Introduction
TED Talks are extremely popular nowadays. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the Ted Talk of Sendhil Mullainathan, titled “Solving social problems with a nudge,” where he describes the issues of the “last mile” (Mullainathan, 2009). The essay will thoroughly discuss the particular Ted Talk by inspecting whether the author made a strong argument for his claim and whether his examples are relevant to the question under discussion. The speaker describes “the last mile” in medicine, science, and other topics being the human mind’s difficulties. He presents the subject from a distant perspective and tries to appear as a non-biased person. However, as a behavioral economist, he cannot be utterly non-partial since he tries to persuade the audience to comply with his worldview. The speaker’s perspective is on the human mind’s diversity and complexity that makes people manufacture irrational behavior, perpetuating poverty, corruption, and discrimination. However, despite the speaker’s argument’s overall correctness, its quality is not as good and useful as it could be.
Rhetorical Situations
The speaker’s target audience is people of 30+, who are looking for some answers in life, so they tend to absorb new information presented in a fun and entertaining way better. The lecturer’s purpose is to explain the concept of the “last mile” and define how difficult it is to fight this mile since it is essentially a fight with windmills, metaphorically speaking. The speaker aims to describe simple concepts and thoughts to an audience. He showcases the apparent problem, presents rather obvious examples, and expects people to change their worldview and the set of beliefs they grew up with just after 17 minutes of Ted Talk.
Furthermore, this particular Ted Talk was recorded in 2009, a relatively calm period in the Earth’s history, which is why it was shocking to hear what he presented as evidence. The speaker bestowed the cases of death from diarrhea in India, which are unfortunate and entirely preventable. The information that Sendhil deliberately chose to avoid is human behavioral psychology. He mentioned the consequences of people’s prejudice but did not say anything about the root cause of the problem. The main reason that humans are irrational is in their upbringing: family, friends, exposure to the relevant data, and the information that comes from school.
Therefore, by concentrating on the consequence, his ideas sounded vague and not valid enough. He failed to mention that the set of beliefs present in the family is likely to pass to the next generation and, therefore, the issue of the “last mile” will stay. The problem of the “last mile” stems from people’s lack of education levels and the reluctance to understand something new. For this reason, the argument felt unmotivated, confusing, and unfinished. Although the speaker uses relevant rhetorical appeals (emotion and logic), it does not help strengthen his statement. It is more likely to confuse the audience even more since it is hard to understand his purpose until the end of his speech.
Evidence
The speaker uses a plethora of proof, such as anecdotal, testimonial, textual, and analogical evidence, hoping it would strengthen his argument. His primary example was about the causes of diarrhea deaths in India, especially in children. This argument’s problem was that Indian women did not know that the diarrhea was curable and that their kids die from the curable disease. However, Sendhil Mullainathan completely dismisses the problem of education, stating that Indian people are educated enough. Nonetheless, as he said, almost 50% of questioned Indian females did not know how to treat an infant with diarrhea.
First, as of 2009, it was harder for females to get proper education since they were considered not fit for an educational field. Therefore, a significant percentage of Indian females were homeschooled and hardly passed pre-school education. Before marriage, their primary source of information is their family, where the father is most likely not involved in the children’s education. As a consequence, everything falls onto the mother or sisters and brothers. Therefore, diarrhea is tied to the lack of education among Indian females, which increases the death rates of infants. The speaker was correct when he stated that it is a problem of the human mind and perception, but he missed several important points, making his evidence weak. As an audience member, I would also like to learn how I can contribute to the solution of the given problem and what was the root cause of the issue instead of its consequences.
Presentation
The main strength of his speech is in his presentation and the way he interacts with the audience. The speaker represents everything he states through several slides to connect with the audience and make his arguments more believable. Moreover, he plays with an audience by asking them questions and engaging them in tasks. However, again, he tries to empower his evidence by making irrelevant examples, which weaken his argument. The speaker also fails to end his talk effectively and memorably. Nevertheless, despite these apparent setbacks, Sendhil Mullainathan is still relatively good with presentational skills; his humor, body language, and other visual aids are impressive.
Conclusion
To conclude, this TED Talk is excellent from a presentational point of view because from this perspective, his work was almost flawless. However, his argument was weak for the reason that he used irrelevant examples and failed to mention the root cause of the problem. The lack of good examples leaves the audience confused and disoriented, although, as he stated, he achieved the effect of “feeling dumber when waking up.”
Reference
Mullainathan, S. (2009). Solving social problems with a nudge [Video]. TED. Web.