A lot of the most important, challenging & unresolved problems in the modern era are extremely complex. It's easy to appear to solve them quickly in a superficial fast way. But to really solve them we need to address them properly, to understand the fundamentals on which they have formed, often the errors of human circuitry and the slow aggregation of a legacy of awful decisions. We are in a weird modern era where the rigorous questions required to reveal the foundations more unwelcome than ever. Where the scrutiny and soul searching needed to provide clarity are deemed hostile. When debate involves questions, probing and testing viewpoints that are these days career-ending ( both if taken out of context, and increasingly in context) despite their utterly noble intentions. We need a lot more scrutiny, we need powerful, honest critical thinking. We need debate, nuance, to be comfortable operating near points of huge contention. We need sophisticated fact-based discussion with near impunity. Not because it's a sign of an advanced liberal tolerant world with freedom of speech, but because it's how we REALLY understand and then start to address & then solve the big issues today. We are doing ourselves a huge disservice. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. …see more