Comments on: Against Interesting Details

By: rnbr

rnbr — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:35:06 +0000

Yes, what I remember most from college was the time a Shakespeare professor was moved to tears by his discussion of the power of second chances–of redemption–in The Winter’s Tale. I now teach English myself, and the moments when I speak from the heart are the moments when my students are most attentive. My student surveys bear this out.

By: frelkins

frelkins — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:22:40 +0000

@mikko

“specific patterns of emotions”

Indeed. But these books and all the speaker training I have taken stress the use of such to help guide audiences to your point and to help them remember it. Robin’s suggestion that the emotion alone is the key item impresses me as novel.

By: Mikko

Mikko — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:20:52 +0000

Then we agree: Lectures Aren’t About Points. They are about setting and calibrating a group emotion or sense of belonging?

Basic treatises on rhetoric emphasize that some specific patterns of emotions work better than single emotion.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 04:01:01 +0000

I’m going to have to remember this. I love to add what I consider interesting details but, as noted, the point is to make learning happen.

Good to know, Robin.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:46:40 +0000

Wouldn’t it depend on relationship between the interesting details and the main point?

Once I was participating in an online discussion about hygiene. Someone mentioned that he’d done an experiment in a biology class about the cleanliness of various body parts, and one of the results was that peoples’ hands tended to be dirtier than their genitals. My response was “so a flexible guy would be better off rubbing his eyes with his dick?”

Sorry, I’m not usually anonymous, but I wouldn’t want to tarnish my good name!

By: frelkins

frelkins — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:00:15 +0000

@Robin

“the degree and type of passion the speaker feels”

Then we agree: Lectures Aren’t About Points. They are about setting and calibrating a group emotion or sense of belonging?

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:04:23 +0000

frelkins, yes often the key point from the listener and speaker’s point of view is the degree and type of passion the speaker feels. I don’t like those talks much myself either, but they do focus on a main point.

By: frelkins

frelkins — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:40:15 +0000

I have attended many difficult lectures. I remember one particular day when we were doing conic sections from Apollonius in Greek – everyone had to go to the board and demonstrate the proof they had learned, as well as successfully answer questions about it from the rest of the tutorial.

We were doing one of the least interesting ones, I recall, but the tutor himself, who rarely spoke, took that moment to discuss why mathematics is beautiful, and geometry especially so. Instead of thinking – abscissas! – I now remember that day as a turning point in my entire education. (How on earth could anyone have such an experience in Powerpoint?)

But this was a case to Robin’s point – there were no folksy sports references or asides involving movie catchphrases. Instead the tutor spoke wisely and from his own heart – as a result, I remain touched to this day.

In my own work, which requires a great amount of public speaking, I attempt to emulate this moment, of speaking from the heart, of using whatever the day’s topic is to illustrate the true theme – and when I succeed at this, I am told the audience enjoys it most. Anything can be made interesting once become clear the speaker is talking from their own passion and candor.

By: billswift

billswift — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:12:06 +0000

“Hear it and forget it; see it and remember it; do it and learn it.”

an old adage, source unknown (meaning I don’t care enough to Google
for it and I have seen it many times in slightly different versions)

I remember quite a bit from books I read back then, including the textbooks.
The only thing I remember from the lectures I attended was a funny story
my Zoology 101 professor told.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:57:06 +0000

Soulless and James, yes many listeners prefer details to a big point, and may not listen if you don’t give them what they want.