Ted Talks aim, it seems, to provide some incredibly deep novel insight about the world in a presentation of scintillating wit and crystalline clarity, that can be assimilated by anyone with even the most modest intellectual aspirations and only ten or fifteen minutes to spare.
In fact, incredibly deep and novel insights, or novel insights of any kind at all, tend to be rather few and far between. Moreover, the most important novel insights are often the product of highly specialized research in arcane fields such as quantum mechanics, neurophysiology or hominid paleontology in Northwest China, topics that are not immediately accessible to the casual Web browser. Thus, TED Talks tend to fall short of expectation. Indeed, some amount to nothing more than
hifalutin bunk, while others make claims that go far beyond, or which contradict, the evidence.