up to date information and relevant topics that Ted talks present. These topics are usually, very well researched, and current. I appreciate the wide diversity of topics, that I otherwise, may not have learned about, or understood as well. What a way to learn, and benefit, from the many hours of research + study, that somebody else put in, to understand these different areas considered, even some questions we all wonder, being proven, by use of experiments...
Thank you for making Ted talks available to everyone, free of charge. This contribution to humanity is very much appreciated.
Maggs
Thank you so much . I get migraine headaches , which are the bane of all dreamers who suffer with them . I needed to remember to not take the mental ability to imagine for granted .
Great talk .
Everything you do -
Everything you encounter -
Everything you experience -
------- is changing your brain --------
Had to listen twice to understand some stuff.
Some intriguing ideas.
Imagination vs real. Did not expect how the topic could be expanded so much.
I wonder how psychedelic influence fits into this subject. With them, how you perceive and maybe imagine the world is completely different. You realize how you normally see (without influence) is only one way of perceiving, is a very very useful, but not actually reality. Just like how flys and butterflies see in a different way that is useful for them, but it’s not the same as reality for them either. I shrugged off and forgot this thought back then and it came back just now from this talk.
Maybe all forms of perception are technically reality? My brain doesn’t want to think or figure out how to make these things make sense together 😅. Too much work.
Astounding and comforting information/wisdom...Wow, thank you!
This helps me to understand myself much better. I have a rich imagination about who and what I am. Very enlightening speech.
I love the up to date information and relevant topics that Ted talks present. These topics are usually, very well researched, and current. I appreciate the wide diversity of topics, that I otherwise, may not have learned about, or understood as well. What a way to learn, and benefit, from the many hours of research + study, that somebody else put in, to understand these different areas considered, even some questions we all wonder, being proven, by use of experiments...
Thank you for making Ted talks available to everyone, free of charge. This contribution to humanity is very much appreciated.
Maggs
The speech was beyond imagination!
I didn't know it takes a whole year to prep for this ted talks. Nobody is perfect yo .. this takes polishing from a group of ted leaders and peers. Brilliant talk
Gracias por compartir. A partir de la imaginación podemos crear lo que se desea ver,tener y experimentar.interesante tema.
Thank you for such an interesting and useful talk.
Excellent way to explain imagination what how we think
Situated between perceptions& our thoughts
4:34 "Some surface quality is going to reflect some inner essence."
Love this
Wow... It is a wonderful lecture...👍🏻
I was blown away as soon as he related the analogy between our assuming the identity of an unknown object to how we assume/judge the personalities of strangers around us....[07:00 min] Also explaining the role of language playing a major part in our perception of the world was amazing....
"imagination and knowledge are complementry. it's like they're in an endless dance in which imagination leads the knowledge"
This guy is a pioneer on what will lead to scientifically induced satori experiences
It seems like an endless dance, where imagination leads wow goose bumps all over me
He speaks and explains amazingly.
With our five senses, we perceive the world around us. We apply our given language to persons places or things with words that are used to define them, but in the process, we limit our experience by our limited perception of what these words mean to us. If we could transcend this barrier, we could open ourselves up to an entire new experience of the world around us, thereby, creating a better world for ourselves and others. That's my take on it anyways. It's the best I can come up with at 12:30 am. Excellent talk though - a real eye opener.
Thank you Dr Leaf. I am a South African, living in England. So proud of you. Went on a Mindpower course with John Kehoe in SA - it changed my life!
4:24 judge people by the clothing
5:25 like produces like
7:01 we think attractive people are honest
13:21 words are different from reality
“Right or wrong, perception is truth.”
Tom Campbell might have borrowed from that one to explain the nuance of subjective reality !
"In the world of your subjective consciousness, if it's not your experience, it cannot be your truth"
1+2 this isn't true
@Phoenix Also probably one of the most revealing ways to show that unlimited realities exist. Everyone is being their own reality of co-existence.
Exactly, put it another way .... Each person's perception , awareness is the truth 💝💝💝🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️
@Natural Technologist Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.
Imagine being able to pay attention while watching this and memorizing the whole ted talk just by watching it once...
Tools expand our imaginations. The more we can do the more we can imagine
In Hungarian it is just encoded into the language...
Kép - picture, image
Képez - educates
Képzés - education
Képesség - ability
Képzelet - imagination
Képtelen - Not able (to do something)
Képtelenség - something that is impossible
Wow! The speakers has really motivated and inspired me to go on with life and being always in a state of thankfullness.😎😎😊☺
“We do not see the world the way it is.
We see the world as our instruments allow.”
Excellent talk. Thank you.
Love it.. Much love & gratitude for sharing.. God bless..
What a great talk💚💚
“Imagination is more important than knowledge”. (Albert Einstein)
Ted talks are highly useful.
are they selective
who should talk
Yes man and for me they are useful twice, infact actually i use them to learn and improve my english
Yes but not at all. For example, Pseudoscientists speakers are there
I’m only a kid and I love ted talks
@djdom43 no he meant a child
when you say kid, do you mean goat baby?
Same here! But no one knew other than my sis
Dylan the Bookworm from my uni perspective I’m only a kid too!
@Connor mclean you too hahahahahahahahaha
The quest for knowledge will be an endless one and that's amazing
Beautifully explained !!! This is really Great !
If we see Venus as a Star from Earth, Are we also seen as a Star from far away planets ? I wonder how do we twinkle, how are we doing on electro-magnetic smog and how would this affect our twinkling 8)
@Sherif El Kadi Conative therapy guides people to examine how they think and how that affects how they feel about themselves and others. Arrowsmith-Youg's therapeutic methods address areas in the brain where individuals have conative deficits, that is the parts of the brain not functioning well. She has discovered exercizes that strengthen these weeknesses so people can function normally, despite 30yrs of success her results are not widely given credit in the scientific community.
@Rodney Paterson ok... thx for the info
It is the air that makes the stars twinkle.
Great & deep statement.
Thanks, it's really thought provocations
Powerful Food For Thought, Deployed Worldwide Through My Deep Learning AI Research Library… Thank You
it is very useful information we can apply it in different scenario
05:03 Sympathetic Magic
05:18 The Law of Similarity
15:24 Imagination is more important then knowledge
Just great! Thank you for sharing
One of the best talks ever!
Beautiful talk.
Awesome, amazing, just perfect!!!
I like TED talk by which I discovered something new to add and develop my knowledge and personality
Great talk!!
Thanks for the upload. An interesting pot-pourri of many ideas which could do with depth-charging.
I like how he included "if it looks and quacks like a duck it's a duck" one of the most false statements ever made when applied to human beings
@Fred Flintstone Yes! From my understanding all humans do this on a subconscious level
@tom.k Hello tom.k .. seems it's taken me a few minutes to get what he was getting at with the duck reference ... I suppose that in our need to understand the world around us we are using past observations , experiences, judgements to fill in the gaps... in fact, I was listening to something about eye-witness testimony the other day and people will often swear that they saw X when it was in fact Y..
They use this in medicine. Exept they talk about horses and zebras. If it looks like a horse... But then, in rare cases, it is actually a zebra.
@Aalok Golatkar it wasnt a complaint. It was actually a praise of the speaker for pointing out the wrongness of the quote. I mean that the quote is fake because as humans we make many cognitive and perceptual errors. That's what I meant, you misinterpreted it
@tom.k all the comments were about what was good about the talk. Yours was the only one complaining. I thought that was very thankless for a something that you had the option of shutting off & you weren't forced to pay for.
The duck will not do otherwise but quack under normal circumstances, so l was wondering what your thought process was, what your comment was motivated by?
Omg this speaks my mind , mind blowing
For Indians who are wondering whether it is IIT Mumbai or Bangalore or anything else, Its Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
sailesh ram thank you!! Haha
“Words evoke experiences, not realities.”
Hhhh
8hhhh
Hhuhhhhhuhuhhh
😊
Thank you ...👏👏👏👏
Very well presented
Imagination is the ability to change the future before anyone else thinks of it.
That was POWERFUL!
I did enjoy that , it is what I attempt to get across to young family members.There is something though! Because I'm using my smart phone the writing on one of the small was too small for me to see, could anyone out there please tell me what it said on the jar that was not salt.🤔🤔🤔
Awesome speech
It's a very fantastic video!
WOW JUST WOW, KNOWLEDGE IS IMAGINATION
Lovely talk!!!
The purpose of education is to enable us refine our imagination
It is marvelous to hear what you believe to be truth or at least on our way to understand, what the truth is. From someone so eloquent and knowledgeable. Fantastic speech.
A string of pearls. Thank you.
Very good and knowledgeable Sir,
wow, this is so fantastic
uncertainty is the best part of life!!!!
Liliana Rovegno I wonder if a guy kidnapped and left in a small cell in Syria would agree with that statement
Magnifique!
Wow. This is pure Alchemical Gold. I desperately needed to hear this, thank you so much.
We should start thinking of science as magic again.
What you think is POSSESSIVE. How you think is STRATEGIC. What you think is THE EFFECT. HOW You think is the CAUSE.
Allah loves all of you ❤️🌿 death is not something scary. It’s a beautiful transition between 2 worlds. I wish all good souls go to Heaven. Doesn’t matter what your faith is. Just believe in One God and don’t verbally or physically hurt anyone and you will be okay. Signed by; a beautiful soul. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
This is verry inspired me and give a energy to dream come true
Too good 👍
It helps me a lot
Charles Faulkner - Brilliant
Just wonderful ...
Really interesting. An eye opener. 👁
Seeing the world according to our instruments and through the lens of group agreement is why new discoveries may take decades to become mainstream despite the results and definitive scientific proof, this indicates that the vast majority of Ph.D.'s are not actively cognizant of this.
Play in new ways and watch it happen!!! 😍😍😍🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️