An opinion by Nassim Taleb on the subject (posted on his facebook page):
"I have been told by conference organizers and other rationalistic, empirically challenged fellows that one needs to be clear, deliver a crisp message, maybe even dance on the stage to get the attention of the crowd. Or speak with the fake articulations of T.V. announcers. Charlatans try sending authors to “speech school”. None of that. I find it better to whisper, not shout. Better to slightly unaudible, less clear. Acquire a strange accent. One should make the audience work to listen, and switch to intellectual overdrive. (In spite of these rules of thumb by the conference industry, there is no evidence that demand for a speaker is linked to the TV-announcer quality of his lecturing). And the most powerful, at a large gathering, tends to be the one with enough self-control to avoid raising his voice to be noticed, and make others listen to him."
One of my favourite perks when I worked at the Guardian is that any employee can go along to the morning editorial meetings. They were absolutely fascinating - a 40 minute meeting where the editorial direction for the day's newspaper is fleshed out, by an extremely smart and well informed group of people, with absolutely nothing dumbed down.
One of the thing that really struck me about those meetings was how Alan Rusbridger, the newspaper's editor, set the tone. He has a relatively quiet voice, and as a result the room stayed quiet enough that you could almost hear a pin drop. When he spoke, everyone listened intently. This influenced the whole meeting - people never spoke over each other, everyone paid full attention and a huge amount of information and discussion was covered effectively in a very short space of time.
I call this the "Godfather" demeanor. It's common among powerful males. I once read an article about a big gang leader in prison and the writer noticed that he had to lean forward to hear what the leader was saying.
They will talk very quietly and unclearly without regard to whether you can hear them or not. When the room is silent and everybody is listening intently, you can't help but think that what they have to say is very important. More so than if they were to speak loudly and solicitously.
It's interesting that Talib is consciously advocating this affectation.
I guess there is a certain kind of leader who gains credibility through actions rather than speech. Some leaders try to rouse you through speech -- e.g. Barack Obama definitely leans on his oratorial skills. Others do the opposite -- Larry Page for example. He mumbles, and he doesn't care to repeat himself. It's everyone else's job to figure out what he's saying.
I've been trying to find it to no avail, but I read somewhere that listeners are more apt to remember something if they required effort to hear it, almost as if the work it took reinforced the memorization of it.
Anyone familiar with that assertion and remember its source? Perhaps I should have had someone whisper it to me in a strange accent.
It's worth noting that a very good speaker often puts the exact amount of hard content needed. Many times you can see a bad speaker who is bad, not for their ums and speaking quality, but because they attempt to put too much detail or too many points into their speech. This is better for text, where people can examine at their own rate.
The philosopher William Godwin basically said: if you have any criticism of my work, or anything to say, write it down.
He thought public speaking relied too much on rhetoric and emotion, whereas with writing it was easier for a sober consideration of the truth to be the prevailing factor.
I disagree with pg's opinion in that case. I think what he describes is correct as far as it applies to his style of speaking, but there are many cases where a speech format conveys information better and is more articulate than reading an essay. Think of TED talks for instance.
It's ok for any one person to perfer words, but not everyone prefers reading to a face to face meeting. If that were the case, imagine all the VC pitches consisting of reviewing business plans rather than live pitches.
Even YC places a lot of emphasis on the 10-minute interview in the selection process . So there must be something non-verbal happening, otherwise an exchange of emails would give founders a better opportunity to present the case for their startup.
not everyone prefers reading to a face to face meeting. If that were the case, imagine all the VC pitches consisting of reviewing business plans rather than live pitches.
That's the worst counterexample one could choose. The reason investors want to meet founders in person is precisely because they care as much if not more about the people than the idea.
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 the audience's attention; and I watch the audience for signs that I'm moving too fast or too slow for them.
But for all of this, I don't think the material I convey has suffered in the slightest. One audience member told me that my cryptography-in-one-hour talk was the "most densely packed hour of information" he had ever seen. If being a good speaker pushed me away from having and conveying good ideas, my talks should have been getting progressively less informative, not more so.
I posit that while PG is seeing a real effect, it's not the effect he thinks he's seeing. Rather than style detracting from substance, it seems to me that there's selection bias: In order to be invited to give talks, you must have at least one of {good ideas, good style}. As a result, those talks which are completely devoid of interesting ideas are inevitably given very well -- we never see talks which are given by poor speakers who have no interesting ideas. This in no way means that speaking well is responsible for the lack of substance.
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.
Being a better speaker doesn't necessarily mean your ideas are going to get worse.
I must have gotten the wrong message from that essay. It seemed to me that from about the third paragraph onwards you were itemizing the bad things about good speakers.
For me it read like this: pg wants to become a better speaker, i.e. one who is able to better convey better ideas. But the notion of a Good Speaker that is trotted out as the ideal to strive for at places like, I presume, toastmasters et al., is just a particular kind of speaker that has hijacked the "good" qualifier.
Better speaking ability may not help with better ideas, but it does help with the introduction of ideas. I think most of us on HN are living in a bit of a microcosm, where people who we need to influence can objectively break down what we're trying to do.
When we need to expand our ideas to the masses, however, the focus becomes less on what the idea is, and more on how it's delivered. Preying on emotion, sequential logic, and subliminal notes, sometimes even the worst of ideas are promoted as good ideas.
In accordance with the last point of your essay, I'm not sure either, that speaking is used more for good. But if that's the case, now that we have so many people with good ideas, perhaps it's time to focus on delivering good ideas, and making the world better that way. (hmm... I just had an idea)
When we need to expand our ideas to the masses, however, the focus becomes less on what the idea is, and more on how it's delivered. Preying on emotion, sequential logic, and subliminal notes, sometimes even the worst of ideas are promoted as good ideas.
An idea is a signal. It's difficult to send complex signals over long distances while maintaining fidelity. We have to focus on the delivery. So we engage our audience emotionally to get them to listen and repeat messages we want people to understand. Subtle abstract notions are even difficult to deliver at close range. How difficult would it be to deliver one to a crowd without adding more energy (emotion) or simplifying it.
We shouldn't always blame people for not understanding. Sometimes there are good reasons for doing things the way we do them.
The factor that makes ideas better (or in some cases worse) is thought, which comes with time. Speaking is very engaging at least for some people... (I notice this when I am in the car and talking to someone). It consumes a lot of attention, attention which can not be used to think about the problem.
The same occurs when I have a discussion with someone. When I walk away after the discussion I get a lot of: "Oh, I forgot to say this, oh I forgot to say that", because you start direct your focus on thinking instead of talking.
But I guess talking/thinking is not an "exclusive or" for some people.
This is interesting. So you think that being a good speaker negatively impacts one's ideas, although it won't necessarily be noticeable to others? That is because those who are good speakers have counteracted the negative impact with more practice.
> 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.
pg, I think you are a good speaker. Not in the classic motivational speaker sense but you do speak with conviction and have a unique voice...both literally and in what you say. You are one of the few authors that I literally have your voice in my head when I am slowly reading one of your essays. At least among your target audience, what you have to say is much more important than how you say it. So keep rewriting your talks minutes before you give them, even if it leads you to say um during your speeches. As long as you continue to say what you truly believe, that'll shine through and you will continue to be a good speaker in my book.
It's a bit too easy and somewhat condescending to brush off public speaking as strictly inferior to written communication. In fact, I disagree strongly with Graham's stance. Sure, pure information transmission is enhanced in written form: there's less noise, the reader can skip and backtrack at will, and so on.
Speaking, however, gives you many more channels, and I refuse to consider these channels (inflection, speed, choice of words, prosody, emotionalization, what have you) mere baggage. Also, it's deceiving to propose that essays are baggage-free. Good style makes a huge difference, even in writing. Compare the great essayists to lowly part-time bloggers: the difference rarely boils down to just ideas. Delivery matters. Emotional content, something Graham appears to see as noise, distorts and enhances in written and spoken form alike.
All in all, I find it a bit too convenient that a mediocre speaker and good essayist happens to think writing is simply the better medium.
> All in all, I find it a bit too convenient that a mediocre speaker and good essayist happens to think writing is simply the better medium.
Perhaps it is more the case that a man who thinks writing is the better medium has spent more time developing his skills as an essayist than developing his skills as a speaker. In fact, I see the essay as a justification for that decision.
You didn't say that per se, but I felt it in the undertone of the whole essay. See some of these sentences:
"As I was doing it I tried to imagine what a transcript of the other guy's talk would be like, and it was only then I realized he hadn't said very much."
"Being a really good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction."
"But here again there's a tradeoff between smoothness and ideas. All the time you spend practicing a talk, you could instead spend making it better."
I know quite a few people who are great thinkers and great speakers and maybe that is why I found the article a bit offensive in that regard.
I try to make the strongest claims I can that are true. If I believed something as extreme as what you claim I said, I'd say it. Which means if I didn't say it, I didn't say it.
Though the difference in meaning between what you claim I said and what you're able to quote me as saying may seem small to you, there is a critical difference between them: what you claim I said is false, and the sentences you quote are true. I think we both agree on that. Or do you think any of the sentences I actually wrote are false?
I don't know you personally. I've read the majority of your essays. Your essays are well thought out and that what you write is purposeful. However, it isn't entirely unreasonable to think that you may[2] you have conveyed something in your writing that you didn't intend. Such a thing must occur occasionally.
I agree with the person you responded to that your essay did come across as having as an undercurrent that good speakers tend not have as much depth in what they say. What you say about spending time on delivery coming at the cost (sometimes!) of content makes sense when I think of politicians and salesmen. I'm don't agree when it comes to more cerebral settings.
[1] edit: Changed "It appears..." to "Your.." because your essays are well thought out and purposeful. It's not just an appearance.
Here is an important tradeoff between speaking and writing. Writing allows the user more room to color the information with their own experiences. For example the words "a very long time" conjures up some concept for a reader -- but when a listener hears "a very long time" from an old person versus a young person they may hear those as two different things. It's important and possibly absent information here that "if [you] didn't say it, [you] didn't say it." Inference is an incredibly powerful tool of persuasion and used often.
Gesture, tone, emphasis, etc... can give an incredible amount of information that people may process quickly and easily. It may alleviate some confusion created by the readers personal interpretation of words.
I think this thread well covers benefits and drawbacks of written versus spoken word. For me, I think of it like I think of various technologies available for a project. There are different tradeoffs and I must consider what I am trying to accomplish, what the pain points are going to be, who my users are, what is available, and make a careful choice.
You don't claim that, of course, but something of similar intent is implied in this paragraph:
> A few years later I heard a talk by someone who
> was not merely a better speaker than me, but
> a famous speaker. Boy was he good. So I
> decided I'd pay close attention to what he
> said, to learn how he did it. After about ten
> sentences I found myself thinking "I don't
> want to be a good speaker."
A charitable reading of this section is "I've observed a correlation between vacuousness and effective rhetoric." What I (and presumably others) gathered is "Clarity of thought and rhetoric ability, pick one." Both seem either misguided or wrong.
I'll go ahead and assume that you're simply offering the passage as an anecdote. In that case, however, you're doing what you condemn -- rhetorics over conceptual purity and ideas. Can you elaborate a little?
I don't see how you think that passage implies "people who speak [well] cannot think." All I'm saying is that speaking well depends little on having good ideas. That doesn't imply people who speak well can't have good ideas, just that they don't need to.
Playing soccer well depends little on having good ideas. Is someone who says that saying "clarity of thought or soccer ability, pick one?"
Now you're putting a spin on that passage that's simply not in the text. Quit the contrary: it's the opposite of what your essay seems to be suggesting.
> "I don't want to be a good speaker."
Why would you think that if rhetoric ability and good ideas are fully orthogonal? It'd amount to "The dude on stage is a brilliant speaker, which has nothing to do with inventiveness and clarity of thought, so I don't want to be a brilliant speaker." Nonsense. A much more reasonable interpretation is:
a) The guy on stage doesn't have any ideas and is a brilliant speaker.
b) Flashiness appears to preclude good ideas, or is at odds with it.
c) Hence, I don't want to be a good speaker.
If I'm still getting it wrong, please explain what the anecdote means -- especially given that, apparently, your essays contain only exactly what you intend them to contain.
I think you have a point that "I don't want to be a good speaker" implies something negative about being a good speaker. In context it can be understood as being a good speaker is in opposition to the goal of having better ideas. Perhaps a less controversial phrasing would be "I don't want to put forth the effort towards becoming a good speaker".
However, a more in depth reading is that being a good speaker is in opposition to the process of improving one's ideas. His example of being captivated by a good speaker, but on further reflection realizing how little content was conveyed, is a case-in-point. You lose the important signal of audience engagement with your ideas if you dazzle them through charisma. Without charisma to charm your audience, all you have left is whether your audience was engaged through the quality of your ideas. So in this sense being a good speaker is in fact in opposition to developing good ideas--you're losing meaningful signal regarding their quality.
You're right; if I wanted to be sure I couldn't be misinterpreted, I could have put it in something like the way you suggest. But I felt like a reasonably intelligent person with no axe to grind would understand what I meant. You always face this tradeoff in writing. If you hedge every statement so carefully that it couldn't be used by someone determined to misrepresent you, you end up with something that resembles a statement by a corporate PR department.
As a reasonably intelligent reader with no axe to grind (and who, on the contrary, really enjoys reading your essays), I too was under the impression (and had no reason to question it until seeing your comment) that you were arguing that writing is an objectively better medium for conveying what I'll call ponderable information (as opposed to information that would obviously be best transmitted through spoken word, such as "get me a decaf latte with two sugars" or "there's a bear behind you") than speaking is, and that being a good writer is more important (or superior in other ways besides importance) than being a good speaker. If the latter was not your intent, please don't kill these four messengers and assume we're just bad at reading. We're simply telling you that that's how your essay comes across, at least to some readers.
This set of posts actually serves as an interesting counterargument to what I interpreted your thesis to be. As I understood it, you feel that writing gives you more time to organize your thoughts, facilitating accuracy and depth more than speaking does. Good speaking, on the other hand, or at least the kind of "good speaking" that refers to being good at captivating an audience, necessarily involves ad-libbing a lot of the details, which means you can't expect to come up with sentences that are as well worded (which usually means as precise or concise) as those you would have delivered in writing. Therefore, writing is the superior medium for delivering information. Period. Speaking is better for things like letting people see you in person (if you're famous) or sometimes better for inspiring people to take action, which you suggest are themselves important, but that speaking is inherently worse than writing for the purpose of conveying information. Am I correct so far? I apparently incorrectly extrapolated that you felt that it's intellectually superior to be a good writer than a good speaker.
Now what was I talking about this discussion serving as a counterexample to your argument? Well, first of all, I agree with everything I think you said up until the conclusion that writing is always more effective than speaking for communicating information. As we saw from this misunderstanding, the written word doesn't provide the author with the live audience feedback that the spoken word does. If multiple readers are confused, the author has no recourse because he does not know that they are confused. Thankfully they can now post comments on the Internet. :) A good speaker, on the other hand, is so in tune with his audience that he knows when they are confused or when his tone seemed misinterpreted, and he can adapt on the spot, providing more examples or changing the inflection of his voice to clarify his tone. George Carlin, one of my favorite comics, was excellent at crafting his routines, but from what I've heard from people who saw him live, was atrocious at interacting with the audience because his written style didn't allow him to deviate from his script. Nevertheless, this afforded him the planning and precision of the written word, and it worked great for him. In fields besides comedy, the written word's advantages naturally win out over the spoken word more frequently, but don't discount good speaking as an effective way to deliver information. Great speakers sometimes get an audience to understand actual content (I've seen multiple speeches were Bill Clinton did that, as well as several TED talks that did) as or more effectively than great writers do.
The point was that before I watched this speaker in action, I still retained some of my naive belief that being a good speaker depended a lot on having good ideas. So when observing the super-duper speaker in real time confirmed what I'd noticed after the fact about the pretty-good speaker at the conference, I was more sure of it.
"Playing soccer well depends little on having good ideas."
This statement seems to me to be profoundly wrong.
Perhaps some ways of "playing soccer well" depend little on having good ideas. But soccer is a very complex game: the configuration space of the players on the field is ~2*11 dimensional per team (add the z dimension for jumping and the ball in the air and you see that the total coordinate and momentum space is even vaster than 44 dimensions). Good teams are capable of organizing into configurations on the fly which are more likely to lead to goal than other configurations, and they can do this in response to the configuration of the opposing team. The Spanish team that won the most recent World Cup is a great example of 11 players who self-organize into optimal configurations in real-time.
You might argue that some players can use pure athleticism to navigate through the 44+ dimensional space and score goals. Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona are great examples: see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYet49BToLw. They share a unique build which is suited to their style of soccer playing. They are not tall, have a low center of gravity, they can accelerate and pivot very quickly, and still they have a high top speed. That allows them to make runs like those "Goals of the Century" in the linked video in which they single-handedly beat the opposing team to a score.
However I would still hesitate to say that Messi and Maradona don't need good ideas to make those runs. Exactly where they choose to run probably depends strongly on where the defenders are relative to the ball-carrier's position. Also how fast they choose to run at any moment can depend on how fast those defenders are moving--hence the utility of pivot moves. Watch Messi beat the defender that comes at him from behind at 36-37 seconds, shown from another angle at 48-49 seconds; Messi gives the illusion that he has eyes in the back of his head. But really he has played soccer so much that he can take one glace around the field and calculate which defenders can reach his position and how fast they must be moving and in what direction in order to do so. This is not a trivial calculation to do at the rapid speed required by the game.
One of my favorite positions to play is Center Midfield. This midfielder often has more control than any other player to influence to configuration space of his team. One of my favorite players to watch do this was the brilliant Zinedine Zidane. He was a technically gifted footballer, but that's a relatively small part of why I loved watching him. The main reason is because of his perspicacity and decision-making skills. It is not just as if he has eyes in the back of his head; it is as if he can see the game as we spectators see it, with a birds-eye view. His brain is closer some kind of soccer video game AI that can calculate the optimal place to put the ball based on current configuration of the 22 players.
One of my favorite matches was Zidane vs. Brazil in 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvYlvkWpPy4. Check out what Zidane does at 2:05-2:20. France is already up (on a Zidane assisted goal), so they do not need to score a goal. Still they would rather keep play near the opposing team's goal for the chance to score again and to decrease the likelihood of Brazil equalizing. So Zidane is basically playing keep away for the win. At 2:14 Zidane makes a hand gesture, directing a teammate into the space to his right. Brazil players respond, moving towards the space. Then he makes a pass in the completely opposite direction, which is probably what he planned to do all along. Possession is maintained by France and the clock ticks closer towards their victory.
I think he meant it as a quick example and wasn't really an indictment of soccer players - nevertheless your obvious passion and understanding of the game is appreciated :)
Your last paragraph about Zidane is interesting. Keeping possession is a bigger tactical advantage than many people previously thought. Imagine an entire team playing keep-away for the win, patiently building up to goals confident they will get them, and you essentially have Barcelona: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6A_K8oWqfk
Zidane was more of an attacking midfielder, which makes his contributions all the more obvious, but even Zidane himself knew that the core of a great team was as far back as the often unheralded position of defensive midfield. When his club Real Madrid sold Claude Makelele and bought David Beckham, Zidane remarked, "Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?"
Despite the presence of more heralded players like Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi, Busquets is likewise the tactical centerpiece of Barcelona, almost purely due to his intelligence on the pitch. In defense, he drops back and positions himself to intercept passes rather than challenging for the ball, and once he has it he almost always makes the right decision where to put it next. And when Barcelona have possession, he pushes forward to form a triangle with the rest of the midfield, providing an open outlet to maintain possession and recycle it. If you chart out the passes Barcelona make in a typical match, there's usually a very heavy triangle between Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets.
The most interesting part of Barcelona's tactic, though, is the way they seem to push even more players into the midfield. Their notional striker is Messi, but in his "false nine" role he plays closer to attacking midfield. Likewise, Barcelona's defenders push forward and hold a very high line. Defensive midfielders like Mascherano and even Busquets have been repurposed to play as central defenders, while Pique can make effective runs forward. Right-back Dani Alves usually rushes forward to play as a winger.
The interesting thing about Barcelona's style of play is that, while it's obviously a tactic well suited for a team full of good passers who have played with each other mostly since childhood, it can be surprisingly effective for other teams. Swansea have used it very effectively in the Premier League this season, while Borussia Mönchengladbach have gone from near-relegation to the Champions League places: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAx9kYx8qo4
Actually, a far more direct "charitable reading" of that is:
A. regardless of how good someone is at public speaking, it is largely independent of their writing skill.
An additional possible inference from the article is:
B. they may/should find it significantly more efficient to impart those or even more ideas in writing than in speech. That is, some aspect of writing itself is simply more efficient than speech for transfer of idea information.
However, I do agree that pg's article does seem to gloss over,
1. the binding effect of emotion to ideas. Emotion is far easier to impart and create via public speaking due to intonation, pauses, story-telling, comedy, body language etc (not even going to add side channels like slides, though they are likely important). Several studies have shown that, for example, comedy is an extremely strong means to reinforce the transfer of new information or complex ideas due to the body's physical and biochemical response.
2. audience interaction does not have to be negative or neutral, but can often reveal how much is new information or what those participants value the most.
Of course, ultimately, to expect pg to cover even a fraction of the full dynamics of public speech and language writing in one blog article maybe is asking a little too much :)
> Being a really good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction.
You didn't say "trying to be a good speaker pushes you in the opposite direction of having good ideas"; you said "being", which implies some kind of essence / gift. You are effectively saying, in this sentence, that the gift of speak hinders one's ability to produce good ideas.
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.
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.
Well, it depends what you're writing. One of the horrible things about early fiction is that the writers usually insert their own interpretations of how characters talk -- including stuttering and "ums" and whatnot. Thankfully much of this is wasted on fanfic, where you know what the author was trying to emulate -- but usually it's a distraction. Great characters can get by without habits written into their dialogue.
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.
Disagreed. Written style matters, and whenever it doesn't matter, neither would it matter in spoken form. Your writing style happens to be lean, concise, reduced. But that doesn't just happen -- or are all your essays first drafts? Would they work as well in flowery prose?
> (...) it was a revelation to me how much less ideas mattered
> in speaking than writing.
Disagreed. I think I've got a grasp on your basic point: that the effective or required ratio of flashiness to content is invariably higher in talks than it is in essays. In the general case, that is of course not true; flashy but relatively superficial essays evidently exist, and (as you admit) academic talks can exhibit remarkable SNRs. But I'd go further and say that your rule of thumb rarely if ever applies in a meaningful way. Rhetorics are crucial in both media, and communication of ideas isn't the sole purpose of verbal interaction -- be it written or spoken.
What you're suggesting may apply to your personal approach to writing and speaking. As you mention, you feel much more comfortable expressing your thoughts as essays. That's great. There's absolutely no further conclusion we can draw from that.
See what a useful exercise it is to look at the actual
sentences I wrote? Gone are the claims that I consider the
extra things you can do in a talk "mere baggage"
(I said the opposite in the last paragraph) and that
"essays are baggage-free" (I said the opposite in the 8th
paragraph). Now all I'm being accused of is claiming that
having good ideas is most of writing well, and that
it is a smaller component of speaking well than writing well.
Frankly these seem such commonplace claims that I think
more people would accuse me of wasting the reader's time
with platitudes than saying things that are false.
For the sake of completeness I'll defend them anyway:
1. You can't explain something clearly if you don't
understand it yourself. Your writing may be fine at the phonetic level, but you won't for example be able to use any metaphors. Your audience will feel like they're being driven in a Ferrari over ploughed fields.
2. Who is generally considered to be better able to
cause people to believe mistaken ideas, speakers or
writers? When you imagine a demagogue, for example,
do you imagine someone speaking before an audience or
sitting at a desk writing?
For those that did not catch it: #1 used a metaphor to prove the point that using metaphors is not superfluous. golf clap :) The question is: did the metaphor take away from the point? Absolutely not. In fact, it helped to solidify it.
===
You're both right and talking passed each other. Writing and speaking both have their flourishes. Writing has constructs and techniques that are not strictly necessary just as oration does. There are also factors besides the content that affect the results of both mediums: writing something in my notebook does not have the same effect as posting it to my blog. So, as far as the tools available, writing and speaking are on the same level for recording and sharing ideas.
However, people are more susceptible to spoken word. There is a reason that poetry is read aloud. This can be used for good or evil but it does encourage people to spend more time preparing for the "flourishes" of speaking than the content.
I don't think anyone in this thread fundamentally disagrees with those statements :)
Are those really commonplaces? Because they are both false. Having good ideas is equally important for speaking and writing well. And you can be snowed in multiple media.
Your #1, at least, applies to both speaking and writing. In fact I'd think it applies more to speaking. Think of teachers and lecturers who can explain things with analogies on the fly, vs. those who just repeat things at the same level.
Why is it 'of course not true'? pg's stance seems the far less controversial one than yours to be honest.
I think it is far rarer to see a flashy writer than a flashy speaker. Malcolm Gladwell is the only one that springs to mind. I think it's actually very hard to pull off as a writer.
This is precisely because of the 'other channels' you mentioned. It's very easy to spot someone trying to pander in writing, where in a crowd you get swept up in the general agreement of the crowd, it's an effective tactic that you often can't pull off in writing.
"[A] person hearing a talk can only spend as long thinking about each sentence as it takes to hear it."
This is where discipline enters. When a speaker says something that fires a massive neuron in your brain, ignore the next five-ten sentences the speaker is saying and start writing.
When you're in school, you take notes on lectures to pass a test, so you have to listen to every sentence. School trains your brain to do this, and you need to untrain it.
When you're at a conference, you're listening to the speaker so you can do something (hopefully) excellent with the information they're giving you.
When the speaker provides you with a spark of inspiration, that's when you need to disengage from the talk and let your own brain take it from there. You'll only miss a handful of sentences, and you'll pack a thought-food lunch for later. You'll get more out of the talk then if you try to consume and register every sentence - many of which won't be nearly as useful.
FWIW, as a speaker I use point-form (aka. "powerpoint", although I do them in LaTex) slides for exactly this reason -- if someone gets distracted and misses a few sentences of what I'm saying, it helps them "resynchronize" with me.
pg strike me as a good speaker. Yes the "uhm" thing was a bit too much on the pycon video, but I think that is easy to get rid of with a little bit of training
"Sometimes I have to pause when I lose my train of thought."
A lot of people state this as a fault in their presentation skills, but is it really? It can be quite powerful and captivating with pauses in an ever streaming chain of talking, and I really don't think the audience mind.
I don't agree that good speakers make the audience dumber. There are and have been a lot of good speakers that can transmit ideas in an entertaining way without compromising on content. Christopher Hitchens and Neil deGrasse Tyson come to mind.
It certainly is hard work to get there, but it may be worth it. For example, I didn't watch the pycon video because I've seen the comments and can't tolerate bad sound quality or speech that is difficult to follow. Sorry.
The following was a real eye-opener for me, as I always thought from someone's speech, you could infer how much mental horsepower they had [1]:
"
"Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle," confessed Vladimir Nabokov in 1962. He took up the point more personally in his foreword to Strong Opinions (1973): "I have never delivered to my audience one scrap of information not prepared in typescript beforehand … My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French.
"At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts … nobody should ask me to submit to an interview … It has been tried at least twice in the old days, and once a recording machine was present, and when the tape was rerun and I had finished laughing, I knew that never in my life would I repeat that sort of performance."
We sympathise. And most literary types, probably, would hope for inclusion somewhere or other on Nabokov's sliding scale: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."
Speaking is not about information transmission. Speaking is to make people do something.
For example, Steve Jobs keynotes made you go to the Apple Online Store and preorder the latest products; Bret Victor in his "Inventing on Principle" talk makes you rant about the current state of IDEs.
The effect of a talk disappears rapidly after the speaker has left the stage. In contrast, a written text stays.
"Speaking is not about information transmission. Speaking is to make people do something."
I couldn't have put it more succinctly myself.
Motivation is speech's primary function. Getting you to vote, or buy something, or work harder, or learn something. Everyone who is trying to get a group of people to do something is using speeches at some point.
Speaking is also about changing minds and hearts. Persuasion works much better in person than in print. There are studies to this effect.
The effect of a talk does not have to "disappear rapidly" after the talk is over. That is why you will find lots of old Jobs keynotes on youtube, because they are still very powerful, and useful, interesting, educational, and motivating even when the products discussed are no longer being sold.
PG walks around at the end of his article, but doesn't say it outright.
Giving talks is about leading. Be it rallying the staff, conveying a vision, or providing an update, the main thing is to inspire, connect, motivate and direct. Some very self-motivated people hate talks because they already have what they need in that area and would prefer just a document of instructions. Most people, however, appreciate good leadership and appreciate talks.
Talks are for implementing ideas.
Conversation is for understanding and generating ideas.
Writing/thinking is for generating ideas.
no coincidence that so many famous speakers are described as motivational speakers. That may be what public speaking is really for
By this standard, I'd say PG is an excellent speaker regardless of any superfluous "ums". I recall back in 2006 at the first Railsconf, I was at lunch with Martin Fowler (arguably one of the best speakers in our industry who happened to be keynoting at that Railsconf) and some other co-workers. The food was was taking to long to come out so Martin Fowler left because he didn't want to miss PG speak. I had no idea who PG was but figured I shouldn't miss his talk if Fowler thought it was worth skipping lunch for.
I remember PG literally up there, head down, reading the easy (http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html) for his keynote. It didn't matter that the audience didn't laugh or that he was visibly uncomfortable. What mattered was how our thinking was influenced afterward. It certainly "motivated" me enough to send my life on a completely new trajectory.
I think one of the best things about speaking is that it allows you to emphasize the parts which are important.
The important distinction is in writing you are giving out ideas to the audience and let them decipher all. But with speaking you get this additional power using pauses, emphasis etc. to notify the audience what are the important points and wherethe whole talk/presentation is revolving around. Maybe PG's audience is very smart most of the time and he just need to float the ideas and let them measure everything.
And not to forget if the language of communication is not exactly your native language (or your not that good at it) then your writing could end up making your whole essay a pile of shit (e.g. this comment ;) )
I've noticed that audiences laugh a lot and that most of what they laugh at is actually not very funny. Most people wouldn't normally laugh at the same things, unless they were really nervous. No doubt social proof is a big part of this: people laugh because others are laughing, as the essay says. Audiences are their own laugh track. But something has to start the ball rolling. I wonder if it's related to authority. The speaker is in an authoritative position, the audience is subordinate. One thing I learned from hypnosis is that most of us are a lot more ready to submit to authority than we seem - far more than we believe we are. If the speaker is known to be famous or powerful, the audience will automatically project this on to them; but even if they aren't, all they have to do is just assume a manner of authority and the audience will automatically project it onto them anyway. Then just about anything they say that is jovial will seem funny and the audience will laugh. And I bet if an audience laughs a few times, they go away saying "that was a good talk".
I've noticed this too - when speaking in front of my employees, they laugh at the strangest things - things that would not be funny if I said them at, for example, lunch.
I've noticed that audiences laugh a lot and that most of what they laugh at is actually not very funny.
Isn't the very definition of funny is that it makes people laugh? Laughter is inherently a social, group bonding phenomena. Inherently, a social, group gathering will have more laughter. There is no such thing as something being objectively funny, funny only exists inside a group and social context, which provides the opportunity for the group to bond at someone's expense (possibly someone inside the group, possibly someone or something outside the group).
Laughter is social lubricant. There is lots of research on this: people laugh more in groups; inferiors laugh more than superiors; nervous people laugh at themselves, and laughing at yourself is also kind of way to efface yourself and show that you are part of a group.
If only HNers would read basic Intro to Psychology books, there would not be so many chimes of "I noticed this too" and, hopefully, more discussion of what actually goes on in the world and how things actually work.
It's just that when you see comments like these -- "I noticed that" or "me too" -- you so rarely see "and then I wondered why, and here's what I found…" as a follow-up.
The conversation is poorer because "I noticed" is where it ends.
PG, since you publish your "talks" as essays anyway, why don't you use your talks to tell interesting stories (from YC or other times of your life)? As you already pointed out, it's better for the audience too to read your essays and think carefully about the ideas, rather than react in a linear fashion with the rest of the crowd.
Stories, on the other hand, like "How YC started" would be much more engaging to hear from you than read. The content of the stories should be interesting enough ("Never a dull moment?"), so that you don't have to make any extra effort to seem interesting.
I agree with most of it. But it seems he is implying that learning to become a better speaker is linearly proportional, even inversely proportional to improving your ideas or your writing. I agree you probably make a better use of your time improving your ideas rather than your speech. But don't you think there are diminishing returns to how efficient use of time it's to improve ideas vs speech? Isn't there a point, after which, your idea is already good enough. That it's more efficient to spend time improving your speech instead of your ideas?
I believe so. And sometimes I think, maybe, pg crossed that line.
I totally agree with this essay, esp. in regard to ideas that are 'new' and are still being dynamically formulated.
There is an opportunity cost associated with different 'top ideas' or perhaps in this case 'top attitudes' in one's mind. If one's interest is in delivering a great speech, that does impugn upon great thinking.
However, the key is just don't give talks on ideas that are too fresh (unless you plan on using the feedback and dialogic nature of talks to your advantage -- but that's less 'talks' and more 'conversations' or Socratic dialogues, etc.). If the goal is to deliver a great speech, you have to have an idea that is fixed so that you can spend your energy applying it to the audience's situation.
Yes, in rare situations one can do both (dynamically eval and dynamically apply), but they are somewhat overlapping, competing tasks.
ETA. One more quick thought -- making this a long post:
I think a lot of public speaking is giving the audience opportunities to 'latch on' to what one is saying. And it's easiest to do this by repeating yourself in various different ways that may interest the listener (different listeners latch on based on different shared life experiences, etc.).
Essay writing is similar. But in that form, you give the reader an opportunity to pause at any time and re-read or just think about the material. This advantage in turn means that less repetition (however artfully enhanced in speech) is required.
People are also better at skimming to what they think is important in essays. So they will skim over structural 'ums' (style that they don't find helpfully repetitive). Whereas, in speech an audience will tend to latch onto whatever is repeated.
Hence, if you choose behavior that focuses on formulation of thoughts repetitively in waves, extemporaneously speaking is more natural. If you choose behavior that insists on sifting towards the truth (and I've seen that recording of PG writing an essay), then written words can be more natural. Everyone can do both with practice, but they are different I think.
It's incorrect to say one is more 'truthful' than the other. In aggregate, knowledge among #'s of people in the universe can be about the same with both (e.g., great speaking brings a lot of people a little bit forwards; great essay writing and thinking can bring a more limited set a little more forward -- but the total area may be the same at the end of the day... -- note, these are generalized examples based on a perceived average type of speech and average type of essay).
I enjoy getting up in front of a crowd of people and helping them learn new concepts in an entertaining fashion. I have taught classes, delivered presentations, recorded video podcasts with millions of views, traveled as a motivational speaker, and performed standup comedy all over the U.S.
What I like about speaking that you don't get from writing:
1) Seeing people's reaction in near real-time. This is a good feedback loop when you're working on how to explain a new product or feature before producing an on-demand recording that could be viewed by 1000x the people in the audience. It's like a focus-group or a series of live A/B tests.
2) A chance to convert the less-dedicated into customers/fans/subscribers. It seems a lot of people are too lazy to read long articles let alone books these days. A good video can go a long way. I watched a lecture by Eric Ries and immediately acquired The Lean Startup for my Kindle.
I think speaking is a great way to get people excited about a topic and teach them a handful of concepts. If my talk is successful, I will have inspired many to drill in on the topic later or become a fan of my product, my podcast, or my standup comedy. I always try to accompany my talks with easy-to-remember URLs or QR codes so that it minimizes the friction between their interest for more information and taking the next step.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 267 ms ] thread"I have been told by conference organizers and other rationalistic, empirically challenged fellows that one needs to be clear, deliver a crisp message, maybe even dance on the stage to get the attention of the crowd. Or speak with the fake articulations of T.V. announcers. Charlatans try sending authors to “speech school”. None of that. I find it better to whisper, not shout. Better to slightly unaudible, less clear. Acquire a strange accent. One should make the audience work to listen, and switch to intellectual overdrive. (In spite of these rules of thumb by the conference industry, there is no evidence that demand for a speaker is linked to the TV-announcer quality of his lecturing). And the most powerful, at a large gathering, tends to be the one with enough self-control to avoid raising his voice to be noticed, and make others listen to him."
One of the thing that really struck me about those meetings was how Alan Rusbridger, the newspaper's editor, set the tone. He has a relatively quiet voice, and as a result the room stayed quiet enough that you could almost hear a pin drop. When he spoke, everyone listened intently. This influenced the whole meeting - people never spoke over each other, everyone paid full attention and a huge amount of information and discussion was covered effectively in a very short space of time.
They will talk very quietly and unclearly without regard to whether you can hear them or not. When the room is silent and everybody is listening intently, you can't help but think that what they have to say is very important. More so than if they were to speak loudly and solicitously.
It's interesting that Talib is consciously advocating this affectation.
I guess there is a certain kind of leader who gains credibility through actions rather than speech. Some leaders try to rouse you through speech -- e.g. Barack Obama definitely leans on his oratorial skills. Others do the opposite -- Larry Page for example. He mumbles, and he doesn't care to repeat himself. It's everyone else's job to figure out what he's saying.
How terrible. This reminds me of so many boring, unclear, tortuous talks by grad students and faculty.
Anyone familiar with that assertion and remember its source? Perhaps I should have had someone whisper it to me in a strange accent.
It would be nice when every talk would be accompanied by a text that deepens the subject, so I can read more about it.
Although a talk is nice, I am always left with a feeling that it barely scratched the surface of the topic.
As a side note: pg, you are a very good writer, you should write more books, please? :)
On Speaking vs. Writing: http://t.co/SYOqGZfm
He thought public speaking relied too much on rhetoric and emotion, whereas with writing it was easier for a sober consideration of the truth to be the prevailing factor.
It's ok for any one person to perfer words, but not everyone prefers reading to a face to face meeting. If that were the case, imagine all the VC pitches consisting of reviewing business plans rather than live pitches.
Even YC places a lot of emphasis on the 10-minute interview in the selection process . So there must be something non-verbal happening, otherwise an exchange of emails would give founders a better opportunity to present the case for their startup.
That's the worst counterexample one could choose. The reason investors want to meet founders in person is precisely because they care as much if not more about the people than the idea.
But for all of this, I don't think the material I convey has suffered in the slightest. One audience member told me that my cryptography-in-one-hour talk was the "most densely packed hour of information" he had ever seen. If being a good speaker pushed me away from having and conveying good ideas, my talks should have been getting progressively less informative, not more so.
I posit that while PG is seeing a real effect, it's not the effect he thinks he's seeing. Rather than style detracting from substance, it seems to me that there's selection bias: In order to be invited to give talks, you must have at least one of {good ideas, good style}. As a result, those talks which are completely devoid of interesting ideas are inevitably given very well -- we never see talks which are given by poor speakers who have no interesting ideas. This in no way means that speaking well is responsible for the lack of substance.
I must have gotten the wrong message from that essay. It seemed to me that from about the third paragraph onwards you were itemizing the bad things about good speakers.
When we need to expand our ideas to the masses, however, the focus becomes less on what the idea is, and more on how it's delivered. Preying on emotion, sequential logic, and subliminal notes, sometimes even the worst of ideas are promoted as good ideas.
In accordance with the last point of your essay, I'm not sure either, that speaking is used more for good. But if that's the case, now that we have so many people with good ideas, perhaps it's time to focus on delivering good ideas, and making the world better that way. (hmm... I just had an idea)
An idea is a signal. It's difficult to send complex signals over long distances while maintaining fidelity. We have to focus on the delivery. So we engage our audience emotionally to get them to listen and repeat messages we want people to understand. Subtle abstract notions are even difficult to deliver at close range. How difficult would it be to deliver one to a crowd without adding more energy (emotion) or simplifying it.
We shouldn't always blame people for not understanding. Sometimes there are good reasons for doing things the way we do them.
These two statements seems to be in direct contradiction of each other.
However I do think that spending some time thinking about how to present your ideas in oral form can indeed help to improve them.
Speaking, however, gives you many more channels, and I refuse to consider these channels (inflection, speed, choice of words, prosody, emotionalization, what have you) mere baggage. Also, it's deceiving to propose that essays are baggage-free. Good style makes a huge difference, even in writing. Compare the great essayists to lowly part-time bloggers: the difference rarely boils down to just ideas. Delivery matters. Emotional content, something Graham appears to see as noise, distorts and enhances in written and spoken form alike.
All in all, I find it a bit too convenient that a mediocre speaker and good essayist happens to think writing is simply the better medium.
Perhaps it is more the case that a man who thinks writing is the better medium has spent more time developing his skills as an essayist than developing his skills as a speaker. In fact, I see the essay as a justification for that decision.
"As I was doing it I tried to imagine what a transcript of the other guy's talk would be like, and it was only then I realized he hadn't said very much."
"Being a really good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction."
"But here again there's a tradeoff between smoothness and ideas. All the time you spend practicing a talk, you could instead spend making it better."
I know quite a few people who are great thinkers and great speakers and maybe that is why I found the article a bit offensive in that regard.
Though the difference in meaning between what you claim I said and what you're able to quote me as saying may seem small to you, there is a critical difference between them: what you claim I said is false, and the sentences you quote are true. I think we both agree on that. Or do you think any of the sentences I actually wrote are false?
I agree with the person you responded to that your essay did come across as having as an undercurrent that good speakers tend not have as much depth in what they say. What you say about spending time on delivery coming at the cost (sometimes!) of content makes sense when I think of politicians and salesmen. I'm don't agree when it comes to more cerebral settings.
[1] edit: Changed "It appears..." to "Your.." because your essays are well thought out and purposeful. It's not just an appearance.
[2] edit: Added the word "may".
Gesture, tone, emphasis, etc... can give an incredible amount of information that people may process quickly and easily. It may alleviate some confusion created by the readers personal interpretation of words.
I think this thread well covers benefits and drawbacks of written versus spoken word. For me, I think of it like I think of various technologies available for a project. There are different tradeoffs and I must consider what I am trying to accomplish, what the pain points are going to be, who my users are, what is available, and make a careful choice.
I'll go ahead and assume that you're simply offering the passage as an anecdote. In that case, however, you're doing what you condemn -- rhetorics over conceptual purity and ideas. Can you elaborate a little?
Playing soccer well depends little on having good ideas. Is someone who says that saying "clarity of thought or soccer ability, pick one?"
a) The guy on stage doesn't have any ideas and is a brilliant speaker. b) Flashiness appears to preclude good ideas, or is at odds with it. c) Hence, I don't want to be a good speaker.
If I'm still getting it wrong, please explain what the anecdote means -- especially given that, apparently, your essays contain only exactly what you intend them to contain.
[EDIT: Slight rephrasing.]
However, a more in depth reading is that being a good speaker is in opposition to the process of improving one's ideas. His example of being captivated by a good speaker, but on further reflection realizing how little content was conveyed, is a case-in-point. You lose the important signal of audience engagement with your ideas if you dazzle them through charisma. Without charisma to charm your audience, all you have left is whether your audience was engaged through the quality of your ideas. So in this sense being a good speaker is in fact in opposition to developing good ideas--you're losing meaningful signal regarding their quality.
This set of posts actually serves as an interesting counterargument to what I interpreted your thesis to be. As I understood it, you feel that writing gives you more time to organize your thoughts, facilitating accuracy and depth more than speaking does. Good speaking, on the other hand, or at least the kind of "good speaking" that refers to being good at captivating an audience, necessarily involves ad-libbing a lot of the details, which means you can't expect to come up with sentences that are as well worded (which usually means as precise or concise) as those you would have delivered in writing. Therefore, writing is the superior medium for delivering information. Period. Speaking is better for things like letting people see you in person (if you're famous) or sometimes better for inspiring people to take action, which you suggest are themselves important, but that speaking is inherently worse than writing for the purpose of conveying information. Am I correct so far? I apparently incorrectly extrapolated that you felt that it's intellectually superior to be a good writer than a good speaker.
Now what was I talking about this discussion serving as a counterexample to your argument? Well, first of all, I agree with everything I think you said up until the conclusion that writing is always more effective than speaking for communicating information. As we saw from this misunderstanding, the written word doesn't provide the author with the live audience feedback that the spoken word does. If multiple readers are confused, the author has no recourse because he does not know that they are confused. Thankfully they can now post comments on the Internet. :) A good speaker, on the other hand, is so in tune with his audience that he knows when they are confused or when his tone seemed misinterpreted, and he can adapt on the spot, providing more examples or changing the inflection of his voice to clarify his tone. George Carlin, one of my favorite comics, was excellent at crafting his routines, but from what I've heard from people who saw him live, was atrocious at interacting with the audience because his written style didn't allow him to deviate from his script. Nevertheless, this afforded him the planning and precision of the written word, and it worked great for him. In fields besides comedy, the written word's advantages naturally win out over the spoken word more frequently, but don't discount good speaking as an effective way to deliver information. Great speakers sometimes get an audience to understand actual content (I've seen multiple speeches were Bill Clinton did that, as well as several TED talks that did) as or more effectively than great writers do.
This statement seems to me to be profoundly wrong.
Perhaps some ways of "playing soccer well" depend little on having good ideas. But soccer is a very complex game: the configuration space of the players on the field is ~2*11 dimensional per team (add the z dimension for jumping and the ball in the air and you see that the total coordinate and momentum space is even vaster than 44 dimensions). Good teams are capable of organizing into configurations on the fly which are more likely to lead to goal than other configurations, and they can do this in response to the configuration of the opposing team. The Spanish team that won the most recent World Cup is a great example of 11 players who self-organize into optimal configurations in real-time.
You might argue that some players can use pure athleticism to navigate through the 44+ dimensional space and score goals. Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona are great examples: see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYet49BToLw. They share a unique build which is suited to their style of soccer playing. They are not tall, have a low center of gravity, they can accelerate and pivot very quickly, and still they have a high top speed. That allows them to make runs like those "Goals of the Century" in the linked video in which they single-handedly beat the opposing team to a score.
However I would still hesitate to say that Messi and Maradona don't need good ideas to make those runs. Exactly where they choose to run probably depends strongly on where the defenders are relative to the ball-carrier's position. Also how fast they choose to run at any moment can depend on how fast those defenders are moving--hence the utility of pivot moves. Watch Messi beat the defender that comes at him from behind at 36-37 seconds, shown from another angle at 48-49 seconds; Messi gives the illusion that he has eyes in the back of his head. But really he has played soccer so much that he can take one glace around the field and calculate which defenders can reach his position and how fast they must be moving and in what direction in order to do so. This is not a trivial calculation to do at the rapid speed required by the game.
One of my favorite positions to play is Center Midfield. This midfielder often has more control than any other player to influence to configuration space of his team. One of my favorite players to watch do this was the brilliant Zinedine Zidane. He was a technically gifted footballer, but that's a relatively small part of why I loved watching him. The main reason is because of his perspicacity and decision-making skills. It is not just as if he has eyes in the back of his head; it is as if he can see the game as we spectators see it, with a birds-eye view. His brain is closer some kind of soccer video game AI that can calculate the optimal place to put the ball based on current configuration of the 22 players.
One of my favorite matches was Zidane vs. Brazil in 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvYlvkWpPy4. Check out what Zidane does at 2:05-2:20. France is already up (on a Zidane assisted goal), so they do not need to score a goal. Still they would rather keep play near the opposing team's goal for the chance to score again and to decrease the likelihood of Brazil equalizing. So Zidane is basically playing keep away for the win. At 2:14 Zidane makes a hand gesture, directing a teammate into the space to his right. Brazil players respond, moving towards the space. Then he makes a pass in the completely opposite direction, which is probably what he planned to do all along. Possession is maintained by France and the clock ticks closer towards their victory.
Truly beautiful.
Zidane was more of an attacking midfielder, which makes his contributions all the more obvious, but even Zidane himself knew that the core of a great team was as far back as the often unheralded position of defensive midfield. When his club Real Madrid sold Claude Makelele and bought David Beckham, Zidane remarked, "Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?"
Despite the presence of more heralded players like Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi, Busquets is likewise the tactical centerpiece of Barcelona, almost purely due to his intelligence on the pitch. In defense, he drops back and positions himself to intercept passes rather than challenging for the ball, and once he has it he almost always makes the right decision where to put it next. And when Barcelona have possession, he pushes forward to form a triangle with the rest of the midfield, providing an open outlet to maintain possession and recycle it. If you chart out the passes Barcelona make in a typical match, there's usually a very heavy triangle between Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets.
The most interesting part of Barcelona's tactic, though, is the way they seem to push even more players into the midfield. Their notional striker is Messi, but in his "false nine" role he plays closer to attacking midfield. Likewise, Barcelona's defenders push forward and hold a very high line. Defensive midfielders like Mascherano and even Busquets have been repurposed to play as central defenders, while Pique can make effective runs forward. Right-back Dani Alves usually rushes forward to play as a winger.
The interesting thing about Barcelona's style of play is that, while it's obviously a tactic well suited for a team full of good passers who have played with each other mostly since childhood, it can be surprisingly effective for other teams. Swansea have used it very effectively in the Premier League this season, while Borussia Mönchengladbach have gone from near-relegation to the Champions League places: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAx9kYx8qo4
A. regardless of how good someone is at public speaking, it is largely independent of their writing skill.
An additional possible inference from the article is:
B. they may/should find it significantly more efficient to impart those or even more ideas in writing than in speech. That is, some aspect of writing itself is simply more efficient than speech for transfer of idea information.
However, I do agree that pg's article does seem to gloss over,
1. the binding effect of emotion to ideas. Emotion is far easier to impart and create via public speaking due to intonation, pauses, story-telling, comedy, body language etc (not even going to add side channels like slides, though they are likely important). Several studies have shown that, for example, comedy is an extremely strong means to reinforce the transfer of new information or complex ideas due to the body's physical and biochemical response.
2. audience interaction does not have to be negative or neutral, but can often reveal how much is new information or what those participants value the most.
Of course, ultimately, to expect pg to cover even a fraction of the full dynamics of public speech and language writing in one blog article maybe is asking a little too much :)
You didn't say "trying to be a good speaker pushes you in the opposite direction of having good ideas"; you said "being", which implies some kind of essence / gift. You are effectively saying, in this sentence, that the gift of speak hinders one's ability to produce good ideas.
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/md2/timewarp/derrida.html
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.
Can you give examples of any specific sentences or passages I wrote that you believe to be false?
What you're suggesting may apply to your personal approach to writing and speaking. As you mention, you feel much more comfortable expressing your thoughts as essays. That's great. There's absolutely no further conclusion we can draw from that.
Frankly these seem such commonplace claims that I think more people would accuse me of wasting the reader's time with platitudes than saying things that are false.
For the sake of completeness I'll defend them anyway:
1. You can't explain something clearly if you don't understand it yourself. Your writing may be fine at the phonetic level, but you won't for example be able to use any metaphors. Your audience will feel like they're being driven in a Ferrari over ploughed fields.
2. Who is generally considered to be better able to cause people to believe mistaken ideas, speakers or writers? When you imagine a demagogue, for example, do you imagine someone speaking before an audience or sitting at a desk writing?
===
You're both right and talking passed each other. Writing and speaking both have their flourishes. Writing has constructs and techniques that are not strictly necessary just as oration does. There are also factors besides the content that affect the results of both mediums: writing something in my notebook does not have the same effect as posting it to my blog. So, as far as the tools available, writing and speaking are on the same level for recording and sharing ideas.
However, people are more susceptible to spoken word. There is a reason that poetry is read aloud. This can be used for good or evil but it does encourage people to spend more time preparing for the "flourishes" of speaking than the content.
I don't think anyone in this thread fundamentally disagrees with those statements :)
Your #1, at least, applies to both speaking and writing. In fact I'd think it applies more to speaking. Think of teachers and lecturers who can explain things with analogies on the fly, vs. those who just repeat things at the same level.
I think it is far rarer to see a flashy writer than a flashy speaker. Malcolm Gladwell is the only one that springs to mind. I think it's actually very hard to pull off as a writer.
This is precisely because of the 'other channels' you mentioned. It's very easy to spot someone trying to pander in writing, where in a crowd you get swept up in the general agreement of the crowd, it's an effective tactic that you often can't pull off in writing.
OTOH people who like him tend not to like Dave Eggers, and vice versa. I personally love Dave Eggers.
This is where discipline enters. When a speaker says something that fires a massive neuron in your brain, ignore the next five-ten sentences the speaker is saying and start writing.
When you're in school, you take notes on lectures to pass a test, so you have to listen to every sentence. School trains your brain to do this, and you need to untrain it.
When you're at a conference, you're listening to the speaker so you can do something (hopefully) excellent with the information they're giving you.
When the speaker provides you with a spark of inspiration, that's when you need to disengage from the talk and let your own brain take it from there. You'll only miss a handful of sentences, and you'll pack a thought-food lunch for later. You'll get more out of the talk then if you try to consume and register every sentence - many of which won't be nearly as useful.
"Sometimes I have to pause when I lose my train of thought."
A lot of people state this as a fault in their presentation skills, but is it really? It can be quite powerful and captivating with pauses in an ever streaming chain of talking, and I really don't think the audience mind.
It certainly is hard work to get there, but it may be worth it. For example, I didn't watch the pycon video because I've seen the comments and can't tolerate bad sound quality or speech that is difficult to follow. Sorry.
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"Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle," confessed Vladimir Nabokov in 1962. He took up the point more personally in his foreword to Strong Opinions (1973): "I have never delivered to my audience one scrap of information not prepared in typescript beforehand … My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French.
"At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts … nobody should ask me to submit to an interview … It has been tried at least twice in the old days, and once a recording machine was present, and when the tape was rerun and I had finished laughing, I knew that never in my life would I repeat that sort of performance."
We sympathise. And most literary types, probably, would hope for inclusion somewhere or other on Nabokov's sliding scale: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."
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[1] Foreword, The Quotable Hitchens.
For example, Steve Jobs keynotes made you go to the Apple Online Store and preorder the latest products; Bret Victor in his "Inventing on Principle" talk makes you rant about the current state of IDEs.
The effect of a talk disappears rapidly after the speaker has left the stage. In contrast, a written text stays.
I couldn't have put it more succinctly myself.
Motivation is speech's primary function. Getting you to vote, or buy something, or work harder, or learn something. Everyone who is trying to get a group of people to do something is using speeches at some point.
The effect of a talk does not have to "disappear rapidly" after the talk is over. That is why you will find lots of old Jobs keynotes on youtube, because they are still very powerful, and useful, interesting, educational, and motivating even when the products discussed are no longer being sold.
Giving talks is about leading. Be it rallying the staff, conveying a vision, or providing an update, the main thing is to inspire, connect, motivate and direct. Some very self-motivated people hate talks because they already have what they need in that area and would prefer just a document of instructions. Most people, however, appreciate good leadership and appreciate talks.
Talks are for implementing ideas. Conversation is for understanding and generating ideas. Writing/thinking is for generating ideas.
By this standard, I'd say PG is an excellent speaker regardless of any superfluous "ums". I recall back in 2006 at the first Railsconf, I was at lunch with Martin Fowler (arguably one of the best speakers in our industry who happened to be keynoting at that Railsconf) and some other co-workers. The food was was taking to long to come out so Martin Fowler left because he didn't want to miss PG speak. I had no idea who PG was but figured I shouldn't miss his talk if Fowler thought it was worth skipping lunch for.
I remember PG literally up there, head down, reading the easy (http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html) for his keynote. It didn't matter that the audience didn't laugh or that he was visibly uncomfortable. What mattered was how our thinking was influenced afterward. It certainly "motivated" me enough to send my life on a completely new trajectory.
I think one of the best things about speaking is that it allows you to emphasize the parts which are important.
The important distinction is in writing you are giving out ideas to the audience and let them decipher all. But with speaking you get this additional power using pauses, emphasis etc. to notify the audience what are the important points and wherethe whole talk/presentation is revolving around. Maybe PG's audience is very smart most of the time and he just need to float the ideas and let them measure everything.
And not to forget if the language of communication is not exactly your native language (or your not that good at it) then your writing could end up making your whole essay a pile of shit (e.g. this comment ;) )
Isn't the very definition of funny is that it makes people laugh? Laughter is inherently a social, group bonding phenomena. Inherently, a social, group gathering will have more laughter. There is no such thing as something being objectively funny, funny only exists inside a group and social context, which provides the opportunity for the group to bond at someone's expense (possibly someone inside the group, possibly someone or something outside the group).
If only HNers would read basic Intro to Psychology books, there would not be so many chimes of "I noticed this too" and, hopefully, more discussion of what actually goes on in the world and how things actually work.
It's just that when you see comments like these -- "I noticed that" or "me too" -- you so rarely see "and then I wondered why, and here's what I found…" as a follow-up.
The conversation is poorer because "I noticed" is where it ends.
Stories, on the other hand, like "How YC started" would be much more engaging to hear from you than read. The content of the stories should be interesting enough ("Never a dull moment?"), so that you don't have to make any extra effort to seem interesting.
I believe so. And sometimes I think, maybe, pg crossed that line.
There is an opportunity cost associated with different 'top ideas' or perhaps in this case 'top attitudes' in one's mind. If one's interest is in delivering a great speech, that does impugn upon great thinking.
However, the key is just don't give talks on ideas that are too fresh (unless you plan on using the feedback and dialogic nature of talks to your advantage -- but that's less 'talks' and more 'conversations' or Socratic dialogues, etc.). If the goal is to deliver a great speech, you have to have an idea that is fixed so that you can spend your energy applying it to the audience's situation.
Yes, in rare situations one can do both (dynamically eval and dynamically apply), but they are somewhat overlapping, competing tasks.
ETA. One more quick thought -- making this a long post:
I think a lot of public speaking is giving the audience opportunities to 'latch on' to what one is saying. And it's easiest to do this by repeating yourself in various different ways that may interest the listener (different listeners latch on based on different shared life experiences, etc.).
Essay writing is similar. But in that form, you give the reader an opportunity to pause at any time and re-read or just think about the material. This advantage in turn means that less repetition (however artfully enhanced in speech) is required.
People are also better at skimming to what they think is important in essays. So they will skim over structural 'ums' (style that they don't find helpfully repetitive). Whereas, in speech an audience will tend to latch onto whatever is repeated.
Hence, if you choose behavior that focuses on formulation of thoughts repetitively in waves, extemporaneously speaking is more natural. If you choose behavior that insists on sifting towards the truth (and I've seen that recording of PG writing an essay), then written words can be more natural. Everyone can do both with practice, but they are different I think.
It's incorrect to say one is more 'truthful' than the other. In aggregate, knowledge among #'s of people in the universe can be about the same with both (e.g., great speaking brings a lot of people a little bit forwards; great essay writing and thinking can bring a more limited set a little more forward -- but the total area may be the same at the end of the day... -- note, these are generalized examples based on a perceived average type of speech and average type of essay).
What I like about speaking that you don't get from writing:
1) Seeing people's reaction in near real-time. This is a good feedback loop when you're working on how to explain a new product or feature before producing an on-demand recording that could be viewed by 1000x the people in the audience. It's like a focus-group or a series of live A/B tests.
2) A chance to convert the less-dedicated into customers/fans/subscribers. It seems a lot of people are too lazy to read long articles let alone books these days. A good video can go a long way. I watched a lecture by Eric Ries and immediately acquired The Lean Startup for my Kindle.
I think speaking is a great way to get people excited about a topic and teach them a handful of concepts. If my talk is successful, I will have inspired many to drill in on the topic later or become a fan of my product, my podcast, or my standup comedy. I always try to accompany my talks with easy-to-remember URLs or QR codes so that it minimizes the friction between their interest for more information and taking the next step.