Writing and Speaking • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing and Speaking

#181

Post by patio11 » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:28 AM UTC

tobtoh wrote: post #173

patio11 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say this in the spirit of somebody who started competitive public speaking as therapy to overcome a speech disorder which would have been virtually disabling professionally: you can hack your way through hesitation noises. A lot of the HN comments suggesting practical ways to do so would be effective. ("Speak slower" and "Use the air gap for a dramatic pause" are my two favorites.) Practice plus directed effor…

I second this. I used to um and ahh very badly and I started debating in school partly to try and stop myself doing this. I had a teacher use one of the most amazingly effective techniques to help me - she filmed me once as I read my prepared debate 'speech' (filled with ums and ahhs), and then filmed me a second time, this time telling me to consciously be aware of the umming and pause before I did, gather my though…

This is about as close to a pure speech hack as I'm aware of, by the way. It makes you immediately, perceptibly better, and even if I told you "Here's a video of me talking. Hit a buzzer when I'm buffering" you'd miss most of them because they read as dramatic emphasis to the audience. (The umms, stammers, and verbal disfluencies, on the other hand, are instantly perceptible.)

As long as we're on the subject of hacks: pick three people in the audience: one on the left, one in the right, and one a bit off center in the middle. Always make eye contact with them when you are speaking. Rotate every couple of sentences. BAM, perceived confidence goes way up.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#182

Post by pg » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:30 AM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #172

pg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give any examples of specific sentences I wrote that you believe are false?

Here are some: "Having good ideas is most of writing well." How did you come to this conclusion? Evidence? Citations? Reasoning? "… how much less ideas mattered in speaking than writing" Is this based off just the ONE other speaker you mentioned? Any studies? Have you made a personal study of this yourself? Taken notes? I would like to hear some evidence or argument to back this up. "Being a really good speaker is no…

Ok, let's start from the beginning. You believe it's false that having good ideas is most of writing well. Can you give a counterexample? Can you give an example of an essay you consider to be a good piece of writing, and yet whose author you believe didn't know what he/she was talking about? Present company excepted of course.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#183

Post by dingfeng_quek » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:33 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #142

ThomPete wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Derrida thought a whole lot about the spoken word vs. writing. According to logocentrist theory, speech is the original signifier of meaning, and the written word is derived from the spoken word. The written word is thus a representation of the spoken word. Logocentrism asserts that language originates as a process of thought that produces speech, and it asserts that speech produces writing. http://www.angelfire.com/…

I agree with that. Good writing should sound like spoken language. One of the classic mistakes of beginning writers is to use excessively formal diction, e.g. to use connectives like "furthermore" that they'd never use when speaking.

If you restrict writing to only the "sounds" words produce when they are read, good writing should sound like spoken language is still hard to defend. Besides how the brain differently processes words seen from eyes, the varied methods of reading (reading linearly, scanning, searching, etc) gives multiple definitions of "good writing", depending on the context, goal, reader, and many other factors.

If you don't, then many other kind of glyphs and grammars arise. At the extreme, diagrams, mathematical expressions, etc, often lack even a correspondence with spoken language. Similarly, spoken languages have many subtle indicators and markers (often temporal or intonation-based) that isn't easily translatable to the written word.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#184

Post by pg » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:42 AM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #174

jpeterson wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sense a certain amount of enmity from your pg-related posts here and your tweets.

Not enmity. I am intellectually galled by the laziness of many of pg's arguments. I agree with a lot of what he writes about creating things people want, on the other hand, and wish he would stick to writing about things he's good at -- or at least, when writing about something he's bad at, do it in an exploratory instead of declamatory fashion.

If you were driven by a disinterested search for the truth, your comments would not have the tone they do.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#185

Post by jpeterson » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:53 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #184

ahoyhere wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not enmity. I am intellectually galled by the laziness of many of pg's arguments. I agree with a lot of what he writes about creating things people want, on the other hand, and wish he would stick to writing about things he's good at -- or at least, when writing about something he's bad at, do it in an exploratory instead of declamatory fashion.

If you were driven by a disinterested search for the truth, your comments would not have the tone they do.

Yea, I'd be interested in reading a balanced criticism of pg's work. But ahoy and the linked article smack more of scorned lover than unbiased review.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#186

Post by dingfeng_quek » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:54 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #182

ahoyhere wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some: "Having good ideas is most of writing well." How did you come to this conclusion? Evidence? Citations? Reasoning? "… how much less ideas mattered in speaking than writing" Is this based off just the ONE other speaker you mentioned? Any studies? Have you made a personal study of this yourself? Taken notes? I would like to hear some evidence or argument to back this up. "Being a really good speaker is no…

Ok, let's start from the beginning. You believe it's false that having good ideas is most of writing well. Can you give a counterexample? Can you give an example of an essay you consider to be a good piece of writing, and yet whose author you believe didn't know what he/she was talking about? Present company excepted of course.

ahoyhere and pg's argument isn't clashing - while pg wrote his essay from his personal experience, ahoyhere demands (or at least appeals to) the consideration of a broad set of ideas related to a long history of thought and research.

However, pg's essay is clear that it doesn't aim to be a well-founded research paper. Although ahoyhere is right that pg's essay will never be recognized as a good research paper (by intelligent people, i.e. not those who were conned by the sokhal hoax), the essay is not designed to be one.

pg: I can give examples of great scholarly works where the author is confused, but the domain is highly specific, and probably outside of your interests. For less technical subjects outside of expert-to-expert communication where some spend years to develop new ideas, there's generally less preference for insight over clarity.

ahoyhere: If you're looking for well-researched expositions in this area, I'm sure you already know where to look. Hm... But I think today's social-psych/cognitive research is better than what Aristotle says.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#187

Post by supercanuck » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:55 AM UTC

mechanical_fish wrote: post #160

pg wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing is, I've now started to notice the ums myself. I was talking to the founders at the last tuesday dinner and suddenly started catching myself every time I did it. I found that if I made a conscious effort to, I could suppress them. But when I was talking about something interesting, I'd forget and start umming again.

I believe I've heard of linguistic studies which demonstrate that the use of "filler" words like um is, in part, a form of "code switching". For example, when teenagers talk to their peers, or to people they don't particularly respect, their speech will tend to be peppered with ums and you knows and likes [1], as in: "I'd, um, you know, prefer to watch something, like, interesting.". But when talking to respected eld…

I've also heard somewhere, this is why Canadians say "Eh" a lot, because it leaves the sentence with a positive, softer connotation.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#188

Post by frigite_ » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:56 AM UTC

I don't think that pg is a bad speaker. However, if you think you are, why not consider working on it? Toastmasters or similar might help.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#189

Post by lukifer » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 3:01 AM UTC

I now consume as much information via spoken word as via print, primarily because I can do so during other tasks (laundry, driving), and so I find this topic phenomenally interesting. Speaking is a radically different beast, where ideas must be wrapped in rhythm, cadence, tone, volume, to the point of musicality.

I also adore standup, which pays a great deal of attention to repeating the same rehearsed ideas in an extemporaneous way. Some comedians do so through writing and obsessive practice (Carlin, Louis CK), others think well purely on their feet with no preparation, often based on a background in improv (Proops, Izzard).

To get a little meta, it's worth cross-referencing these ideas with the Atheism 2.0 TED talk, which among other things discusses the power of the sermon to unite a group behind a set of ideas and inspire them to action. For better or worse, ideas break through your defenses and take root more effectively if (a) you're forced to absorb them in real-time, (b) you know other people are taking the speaker seriously, and (c) the speaker is eliciting the same emotional reactions in others that they are eliciting in you.

http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0.html

Re: Writing and Speaking

#190

Post by plinkplonk » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 3:07 AM UTC

@pg,

What do you think about the idea that good teaching involves good 'public speaking' skills and 'stage presence'? Prof Lewin of MIT for example seems to be an extremely effective teacher. People do seem to need lectures (even if in a video form) in addition to books and papers to learn maximally, even when what is being learned is science or engineering.

(I understand that teaching is about conveying existing ideas from one mind to another vs generating new ones 'at runtime'. I was just interested in what you think about the need for "public speaking" skills to be a really good teacher.)