@Zaine, I considered a lesswrong post on it, but it is very difficult to give general advice on the topic due to interactions between identity and voice, the fact that many people already use many techniques and so could get bored with a list, etc etc. How would you advise structuring such a sharing post?
pscheyer
Karma: 226
Yes, i am referring to your normal speaking voice. Khargyraa and Tuvan techniques in particular add undertones to your normal speaking voice, making it seem deeper and more resonant when the exercises are performed regularly. It is not that your ‘normal voice’ becomes more resonant, but that the concept of ‘normal voice’ is actually based on a combination of vocal chords and you simply add to the mix, increasing the apparent depth and resonance of the timbre which the brain sums the voice into. In short, yes, I am referring to normal speaking voice, though it also allows some fun things when singing. Like metal screams without injuring vocal chords, at any register.
‘How does being able to do it make a difference when you’re speaking normally?’ The vocal exercises drop your register immediately, particularly even a moment or two of Khargyraa will sort of… remind you that you have a lower register under your normal voice for no extra work, and sticks with you for about an hour if stressless or fifteen mins if stressed (public speaking, etc.). Also after extended use you develop the additional vocal muscles- it’s like working on your core to increase your run times, by improving a range of seldom-used muscles you gain capabilities in your mains.
‘Did you or any of your classmates find it did long-term harm to the high singing voice?’ We weren’t singing students. It was a Voice Projection for Stage class, followed by Diction and Dialects. Personally i’ve found that my high singing voice is more accurately pitched, but that may be due to an entirely different suite of exercises i’ve been pursuing simultaneously.
I laughed at ‘back when they were inexplicably called ’minicamps.″ As a member of the first minicamp, which was to be a truncated version of the first Rationality Boot Camp, i find it amusing to watch the memetic evolution into a workshop. Not that workshop is, really, any less arbitrary, just more commonly used for CFAR’s sort of thing.
Learn some basic voice production for stage techniques. How your voice sounds is an absurdly strongly weighted component of a first impression, particularly over a phone or prior to direct introduction, and being able to project your voice in a commanding fashion has an overpowered influence on how much people listen to you and consider you a ‘natural leader.’ In particular, learn what it means to speak from the diaphragm, and learn some basic exercises for strengthening your subsidiary vocal chords like Khargyraa and basic tuvan throat singing, and you’ll be surprised at how much it makes people sit up and listen. You might coincidentally have your voice drop into a lower register after about a month of such exercises, it (anecdatally) happened to me and several people in my voice production for stage class in college. (class of 25, 6 people had their voices drop within the first 4 months, teacher said those numbers were normal.)
Most people just assume you’re born with a voice and have to deal with it, which is demonstrably untrue, and so they consider your voice to reflect your character.
FYI, this training is part of USAF basic training. With more yelling. I wouldn’t call it a pleasant routine, but it’s certainly effective when you do it for six hours straight and start to get an adrenaline surge when your alarm goes off.
That still persists 1.5 years later, so it may be a munchkin hack in itself.
If you can argue for anything, you can choose to argue for what matters to you. If you can’t create arguments and understand the structure of arguments and the valid points inherent in any perspective, including those which you don’t believe, then all you can do is parrot the arguments you’ve heard before.
well, the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic#Theorized_psychological_heuristics) on heuristics claims five ‘well known’ heuristics, which they list as ‘Anchoring and adjustment, Availability heuristic, Representativeness heuristic, Naïve diversification, Escalation of commitment.’
Good point, though. Maybe a series of posters would be better for this topic.
Looks like a good time.
I’d like to see a poster of a person thinking with the top five heuristics/biases floating around them. I’d buy that poster and keep it right behind my computer on the wall as a reminder.
I wonder how many Akrasia or other self-help techniques could benefit from a little prediction and data gathering on the part of the participants. I imagine it would be productive for someone to say ‘well… I tried Getting Things Done back in August for three weeks, and by September I wasn’t remembering to enter anything in my GTD log, so for whatever reason it didn’t mesh with the way of doing things I’d already had.’ More productive, at least, than trying GTD for three weeks every year because ‘i recall it sort of worked out last time. For a while.’
It seems that some self-help methods never ask their adherents to test the goals of the framework against the results, and I wonder if some ingrained fear of permanent records of failure is behind this. Regardless of the cause, I’d be interested to see how keeping logs of key goals correlated with the effectiveness of self-help techniques in general.
I prefer the outside view when speaking with good friends, because they know me well enough to gather what I’m really saying isn’t ‘Stop Here!’ but rather ‘Explain to me why I shouldn’t stop here?’
Perhaps this isn’t really the outside view but the trappings of the outside view used rhetorically to test whether the other party is willing to put some effort into explaining their views. The Outside View as a test of your discussion partner.
The Inside View can be a conversation halter as well; going ‘farther inside’ or ‘farther outside’ than your partner can deal with halts the conversation, not the fact that you’ve taken an inside/outside view by itself.
Also, am I the only one who sees clear links between Outside/inside Views and methods of avoiding the tragedies of the Anticommons/Commons? Seems like the Outside view does a good job of saying ‘By continuing to gather evidence you are hurting your ability to remain rational!’ while the Inside view says ‘Your Grand Idea is irrational considering this evidence!’
@the other dave, those are excellent for singing and, when actively used, social situations, but there are other techniques which are more passive. The Khargyraa, Tuvan, Diaphragm Breathing, Nasal Passage Opening, and some more general speech techniques including speaking slowly, pausing often, knowing when to gesture, all of these contribute more effectively to your impression than the techniques you mention, which fade as soon as you get caught in the moment.