Comment by kanzure | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kanzure | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> If you've ever read a verbatim transcript of an interview or conversation, you'll know that actual speech is anything but clear

When I go to conferences and sit in the audience, I type transcripts in real-time. I somewhat agree with you, but I have some other evidence that I don't know what to do with:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/

I have found that some people are amazingly well spoken. Absurdly well spoken, as if they specifically chose words so that I could transcribe and type them more easily. Matt Corallo has been really easy to type:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/mit-bitcoin-expo-2015/matt...

For comparison, gmaxwell is more difficult to transcribe because of compressed deeply parenthetical spike bursts:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/gmaxwell-bitcoin-selection...

and I remember jgarzik gave me lots of trouble recently during his talk:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/issues-impa...

For more comparison, here was an impromptu sit-down session with a few (high-energy) friends:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/snarks/

Great results abound when making authoritative statements. I find that I sound the most elegant for hours after I am done with some 10 hour high-concentration programming session. I attribute this to paying more attention to the purpose of communication, whether to transfer knowledge or achieve some other goal, and that good writing/speech is very similar to good programming.

And I have low tolerance for communication when the epistemology is all wrong....

Generally speaking, people who give talks have them prepared beforehand. They practice speaking it, to make sure that it's clear and understandable. So to say that it's easy to write a transcript for a planned talk isn't really saying anything. It's already been written, and writing the transcript of the presentation is just a rewrite. Not all talks are prewritten, but almost all of the good ones are.

I'd also like to note that presentations are very dissimilar to conversations, and some interviews. Conversations are at least a two-directional flow of information (more directions with more people), whereas the bulk of presentations are a one-way flow of information.

Even if they're not "prewritten", they have generally been prepared. For example, if I give a talk, I'll at least have made (mental or written) notes on what points I want to make and in what order.

When I'm in a natural conversation, the list of points I want to make is made up on the fly and is usually quite fluid (changes back and forth as I or the other people talk as a function of what is being said).

That is, talks, even if not already "written", are not the same as natural conversation at all.

I also find that really great impromptu speakers actually do speak more coherently in their natural conversations too. I assume because they're used to pre-editing what they're saying in their heads as they talk.

I don't consider myself a great speaker by any means, but yes, I do find myself pre-editing my sentences when I give a talk. Prewritten talks are no exception. I always need to edit them on the fly to suit the audience and the context.

If natural speech were a modern programming language, prewriting would be analogous to compiling to bytecode. Then you JIT compile it again when you speak. You rarely go directly from source code to machine language, perhaps because there's so much diversity among the "machines" (humans).

Heck, I even "transpile" my talks from time to time. The last time I gave a presentation, my paper was written in English but I had to present it in Korean! Needless to say, that wasted a lot of brain cycles.

Other replies mention the atypical preparedness of presentation text; but I have noticed what you describe in normal life, in normal conversation: some people do indeed seem to speak as if they'd had a chance to revise the sentences / paragraphs in advance. Is it that they care more, and a lifetime's practice has resulted in that kind of automatic organization?

Quite often, I'll have run through a whole series of variations on the probable avenues that a conversation or meeting could take. If you deal regularly with the other party in the conversation, you can often predict with pretty good accuracy what they are going to say. Most spoken communication is just trudging through the same well-established ruts, and throwing out the same sound-bite loops.

Eventually you get to the point that you know that when subject X comes up, Bob is going to deploy his well-worn chestnut that you've heard 147 times before, and you can damn-near repeat it word-for-word.

> Most spoken communication is just trudging through the same well-established ruts, and throwing out the same sound-bite loops.

You're hanging out with the wrong people. Or something.

> when subject X comes up, Bob is going to deploy his well-worn chestnut that you've heard 147 times before,

You should stop hanging with Bob. There are other people out there who have real conversations about what's going on with them, their view of current events, their new ideas for what ought to be done, their new inspirations. . .

I think the more likely and plausible explanation for why some people sound more prepared when speaking is because... they simply are better at it. They've practiced thinking through things, and are adept at putting thought into words. They've developed the think-and-communicate muscle, through lots and lots of practice, and now they can use that muscle with greater effectiveness than your average bear.

This Pico Iyer TED talk is a great example of how a talk can be so well crafted, rehearsed, and mapped, and yet still so conversational and welcoming. Almost a inversion of PG's piece — type as you talk and then talk as you typed.

https://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_home?language=e...

This is very interesting. Just by skimming the texts, there's a noticeable difference. Matt's paragraphs generally start with "So I..." or "So you/we.." and it's possible to grasp the overall flow of the logic even by looking the beginning of each paragraph, whereas gmaxwell/jgarzik often starts with statements like "This is..." or "I think..." where the relation to previous paragraphs is less clear. Thanks for sharing this.

Depends what sort of conference for a formal one most of the speeches will be planed before hand and speakers will be trying for rhetorical effect and its not natural speech.

And some experienced speakers will have their speaches written out and timed.

Have you never given a presentation in your life? They are practiced and prepared beforehand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com