I would like you to reflect on E.O. Wilson's main message during the TedTalk we watched in class. Please come up with one word that you believe best describes the main idea he tried to convey during this talk. Support your rationale for using this word with examples given from the talk.
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The one word that would best describe the main idea Mr. Wilson is trying to convey is to explore. There are so many species of bacteria and animals that we have not yet found and we are destroying them without knowing their existence. Humans are using "HIPPO"to destroy those innocent species. We as human beings know little about biodiversity. We need to explore and expand our knowledge on it. In the Global Environmental Issues class, we are starting to learn about biodiversity. We learned that one thing is linked to another, so if you take out one thing, the other thing will be affected.
Building an Encyclopedia of Life is a really great idea and we should work on it!
I would also like to choose "explore" as the word that Mr. Wilson is trying to communicate to us.
Ignorance in a way, is a very scary thing because we sometimes simply do not know anything, and we destroy the eco systems unconsciously. Mr. Wilson said that there are millions speies of bacteria are all unknown, and we do not knwo what are they all doing, but we all rely on those small organisms to live. Therefore Mr. Wilson is trying to call on humans to explore outside of the box. If we can explore as much as we can about these organisms, we would appreciate what out there.
I want to link this with Global Environmental Issues's discussion. I think that there are a cause and effect to everything. We must understand the cause and effects (which is also helping to build the encyclopedia of life) of things in order to fix the problem or solve the unknown questions.
"The Encyclopedia of Life" to me, means the whole life cycle on Earth. The word "Encyclopedia" was originally from French, it basically means a man wish wisdom. However, if you twist the word a bit, and put it with the word "life" it can mean something like the knowledge of "life". What is the "knowledge of life"? It can mean things such as the different life forms, different ways of living, different behavior...etc, which are basically all tie into life cycle. However, when any kind of creatures decreases, it slowly changes the chain, and might break the chain if it keeps decreasing, which is known as the biodiversity. According to E. O. Wilson, the problem now is that we only fully understand about 16% of all the creatures on Earth, today, and we are already facing the problem of biodiversity. There is just too much for us to explore on Earth, but before we could even study them, most of them are already in danger of extinction. E. O. Wilson's dream, is perhaps to make a speech that lets us to appreciate and to be aware of this situation, which is already bad enough, hopefully it does not get worse in the future.
The word I chose to explain the video is "selfish". This video makes me realized how unimportant I am, and how enormous this universe is. We thought we understand pretty much about this universe, however, Mr. Wilson mentioned that there are still millions species of bacterias we haven't discovered yet. There are other creatures live in this universe, but there is a selfish "small" group of creatures (human) damaged other creatures' living space just for their own conveniences.
Also, I want to tied the video with Mr. Marour's class. Everything in the universe ties together. One thing changed will affect other parts of the universe. If we want to solve the problem of something, we can follow the cause of the issue and solve it in order to find another cause. It's like trying to find some treasure. We use clues to find clues and finally, we will find the treasure, which is the solution of everything.
For me, E.O. Wilson's speech is trying to convince us to simply understand the species in our planet a little more. He stated that we humans only knew approximately 16% of the species with in a that we share this world with. And without knowing them, we are already pushing them into extinction. The extinction of these species doesn't only lead to biodiversity, it also disturb the balance of life cycle. E.O. Wilson stated that if all insects have been wiped out, the rest of the world will disappear with in a few months! He shocked me again when he said that every tone of soil contend 4 millions of bacterias ALL UNKNOWN. I believe Wilson want us students to pay more attentions to these species and try to build this encyclopedia of life for our generation or the next to learn and appreciate.
The word I think could best describe what E.O.Wilson's ideas are, is "awareness". Most of us don't realize how important each and every individual is in this world. Without any type of creature, no matter how small that kind of creature are, will effect the entire world.
The one word that can summarize and connect all the ideas communicated in the talk is "Help". E.O. Wilson's speech was a plea for help, he felt that the tumultuous task of ecological preservation would be far too great an endeavor for any single person to undertake. He was calling for help, to make this a collaborative effort by everyone (not only scientists) around the world. He used countless examples of our sheer ignorance of biodiversity, as well as examples of our thoughtless destruction of species (not to mention the ecosystem as a whole). What struck me was how strongly the concept of "Consilience" had affected Wilson's thinking. Consilience, when he first coined the term, was used to describe the unity of knowledge, the harmonious coming-together of scientific evidence from a wide range of fields to verify a concept. Wilson seemed to use the concept of consilience again during the talk, but with a slight alteration. Bioconsilience, or Ecoconsilience would be an accurate description of E.O. Wilson's message. He wanted to stress the fact that all life relies on life, that all life, us included, is inextricably intertwined, that the destruction of a single branch of life could set off a calamitous chain-effect, resulting in disastrous consequences for the biosphere. This is where HIPPO comes in, HIPPO is a prime example of our destruction of other species for temporary self interest. Ignorance is the central problem, while we remain ignorant of the bioconsilience of live on earth, we cannot begin to solve the problem of HIPPO. His talk was to raise awareness, to force people to understand the problem we all face, and to demonstrate that we are just another species, we will face the disastrous consequences that other life forms are now facing sooner or later, and that we must begin to act now, to preserve biodiversity, not only for other species, but for ourselves as well. Our actions now, HIPPO, are leading us into a downward spiral of ecological destruction that none of us will crawl out of, it is crucial that we act now to preserve biodiversity, not only for our species, but for all life on Earth.
blindness
This is sarcastic that creature species are get less and less. When I was age 8 I ask my dad “Is human an animal?” He said “human is human is not a animal.” I replied “why human can stand out and not be animal?” He answered “human is great and make decision for everything.” This TED talk had reminded me this conversation. I felt sad and helpless about this human selfishness. I love those animal and science for many years. I can not stand humans' nonsense. These animal had live thousand million years and did not distinct. This is a miracle for nature science. Once when I in the church prayed I thought a funny idea. Everyone in world is in church praying for good life. Why they don’t pray animal and nature of science have good life. God is being fair. Human had enough good life. Human is blindfold our self not seen we are in this ecosystem. The pollution that human made will always back to human and same as the distinct creature on earth human will get the worst of it because we eat and use everything we are top one in the ecosystem pyramid. This is not the only affect that will come. As what EO Wilson said discovery of new creature will stop. Creature distinction will faster than we discover. In order of people stop discovering and creature increase their speed to distinct people in future can only study creatures on book. And this human’s pursuit of happiness won’t stop till their satisfied. In human’s selfishness there is no success. Only you look back and feel the happiness, not blindfold our self and look broader in future.
I couldn't choose between these two words that can be considered antonyms; knowledge and ignorance. I seriously don't know which is greater. There are undoubtedly things we are doing (and that we're aware of) that's destroying biodiversity such as producing more greenhouse gasses. But as Wilson mentioned there are a lot of things we don't know (way more than what we do know), and we're destroying something without even knowing what that "thing" is. Personally I hate insects, and this topic reminded me of a question I often repeat to myself whenever I encounter a nasty situation with a bug of some kind. What if all ants could just die? What if flies didn't exist?! I guess that just wouldn't work. Without any of them or any other small (but important) organisms, we animals wouldn't exist.
I’m going to start out by repeating E.O Wilson’s goal, which is stated at the very end of the video clip. “I wish we will work together to help create the key tools needed to inspire preservation of earth’s biodiversity.” By this Wilson is referring to The Encyclopedia of Life. I think the word, Cooperation, would best describe Wilson’s message in this video. It isn’t known to many but there are a million trillion insects and other small creatures inhabiting our planet. I think it is incredible to think about what would happen to us if we were to wipe out the insects alone. Within a few months the world as we know it today would be almost completely gone. A lot of people, including myself obviously haven’t really taken time to think about how important these insects are to help keep us at the stage we’re at. Everything in our ecosystem is interlocked and if something happens to be removed it would cause a colossal chain reaction for the worse. Us humans tend to have this way of avoiding or ignoring what is actually happening around us. I believe Wilson is crying out for help because this task he is trying to accomplish is too much of an endeavor for one individual to partake. We need to create awareness on this issue and really take it home. I know now that I will think twice before smashing a spider or other small insect. I now know the importance of each and every living thing on this earth. We all play a role some way or another. Us humans tend to forget this. We will destroy ecosystems with great ingenuity. The human juggernaut is eroding earth’s biosphere tremendously. One of the most harmful destructions is called HIPPO. Each letter stands for one way in which we as humans destroy habitats and affect these living creatures. I was thinking earlier about my endangered animal, the Black Rhino. Over the last 30 years the population of black rhinos in Africa has dropped from more than 30,000 to only 2,550 at the latest count in 1994. Do you know why the death rate has increased dramatically and Black Rhinos are high on the endangered animal list? Humans, that’s why. These innocent animals are poached for their horns, which are then used in Far Eastern medicines. These people aren’t even using the meat! Honestly I think humans are ignorant and only think about themselves most of the time. Almost every animal that is on the endangered species list is on there because of humans. We don’t even worry about that because we are so caught up in everything that’s happening with ourselves. HIPPO is destroying our planet in ways that is unredeemable. Our biosphere needs to be properly explored and competently managed. We need to preserve biodiversity, not only for these creatures but for us as well. The whole point of E.O Wilson’s TED talk was to bring awareness of the topic and to try to get help achieving the goals he has set. It is extremely important to preserve biodiversity for all life on earth, including us. Together we can make it happen.
I think the word HIPPO can mean alot of what this Wilson guy wants to convey. You my think, " Dude, you are so uncreative, why not think of a word of your own?" , but the more i think about it, the only word that appears in my head has been the word HIPPO. This one single word, had explained almost the whole progress E.O. Wilson had tried to explain throughout the whole movie. The word HIPPO means 5 difference progresses that humans use to destroy this world.
H for Habitat distruction
I for Invasive Species
P for Pollution
P for Population expansion of humans
O for Over driving species into distiction
What does each part of this word mean?
Habitat distruction can be deforestation, or even climate changes.
Invasive Species are when animals are brought to some other place that they don't belong in, and the whole natural life cycle has been messed up.
Pollution, is for how humans have polluted our own world killing many innocent life.
The second P is for population expansion of humans, in other words over population of humans. Alot of problems may be caused due to over population, and population could be caused by other problems also.
The last and only O, is for over griving species into distinction.
Because of the way we are treating nature, alot of different species are dying out, maybe due to the unwareness we have of the world, how there are still so many creatures out there that we do not know yet.
There is one other word that really catches my attention. " Unimaginal Changes". This word means so much, it's like... you have just handed yourself over to the word to change, because you have no idea why or what these changes occur.Or maybe you have been doing one of the five steps in HIPPO, and without noticing, you had made changes towards your own homeland. The word "Unimanginal Changes" has such a powerful feeling.
Therefore we should work together and hope nothing like this would happen. No HIPPO's or "unimaginal Changes". Just a normal lifestyle that we can just relax and enjoy our time on this earth, with the reasources and the privalledged chances we have.
I believe the one crucial word that can best describes the main idea E.O Wilson tried to convey during his talk is "care". Throughout his talk, he constantly proved how ignorance of the human specie alone can lead every other species to our current situation. For instant, animal extinction, global warming, environmental issues and various disasters. E.O Wilson explained how human used HIPPO to destroy other species for our own good. Therefore, if human can start to care about what they are doing and consider the problems that they may create for other species, we can slowly reduce the problems that all life are facing because of our selfishness.
Although scientists now and then are trying hard to answer “How we know what we know?” about new things that we’ve discovered so far, we still have little knowledge and understanding about the majority of life on this planet. Which that introduced one of E.O Wilson’s goal of building the encyclopedia of life.
E.O Wilson also talked about how humans were trying to wipe out insect alone, and if that did happen, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land within a few month. His concept on how every species were linked together reminds me of the Butterfly Effect or Chaos Theory that explained how one little event can affect every other things. Therefore, it is important that we start to care about things we do and save all life on the planet.
blindness
This is a sarcastic word that conveys a message of many organism species are lessen. When I was eight years old, I ask my dad: “Is human an animal?” He answered: “human is human is not an animal.” I replied “why is human a unique group that stands out and not classified as animal?” He answered “human is great; humans make decision on everything.”
This TED talk had reminded me this conversation. I felt sad and helpless about this human selfishness. I am fascinated by those animals and the study of science realm for many years. I can not endure human’s nonsense. These animals had live thousands of million years and did not extinct and I think that is a miracle of nature science. There was one time that when I was doing my prayer in the church, I thought of a funny idea: everyone in world is in church praying for good life. Why they don’t pray for animals and the nature can have a good life? God (nature of science) is being fair. Humans already had a life that’s good enough. Us as humans are blindfolding ourselves and not seeing we are part of this eco system. We are at the most top in the eco system pyramid. But in fact, human will deserve the payoff for the pollution human made and same as the extinct creature on earth because we eat and used up everything that’s given by the nature; and this is not the only outcome. I believe what EO Wilson said about discovering and understanding of this eco system will stop creature extinction will faster than we discover.
This is a chain effect. We are creating problems to ourselves. The illusion of the wealth and good life we made is going to crash. If we want to stop global problems in the world we need to look back at past time to see what we did wrong and save earth together. Feel happy and be satisfied with what we have, not blindfold ourselves and look broader in future.
The one word that would best describe the main idea Mr. Wilson is trying to convey is to explore. There are so many species out there that we have not yet found and we are destroying them without knowing their existence. Those species are going to become extinct just because of our carelessness. Humans are using "HIPPO” to destroy those innocent species. We as human beings know little about biodiversity. We need to explore and expand our knowledge on it.
In the Global Environmental Issues class, we are starting to learn about biodiversity. We learned that there is interconnectedness between all the things. Everything is connecting to each other, so if you take one thing out, it will affect the other thing.
I learned something very valuable when I was seven. I hated bees but I liked honey. I remembered one time, I saw a bee flying near my leg, I was scared but I stepped on it and it died. I was so proud of myself that I ran home to tell my grandma. She was very disappointed in me and told me that if I kill the bees, there will be no honey. From that day on, I try not to kill other species on purpose.
Building an Encyclopedia of Life is very important right now because we can explore many new species and know what the effects are when we kill them.
As for me, the one word that can best describe main ideas of E.O Wilson is knowledge. While his talking, he proved lots of things around of human. Such as, some virus, Global issues and animal extinction. the reason i choose this words is that, almost every person in the earth, they know something problems of our life and also they knows what things good and bad although, they know how to make decrease of those number of problems too. We all have knowledge of our problems on our society.
Although, E.O Wilson shows some video clips about our life, like how humans, insects, animals...Etc
Things born or grow. It means, each of these things are growing and finally we all meat together.
Same as idea, when some knowledge is coming out more and more it makes encyclopedia of life, although we can solve some problems for our future,for our generations and for our plannet.
I want to expand my opinion by making parallel opinion to the global environmental issue's class. We are talking about sustainability--- It is the resources that the earth are able to support our life and also for the next generation. It is all about the relation of "now" and "future".
If we take recent years as "future", then what is the "now"? In my point of view, the "now" may refer to the period when industrial revolution began.
Since that period, the world become dramatically civilized. Humans began to think that we dominates the world, and even the nature. Such mind set is making humans to neglect the importance of the balance of this whole natural environment. This then leads to ignorances of what's going on in this world.
Although it may seem too late to build the encyclopedia of life and to explore what's out there starting now, but if we don't even try to step out the first step, then we'll be living in total ignorance and cause more harm for future generations.
I think after watching E.O. Wilson’s speech, the word “warning” trucked my mind. Mr. Wilson showed me the ignorance of human’s behavior toward other species which inhabit in our planet. E.O. Wilson stated that we are using HIPPO to destroy innocent creatures for our own benefits. He warned us with many good examples. He told us about the interconnectedness we have with insects. If one day humans destroyed all insects, the cycle between the two will break and all human been will be gone within a few months. Although this might seen forever because of the mass amount of insects that is still alive, but studies tells us that over the last 600 years we humans have already pushed over 44,000 varieties of bugs into extinction and that’s only because humans only just started polluting this earth. I read an article over the holiday about hermit crabs in Taiwan. Their habit is being destroyed cruelly from the pollution and there’s hermit crabs forced to use waste pipes as shells. If we continue to ignore this issue, the speed of species’ extinction will increase dramatically and the extinction of humans will come faster than ever.
During Mr. Wilson’s speech, he also talked about the little knowledge we humans have on our mother earth. It’s incredible that humans only know 16% of the species that lives among us. Sadly, without learning from them, we humans are already pushing them into extinction. E.O. Wilson tried to convince us to respect the animals and to spend more times understanding them. His greatest dream is to create an encyclopedia of life. The word encyclopedia basically means knowledge. He wish humans can have wisdom and to understand the natural. That’s why it’s call the encyclopedia of life. He wishes to include all living creatures that inhabit in our earth in the encyclopedia. If his dream really come true, human’s life will change dramatically. For centuries, humans have been learning from the animals around us. Our ideas mainly come from the animal kingdom. If we know all the species and protect them, our knowledge about all surrounding will increase and it will also teach peoples to take care of each others. The help it give is so wide that I can’t even imagine. After all, the main point is too take care of the environment and treat the species with all respect.
The main idea that E.O. Wilson is trying to say is if we eliminate a species like insects in the world which we are trying to do, we will destroy the ecological environment and break the food chain. We will not survive. The word I would use for describing the main idea is “Interconnection.” E.O. Wilson said we only have a tiny piece of knowledge. There is diversity of life which we haven’t even explored. We don’t even know what the consequence is behind the destructions. HIPPO is the abbreviation of Habitat Destruction, Invasive Species, Pollution, Population and Overexploitation. These are the things we are doing right now; it will drive species to extinction. The cockroach is the greatest example. We had tried to eliminate cockroaches for a long time. But if we don’t have cockroaches, we will not have cleaners to decompose our garage. In the medical research, plants and animals can actually save lives. 30% of medicines have natural ingredients. Unfortunately, we only know 5% of the plants that have medical value, and the plant species are drastically endangering because of HIPPO. Everything is interconnecting!!
The following his TED talk, Wilson describes that exactly what treasures of the natural world we are about to lose forever and what we can do right now to save them. Destruction of natural habitats, the spread of invasive species, pollution, uncontrolled population growth, and over harvesting are the main threats to our natural world. Wilson explains how each of the elements works to undo the web of life that supports us, and why it is in our best interests to stop it. In the process, he explores the ethical and religious base of the conservation movement and deflates the myth that environmental policy is antithetical to economic growth by illustrating how new method of conservation can ensure long term economic wellbeing.
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