Four Tips for Public Speaking

April 15, 2013 By 12 Comments
debate-rostrum

During a call for post topics, I signed up to write a post on speaking tips for LessWrong, which is up today.  I thought it might be fun to cross-post here.  Most of it is tailored to talking, but it can be applicable to writing anything from comments to posts.  I've done a fair amount of debate and murderboarding (helping people prepare for interviews) so these are the four tips that help the people I've talked to have the most marginal improvement: Fortissimo! Don't apologize for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Debate Tactics 12 Comments

Can We Play Not-Nicely Better, Please?

April 10, 2013 By 120 Comments

And speaking of sparing feelings without pulling punches, there's been a donnybrook going between Tom McDonald (Catholic) and Hemant Mehta (atheist) and JT Eberhard waded in yesterday.  I'm not planning to tag in exactly, but I would like to suggest that they have a slightly different fight. Both Tom's original post mocking atheism and Hemant and JT's rejoinder seemed pitched particularly to their own sides, so, even though the posts got pretty heated, it has kind of the effect of a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Apologetics, Atheism, Debate Tactics 120 Comments

Am I enabling blasphemy?

April 9, 2013 By 260 Comments
hand over mouth

While the commenting system changes over, some disputes in the content of the comments stay the same.  And there was a recent tete-a-tete I'd think needs a post worth of response.  In Cam's reply/objection to Scott's essay on suffering and optimal search strategies, Cam went through a couple of the usual objections to theodicy and then exclaimed: Why are there multiple types of suffering? Is your deity a sadistic fuckhead? Let’s accept all of the arguments offered by the author. This … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Debate Tactics Tagged With: , 260 Comments