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Writing and Speaking

paulgraham.com

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Re: Writing and Speaking

#201

Post by ahoyhere »

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.

I never claimed to be driven by a disinterested search for truth. I said I am intellectually galled. I find lazy thinking to be extremely irritating.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#202

Post by pg »

plinkplonk wrote: post #190

@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 ide…

It's an interesting question whether lectures are necessary. I've heard universities are moving away from them. It's obvious why you want a human teaching a small class; that's a conversation, not a talk. But is there a benefit to lectures too large to be conversational besides the two that I listed (meeting the speaker and motivating people)?

It was a while ago, but I can't remember a lot of lectures from college or grad school that I found more useful than books. When I try to remember lectures that I learned things from, what comes to mind is professors writing on chalkboards, explaining things like what happened in memory when some program was running or showing what happened when you did something to a matrix. So perhaps the big advantage of lectures is that they're not just words-- that they can include visual demonstrations.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#203

Post by jpeterson »

ahoyhere wrote: post #201
pg wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I never claimed to be driven by a disinterested search for truth. I said I am intellectually galled. I find lazy thinking to be extremely irritating.

I think what he's getting at is that your tone is needlesly hostile, and belies the claimed "intellectual" nature of your complaints.

I, for one, cannot take you seriously for this reason.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#204

Post by ahoyhere »

pg wrote: post #200
ahoyhere wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof is on you. It's your essay. Furthermore, I didn't state that I disagreed… I merely asked you to explain your reasoning. Argument isn't a case of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours." You either have a case to make, or you don't. You either have a good reason to hold an opinion, or you don't. And, as jeremymcanally pointed out, you switched from "good ideas being most of writing well" to askin…

On the contrary. I asked you to give me an example of something I wrote that you believe to be false. You gave me that sentence. The burden of proof is on you. Just so we're clear, do you believe it's false that having good ideas is most of writing well? Or not?

Yup, I do, but conditionally. But, like I said, that doesn't matter. What's at issue is not what I believe, but what you fail to demonstrate, argue, or prove.

You asked for statements I believed to be false. I took this to mean statements I didn't believe. Because you didn't argue any of the effectively. I consider them false until well argued -- and the statements I called out hadn't been backed up even in a cursory way.

No amount of arguing with me over what I believe is going to change that fact.

You are very skilled at turning the tables in an argument, bravo. Your essays would be a million times better if you would do it to yourself instead of taking the lazy route.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#205

Post by dwd »

It's all about the context.

pg once explained essays are his exploration of an idea and I would hazard to guess in many cases the conclusions are still born out of the act of writing. http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html

tl;dr Essaying is not about the writer's clarity of thought but the process of bringing their thought into clarity.

As for professional public speaking look at it in the context of their motivation and why they are up there: is it to promote an idea, sell more of their books or simply get invited to speak again? If their goals are being met then maybe they are an effective (good) speaker. Did it provide real value to every member of the audience? Only as far as it meets the speaker's goal.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#206

Post by aristus »

I recently read an essay by an advisor to Mario Vargas-Llosa's failed campaign for the presidency of Peru. Brilliant writer, bad speaker. [0]

Being one of the greatest writers alive, Vargas-Llosa was good at giving voice to the people's dissatisfaction and ideas for how to solve them. But he failed at the other half of political communication: repetition. He was always racing ahead of the electorate, speaking on his latest ideas. He was bored with the thought of repeating himself. He never developed the habit of the stump speech, and left his constituents behind.

In the influence game, one is eventually faced with a tradeoff between being a thinker who raises the upper bound, and being a communicator/popularizer who raises the median. Thinkers are needed, but if their ideas race too far ahead they languish until a popularizer takes them up.

There is a middle way: continue your writing as before, but use the stump as a trailing indicator of your thought process. There is no dishonor in giving audiences an expanded version of your thoughts as of a few essays ago. Don't worry that the ideas aren't "new". Definition, then repetition.

Also, learning how to be an engaging speaker at the same time as trying out new ideas is hard. Keeping the ideas constant can help you become a better speaker more quickly than you might think. And repeating yourself can even lead to better thoughts in directions you don't expect.

[0] Mark Malloch Brown, "The Consultant", Granta #36

Re: Writing and Speaking

#207

Post by pg »

ahoyhere wrote: post #204
pg wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary. I asked you to give me an example of something I wrote that you believe to be false. You gave me that sentence. The burden of proof is on you. Just so we're clear, do you believe it's false that having good ideas is most of writing well? Or not?

Yup, I do, but conditionally. But, like I said, that doesn't matter. What's at issue is not what I believe, but what you fail to demonstrate, argue, or prove. You asked for statements I believed to be false. I took this to mean statements I didn't believe . Because you didn't argue any of the effectively. I consider them false until well argued -- and the statements I called out hadn't been backed up even in a cursor…

You asked for statements I believed to be false. I took this to mean statements I didn't believe. Because you didn't argue any of them effectively. I consider them false until well argued

I find when a thread gets to the point where someone is arguing about the meanings of fundamental words like "false," nothing good is ever going to come of it. So if you don't mind I think I'm done here.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#208

Post by wisty »

jonnathanson wrote: post #148
edw519 wrote: post #58

I dunno, I think the definition of "good speaker" really depends on the audience. I probably speak for many here as an introverted, deeply introspective outlier. I have seen many great speakers in person (Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, Steven Covey) and almost always come away underwhelmed. I struggle to understand why the audience gets so worked up with so little content transferred. I have trouble with co…

"I dunno, I think the definition of "good speaker" really depends on the audience." I agree with most of your post. But I'd actually invert that relationship. A good speaker is someone who understands his audience, so that he can maximize both his connection to it and his impact upon it. The intent of speaking, and the intent of writing, aren't altogether different. In either case, a typical goal is to convey informa…

Or perhaps - a good speaker picks a good audience.

You can adapt your style to an audience - dumb down technical details to focus on the "big picture" capabilities and limitations, or get down to the nitty-gritty. But if you are talking to a crowd that just doesn't care about any of it, you've lost the minute you walk into the room.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#210

Post by rimantas »

pg wrote: post #12
cperciva wrote: post #9

I wouldn't say that I'm a good speaker, but I'm certainly a much better speaker than I used to be. It's not just about transmitting a certain number of bits of information per minute; it's also about making sure that those bits are being received at the other end. I often throw jokes (and quasi-jokes, like my "purpose of cryptography is to force the US government to torture you" line) into talks as a way to help keep…

Being a better speaker doesn't necessarily mean your ideas are going to get worse. (I said in the first paragraph that I wished I were a better speaker. Why would I wish for that if I thought it made your ideas worse?) It's just alarming to me how little being a better speaker depends on making your ideas better.

  > It's just alarming to me how little being a better
  > speaker depends on making your ideas better.
It's not about making ideas better, it is about getting them across better. If your idea has value of X, then speaking makes it aX + c, where c is some entertainment value, so the speech can be entertaining even if idea is worth zero.

However I do think that spending some time thinking about how to present your ideas in oral form can indeed help to improve them.

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