TEDxperiments: creating scientific knowledge in TEDx | Gerry Garbulsky | TEDxRíodelaPlataED

This talk is a TEDx event organized independently from the TED conferences.

TEDxperiments is an initiative that brings game and science together. In TEDxRíodelaPlata we have the goal of making TEDx events also a space for the creation of knowledge, where each attendee can discover by their own experience. In TEDx events, a select group of speakers spread their ideas to a massive and enthusiastic audience. Gerry Garbulsky is TEDxRíodelaPlata organizer, TEDx Ambassador for South America, columnist at the radio show "Basta de Todo" and founder of "El Mundo de las Ideas". Gerry holds a degree in Physics (UBA) and a Ph.D. in Materials Science (MIT). For 13 years he was a consultant at BCG on issues of business strategy in different countries.

You have just been subjected
to a scientific experiment.

Ha, ha, ha!

We are trying to pose a question
and the question here was:

What is the best strategy
to solve this kind of problems?

You all solved two problems,
on sheet number 1 and 3,

but different things happened
for each of you on sheet 2.

We offered some of you a possible strategy
to solve this kind of problems.

We told you how you can
think this problem.

We asked others to think
how they solved the first problem.

To reflect: what methodology did you use?
How did you face the problem?

To the third group among you
we asked you to just relax,

to close your eyes, breathe,
and calm down for a while.

And then, you all solved
the second problem.

The question we want to answer is:

which of these 3 groups was better
at solving the second problem?

Which of these three possible strategies
is better to solve these problems.

Isn't it great?

(Laughter)

I love this.

(Applause)

Imagine teachers, with all that passion,

that energy, that wisdom, and experience,

if we could provide them
with a scientific view

of what works and what doesn't.

Which things work better than others.

And it's not that difficult,
we just did it in 10 minutes.

It's going to take us a couple
of weeks to process all this,

but it wasn't that long.

We hypothesize which may be the answer.

Our hypothesis is that perhaps

to reflect on how we solved
the problem the first time,

can make us better to solve
a similar problem the second time.

But the truth is, the answer is:
we do not know.

And that is what's great about
this type of scientific experiments.

It let us ask questions on things
that are very important for us,

but for which we don't know the answer.

This is the idea of what we do.

We call it TEDxperiments,

it's something we started
two years ago in this same room,

and we already did TEDxperiments
in two TEDxRíodelaPlata events.

This is the fifth experiment we'll do,

and within a few weeks
we're going to share the results.

But let me show you...

some things that happened two years ago.

We did an experiment where we wanted
to see what was the effect

when one person tells another one

something that is important to the former,
and the latter doesn't care.

I don't know if this ever happened to you.

(Laughter)

Then we did the following: we handed them
out envelopes like we did today.

To the odd rows,
the note in the envelope said,

"You are going to tell a story
that is important in your lives."

While the even rows were instructed,

"You will listen," but not the same way
to everyone like today.

Some had to pay a lot of attention,

not to take their eyes off the person.

The others were asked
to totally ignore them,

to check their cellphones,
to do other things, etc.

And after that we asked questions.

"What did you feel?"
"About your own story?"

"How's your self-esteem?" and such things.

And amazing things happened.

In particular, around that row,
there was a lady sitting.

She attended the event with her daughter
and her grandchildren.

And she had to tell a story.

The person in the back row
she was telling the story to,

was a boy of 12 she didn't met before.

And his instructions were to ignore her.

She began her story passionately,

she was moved by her own history,
but this kid wasn't caring at all.

(Laughter)

He began to feel bad about himself
because he had this contradiction,

he was listening to the story
and beginning to be moved by it,

but he wanted to follow the rules as well.

The rest of the four minutes
were very uncomfortable.

She obviously didn't know
he had to follow this instruction.

She hated him, he hated himself,

the 4 minutes were over
and when we revealed what had happened,

she turned around, they hugged,
and they both started to cry.

An interesting thing of this experiment

is that of all the experiments
we did so far, it was the first one

where we found something new,

something the scientific community
didn't know about.

This is not a game,
we are creating knowledge.

And we sent it for publication.

It was just accepted in a worldwide,
top notch science magazine,

and this is the article's title
that will soon be published;

and the TEDxperiments team published it.

Let's give it to them because it is...

(Applause)

The title is a bit cryptic, right?

It's in English, so I said, well,
what if we typed it in the browser...

[Google Translator]
(Laughter)

And when I typed it in the Translator,
something like this read,

[It bothers me that you check your phone

and don't pay me attention
when I'm talking.]

(Laughter)
(Applause)

Last year, when we held our event
in October, that very, very large event,

the world's largest TEDx,

we did another experiment,
this time, with 10,000 people.

We asked all these 10,000 people
to play thumb wars in couples.

Sometimes with eyes closed,
and we'd give them different instructions.

And we wanted to test

our capacity to cooperate vs. to compete.

If we are able to cooperate or not,
when cooperation is the best strategy.

And it turns out that, in many cases,

we end up competing when it's unnecessary,

when the best for all is to collaborate.

And that also gave a result
that is being processed,

and it will probably, hopefully,
become another article

that will contribute to human knowledge.

But here so far, we were keeping the data.

Now we decided to launch this.

And the TEDxperiments website
went online today.

The idea of this site is to make public

the results of all the experiments
we did so far.

Of the 4 we did until yesterday,
3 were already uploaded,

the fourth will be uploaded there soon.

And you can see it in:
tedxriodelaplata.org/tedxperiments

today when you come back home.

This fills me with joy
because we believe that in these events

is good to come and listen
to ideas and learn;

maybe sometimes we have a new idea
when we listen to other ideas.

But given the amazing community we are,

why not also create new knowledge?

Knowledge that is relevant,
in this case for education;

for how we communicate and how we relate.

I invite you all to have
a critical eye, to ask questions,

and to try to validate them
in a way they become irrefutable.

So they can help others learn
and teach in a different way.

Thank you.

(Applause)