"The Paradox of Choice" has a couple good insights, especially for entrepreneurs selling, but I think it misses one very important thing.<p>Yes, the unknowledgeable shopper will feel overwhelmed if you ask them what spice you want to buy out of 40 different spices, but the world would be much worse if there was a mandate that you could only buy pepper and garlic.<p>It would be easier for the unskilled cook, but serious chefs would have their ability severely curtailed.<p>Likewise, I think a lot of the "paradox of choice" applications evolve into tyranny - force simpliciy, because hey, that's great for people! All these choices confuse people! It's true, yes, that 80% to 90% of people don't want more choice and the choice is a hardship for them. But removing choice from that last 10 to 20% that are educated on the tradeoffs is really, really, really bad.<p>There's a fundamental flaw with the whole premise of paradox of choice - it ignores that there are people for whom a wide variety of choices is <i>incredibly</i> valuable and important. Encouraging restricting choices (especially by force! yuck!) makes things easier for most people, but destroys a lot of potential for amazing creations as well.
I've been seeing more and more of these "best _____" questions on Quora and I can't help thinking it doesn't really fit the Quora mold very well. I emailed them asking that they implement a feature making it easier for people to create lists. The problem right now is that if I post 5 suggestions, and someone votes up my answer because they agree with one of those 5, that information is blurred. It should split those suggestions into 5 separately votable answers.<p>That said, I think that one of the biggest entrepreneurial opportunities on the web is recommendation of content. I sometimes think about how much stuff there is to experience, from books to movies to music, and it depresses me that I'll only ever be able to enjoy a tiny, tiny fraction of it all before I die. With that in mind, I'd like to know I'm experiencing the best this world has to offer. It's a complicated problem, but I have my wallet ready for the person who solves it.
FYI, I made this convenient scrape of ted.com, providing direct download links and SRT subtitles for every talk.<p><a href="http://www.the-geek.org/ted/" rel="nofollow">http://www.the-geek.org/ted/</a>
I am not sure if I can watch TED again, after reading the article on HN about how TED seems to run, its appeal is lost.<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268336" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268336</a>
Here are two that stick out in my mind almost immediately when I think of inspiring overall TED talks:<p>Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_...</a><p>William Kamkwamba on building a windmill<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_windmill.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_win...</a>
What is the use of this question without context? You could check the ratings/stats on TED.com and pick what is most popular. Quora is slightly different demographics than general TED audience, but is this minor difference worth asking such a question? I don't think so.
Everyone has an opinion and everyone wants to differentiate his answer which in turn, given enough answers (700 roughly) all the talks turn to be 'must-see'. Quora become boring with these subjective questions.<p>anyway here is my answer a year ago : <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=443008" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=443008</a>
List of talks for entrepreneurs: <a href="http://theeducatedentrepreneur.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/10-ted-talks-for-entrepreneurs/" rel="nofollow">http://theeducatedentrepreneur.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/10-t...</a>
Here's a similar HN discussion awhile back: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442022" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442022</a>
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1324937" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1324937</a> - sorted list of TED talks by @igrigorik
How can a source on knowledge like TED, thriving conferences that are entertaining and full of knowledge, be unknown by so many people. I mean they have access on TV to so many brain melting content, but a source of knowledge and idea like TED, is burried on the internet.... What a world !