What I Believe, and My Favorite TED Talks

Collective intelligence is on the very top of my list of beliefs, although I am using creativity and diversity to introduce this concept here. It is a shared intelligence, as opposed to individual intelligence, that emerges from a group of individuals through various interactions to maximize the idea pool of the group while enhancing the knowledge base of individuals. What predicts collective intelligence? Is it the intelligence of individual group members? Surprise: research has shown that social sensitivity is the only significant predictor of collective intelligence.² This brings me to my next point: social capital.

Indeed, both the education system and the corporate world seem to still be dominated by “the super chicken model,” as shared by Margaret Heffernan in this talk. When it comes to group performance, it is not about the individuals, but the interconnectedness of these individuals in the social network. Social capital refers to the collective value from the relationships in social networks. In the context of education, schools are the nurturing environment for social capital, which has been proven to attribute to lower dropout rate and higher performance. OK, I know I am starting to sound like an academic, but trust me, you have to hear about the chicken experiment on productivity in the first minute of this talk, if not anything else!

I have to admit that I do not have a specific TED talk that speaks the full volume of this point. In fact, the findings from the longest study on happiness is a testimony for the effects of social capital discussed above. People with quality relationships with families, friends and communities are happier, healthier, sharper, and live longer. So I have to back myself up with an old article and a new book. On living in the moment, researchers have found that people are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is and that doing so typically makes them unhappy.³ On the pursuit of meaning, researchers have identified the defining features of a meaningful life as connecting and contributing to something beyond the self, which again is related to the collective.

Got grit? Gotta love the new slogan on the Yorkshire Academy’s cap! Many parents probably have read the book recommended by Ms. Swinbank: How Children Succeed.⁴ This hot word can be traced back to an old concept: deliberate practice. Most of us are familiar with the 10,000-hour rule.⁵ However, what matters is not just the volume of practice, but the quality of the practice.⁶ But this should be done only if one has accomplished the practice on being a good human being. Confucius said, “A youth should be filial at home and fraternal abroad. He should be earnest in deeds and truthful in words. He should overflow in love to all, and cultivate the friendship of the good. When he has effort to spare (after the performance of these above), then he should study the literature.”