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I'm in a public speaking club and we often separate content (topic, grammar) from the presentation (e.g. good use of gestures) I've come to regard Gladwell as
by phaedryx 4y ago
I'm in a public speaking club and we often separate content (topic, grammar) from the presentation (e.g. good use of gestures)
I've come to regard Gladwell as strong on presentation (writing-wise), weak on content.
- azmodeus 4y agoWhat public speaking club is it? Around me toastmasters and more exclusive university clubs are the only options
- phaedryx 4y agoToastmasters
- xu_ituairo 4y agoHe fumbled bad (in my opinion) in this recent Munk debate, "Be it resolved, don't trust mainstream media," against Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8OgH9EfxuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8OgH9EfxuM
- chitowneats 4y agoNot just in your opinion. The 39% swing away from Gladwell's position, in favor of the affirmative, is the largest swing in the history of the Munk debates.
- tptacek 4y agoNot super surprising given the audience and the history of those debates.
- chitowneats 4y agoCan you please elaborate? What type of audience does one expect to not support a particular claim at the start, then to swing their opinion wildly in favor of it?
- tptacek 4y agoI'm just looking at the results of all the previous debates on Wikipedia. Whatever the starting vote on this issue was, the result of the debate falls sort of coherently in line with previous results.
- chitowneats 4y agoMichael McFaul absolutely trounced Mearsheimer on the Ukraine issue. The forum may feature more conservatives than liberals, but the result is not a forgone conclusion. This is evidenced by 30+ point swings in recent debates, where both the liberal and conservative position have prevailed. I encourage you to reconsider your assessment.
- tptacek 4y agoThe Ukraine debate is I think the one example I think you can come up with, and something like 50% of conservatives are on the same page as liberals on Ukraine.
- chitowneats 4y agoIf you actually watch the debate, you can see the audience shift from their initial position to their final one. I don't buy your premise that the outcome is predetermined based on the political bias you've implied with your comments.
- tptacek 4y agoI'm simply observing that if you look at the history of these debates, there's a pretty coherent ideology to the winning side. That's all. Make of it what you will. If I got to bet on this debate before it occurred, I'd have put all my money on the "against the mainstream media" square, and then taken out a loan to get more money to put down.
- 4y ago
- gnicholas 4y agoThe audience was slightly in favor of the media in the pre-debate poll. Or do you think they weren't really, but were massively sandbagging? I admit that it's a possibility, but that wouldn't explain why this was apparently the largest pre/post swing in Munk history.
- scifibestfi 4y agoHow much of that is him vs the media being impossible to defend at this point?
- chitowneats 4y agoIf they are impossible to defend, why did he participate in a Munk debate where his sole purpose was to defend them? Clearly he doesn't agree with your premise. For that he deserves criticism.
- throwaway09223 4y agoThe phrase "impossible to defend" implies a successful defense.
- gnicholas 4y agoIn the pre-debate vote, trust in media had a 4 point edge (52/48), and in the open-minded poll, 82% said they were open to changing their mind. He and Michelle Goldberg were beaten soundly by a guy whose first name Malcom got wrong, and a guy whose last name Malcom got wrong (repeatedly, in both cases).
- gcanyon 4y agoI've watched about 40 minutes of that debate -- does it improve at all? The pro side seemed content to provide compelling anecdotes almost exclusively. The con side was also presenting anecdotes, but Gladwell at least made the crucial point that the mainstream media at least has a process for discovering and reporting the truth. The "both sides" game from the pro team was excruciating. As an aside, even when it comes to the anecdotes, Matt Taibbi was incredibly disingenuous about the one thing I fact-checked: his reporting on ivermectin. Sure, he might not have said "everyone should take ivermectin." But in the very first interview I hit with him about it his statements can be summarized as: "Ivermectin is a miracle drug for treating parasites." -- this sets up a kind of expert opinion fallacy: if Ivermectin is so good at fighting parasites, and viruses are sort of like parasites, right? So Ivermectin might be good for Covid. Then he says, "Some studies have given weak evidence supporting the use of Ivermectin for Covid." This elides so much about those early studies. Then he says, "And no one can talk about it [those positive studies]." It boils down to "tell me you think Ivermectin is good for Covid without saying the words 'Ivermectin is good for Covid'" and it makes me doubt anything Taibbi says. And the fact that he can have said that and then claim that he never supported Ivermectin tells me he will lie to prove a point.
- dtornabene 4y agoHe's an awful public speaker though, fwiw. Maybe he's changed since the time I saw him but it was....less than satisfying.
- tptacek 4y agoGladwell? Have you heard his Moth story? Or his podcast? He's annoyingly good at it (anything Gladwell is good at is annoying, of course).
- dtornabene 4y agoI'm unfortunately quite familiar, and I heard him speak in person in Cambridge MA, many years ago when he was in the first period of his fame. Its not just my own feelings about him or his dishonesty, he truly was a lackluster speaker and the person who brought me to hear him was slightly embarrassed!
- dreamcompiler 4y agoGladwell's like a TED talk. Both taste good but at some point you realize you just ate a bunch of empty calories.