There are two big things happening in psychology today. One, of course, is everything that's got to do with the brain, and that's dominating psychology. But there is something else that is happening, which started out from a methodological innovation as a way to study memory, and we've always known, that's the idea of the notion of association of ideas, which has been around for 350 years at least.

I came away from TED feeling that the creativity of the human race will do a fine job of getting us beyond this crisis. We just need to keep focused on the bigger opportunities and not get consumed by the apparent intractability of our financial problems. I certainly felt that as a design thinker focusing on the opportunities, as TED does, is a far more productive way to spend my time than focusing on a crisis that I can do little to effect.