There is something poisonous about this presentation, that I can’t quite verbalize. My impression is that it says the right things, but in a wrong way.
The format clearly has potential though.
ETA: My complaint is about the content presented with text, not its style, voice acting or the video sequence. Connotation, not denotation or presentation.
I just tried to read your mind from a distance, and this is what I got:
The video’s central debating technique is latching on to a word (“open-minded”) that presumably carries good connotations even for a superstitious viewer, and using this applause light to drag the viewer through to unwelcome conclusions. “If you think this concept corresponds to good, then you have no option but to think this and that are also good.” The Internet abounds with examples of this persuasion style, e.g. in politics: “if you like democracy, you must also like X” whatever X is. We could call this tactic “value extortion”. Can’t imagine it successfully converting an emotional person—they would just tune out, instinctively feeling it’s something akin to mind-rape, even if the concepts presented are totally valid.
I imagine a better approach would be closer to seduction than rape, much softer and less confrontational, defusing questions in the viewer’s head at just the moment they’re ready to ask them. Takes a lot of effort and empathy though, over and above logically valid reasoning.
It’s not Bayesian—he’s implying more-than-one-dimensional stance to beliefs which says you get to decide when to adopt a belief as yours or not, rather than simply assigning numbers according to Bayesian statistics.
Honestly, I’m not sure if that’s an improvement over “can’t quite verbalize” but hopefully that starts to express what the problem was.
There’s a bit of “dark side” style argumentation and use of examples, though on the whole it seems well-done. The ghost-lamp anecdote is one example; it illustrates his point, but being the only example he uses, suggests that the other side is pretty much just missing obvious explanations (which is possible, but it’s not very good evidence of that point).
He also throws around a lot of stop-light, connotation-heavy pejorative terms in a few cases. They may be entirely accurate, but I don’t think their purpose is promoting rational understanding.
There is something poisonous about this presentation, that I can’t quite verbalize.
Here’s my verbalization attempt:
First, it’s way too complex—too much stuff on the screen. I’d simplify it to the limit.
Second, personally, I don’t like the color scheme and style they used—I always found colors like these depressing (this is purely subjective impression, others may like it.) Since the video is about the art of clear thinking, I’d use a clearer, simpler, less muddy palette (varied grays/blues, white, and occasional concentrated orange/red/yellow for accenting). Perhaps the muddy colors can be employed to convey unclear thinking (as contrasted by clear thinking) - e.g. the scenes with the irrationalist guy can use this scheme.
Third, the characters seem the same—it’s hard for me to visually distinguish the “good guy” from the “bad guy”—they all look like “American comic book guys from the sixties” to me. Perhaps some stereotyping would help here.
Fourth, the voiceover (and/or) the script seemed boring to me. No turning points, no accents, just several minutes of uninspired monotonous speech.
Two ideas how to fix this: 1. use a professional voice actor, and 2. rewrite the plot to include accents / turning points / reversals etc. (the Bardic conspiracy should have some advice on this). Adding some striking / scary examples would help as well (e.g. Solomon Asch conformity experiment.)
Finally, the video is way too long for today’s attention spans. Should be a couple of minutes maximum.
There is something poisonous about this presentation, that I can’t quite verbalize. My impression is that it says the right things, but in a wrong way.
The format clearly has potential though.
ETA: My complaint is about the content presented with text, not its style, voice acting or the video sequence. Connotation, not denotation or presentation.
I just tried to read your mind from a distance, and this is what I got:
The video’s central debating technique is latching on to a word (“open-minded”) that presumably carries good connotations even for a superstitious viewer, and using this applause light to drag the viewer through to unwelcome conclusions. “If you think this concept corresponds to good, then you have no option but to think this and that are also good.” The Internet abounds with examples of this persuasion style, e.g. in politics: “if you like democracy, you must also like X” whatever X is. We could call this tactic “value extortion”. Can’t imagine it successfully converting an emotional person—they would just tune out, instinctively feeling it’s something akin to mind-rape, even if the concepts presented are totally valid.
I imagine a better approach would be closer to seduction than rape, much softer and less confrontational, defusing questions in the viewer’s head at just the moment they’re ready to ask them. Takes a lot of effort and empathy though, over and above logically valid reasoning.
There comes a time to hire a professional Sith Lord...
It’s not Bayesian—he’s implying more-than-one-dimensional stance to beliefs which says you get to decide when to adopt a belief as yours or not, rather than simply assigning numbers according to Bayesian statistics.
Honestly, I’m not sure if that’s an improvement over “can’t quite verbalize” but hopefully that starts to express what the problem was.
There’s a bit of “dark side” style argumentation and use of examples, though on the whole it seems well-done. The ghost-lamp anecdote is one example; it illustrates his point, but being the only example he uses, suggests that the other side is pretty much just missing obvious explanations (which is possible, but it’s not very good evidence of that point).
He also throws around a lot of stop-light, connotation-heavy pejorative terms in a few cases. They may be entirely accurate, but I don’t think their purpose is promoting rational understanding.
Here’s my verbalization attempt:
First, it’s way too complex—too much stuff on the screen. I’d simplify it to the limit.
Second, personally, I don’t like the color scheme and style they used—I always found colors like these depressing (this is purely subjective impression, others may like it.) Since the video is about the art of clear thinking, I’d use a clearer, simpler, less muddy palette (varied grays/blues, white, and occasional concentrated orange/red/yellow for accenting). Perhaps the muddy colors can be employed to convey unclear thinking (as contrasted by clear thinking) - e.g. the scenes with the irrationalist guy can use this scheme.
Third, the characters seem the same—it’s hard for me to visually distinguish the “good guy” from the “bad guy”—they all look like “American comic book guys from the sixties” to me. Perhaps some stereotyping would help here.
Fourth, the voiceover (and/or) the script seemed boring to me. No turning points, no accents, just several minutes of uninspired monotonous speech.
Two ideas how to fix this: 1. use a professional voice actor, and 2. rewrite the plot to include accents / turning points / reversals etc. (the Bardic conspiracy should have some advice on this). Adding some striking / scary examples would help as well (e.g. Solomon Asch conformity experiment.)
Finally, the video is way too long for today’s attention spans. Should be a couple of minutes maximum.