Sarah Silverman vs. TED

When I first discovered the TED talks, I thought I’d found a great source of cutting edge, innovative intellectual stimulation. But the more of them I watch, the more I’m starting to think that it tends to represent a rather narrow and conventional view. I really started to wonder where they are coming from when they showed a rather trivial presentation by professional debunker Amazing Randi.

This video shows what happened when TED invited controversial comic Sarah Silverman to speak. Predictably enough, she offended many people, including the organizer of the conference. How smart can these people really be if they were surprised when Sarah Silverman said something politically incorrect?

What’s especially annoying is that I could not even find the original talk given by Sarah, while TED routinely posts all of their talks on their website. The video below is an interview by Bill Maher about the TED incident.

While I’m sure there are still some positive things about TED –with all of the hundreds of talks they organize every year some of it has to be good!– my overall estimation of them is steadily declining.