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Journal by The Mighty Buzzard
Something I've been thinking about a bit lately is the ability to communicate your message well. I'm not the best at it but it's not difficult to spot those who really are. Their number sure as fuck doesn't include Jordan Peterson. Or most any intellectual, especially with an academia background, for that matter.
You know who the best are? Really good standup comedians. They have to be. If you need to explain a joke, it's no longer funny. If you're consistently not funny, you have to get a dreaded day job.
If you want to take up public speaking in any sort of persuasive capacity, you could do a lot worse than to learn from them.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Operator, please trace this call and tell me where I am.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 13 2019, @01:44AM (2 children)
That's the main thing that can be learned from comedians, yes. They don't have the luxury of being long-winded and getting sidetracked by minutiae. They have to speak so as to be easily understood by 95% of their audience and convey their meaning extremely efficiently or the joke dies. That academics specifically and intellectuals in general are largely unable to do this is why most people have little to no interest in listening to them [youtube.com].
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:59AM (1 child)
You're comparing apples to oranges. Playing on emotions as a comedian does is a much different form of communication than conveying knowledge and information.
Making someone laugh, cry or get angry requires significantly different skills and strategies from expositing complex sets of ideas like quantum mechanics, demand curves or game theory.
Louis CK would crash and burn trying to explain cell regulation through potassium channels. However, a biologist would likely be able to do so fairly well, even if he or she ended up pelted with rotten fruit at a comedy club's open mike night.
That's not to say that academics are all wonderful communicators of ideas, especially in verbal contexts. However, many do communicate well verbally.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 17 2019, @03:46AM
No, as a general rule they're complete shit at it. At best they can impart the message they're trying to convey eventually but very few of them excel at imparting it to a wide audience or with any particular efficiency. They have the luxury of having an audience that has self-selected to be there and has to take the consequences for their failure rather than the egghead in question having to do it themselves. That does not push communication skills worth a damn, thus very little growth in ability happens.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.