I’ve told people to develop a lesson plan - but an engaging lesson plan (and yes there is structure for that too) - the goal is to have them learn new facts about your work - I’m not sure emotion is involved other than curiosity
Communication is an interesting human endeavour, including the institutionalised/captured version of it, which is more or less what's being discussed here. A fairly standard axiom of institutionalised comms is they aim to manipulate the intended audience, which is quite effectively implied here. I get that ethics as a subject matter isn't really up for discussion in this forum, but I think manipulation of others is worth reflection, both in the parochial and normative senses. In my experience, including as a professional communicator, the semantics of 'manipulation' can be pretty variable and it's worth clarifying my own here. I've seen some people consider manipulation to be anything that influences decision making in another. I do not mean this. I mean any kind of deception employed to influence decision making. I do not include sincere expressions of truth in my definition of manipulation, obviously. I feel inclusion of expression of truth and deception in the same definition allows people to justify the latter by muddying its distinction from the former. And, that's not just theoretical; not only have I witnessed it, it's commonplace.
So in the context here, say in relation to the first story type explained, this point was made:
"Audiences are quite sensitive to challenges that weren’t fully resolved. They will typically describe such situations using words such as “the ending was disappointing.” They may not know exactly why they feel this way, but they know that something was off. Don’t put your audience into this position."
Why is putting your audience in this position bad? Is it not pretty great that they're sensitive to holes or flaws in our knowledge, including that which we're discussing in the moment. Well, we're not really giving presentations to inform, are we. Not in this society, and not in contemporary institutionalised science (let's call it Science). These presentations are undertaken primarily to impress. Truth is unquestionably a lesser priority, and I get the necessary implication of fraud there, but truth is still a priority. If it wasn't, Science wouldn't have any utility at all, not even to the technocracy that upholds it. Anyway, radical politics mostly aside, how do you engage in narrative without deprioritising truth to unconscionable levels, or even at all. One piece of advice I have is do really good fucking work. Spend less time figuring out how to bullshit audiences, and spend it in service of your work. Like, the first principles work. The (small s) science. Do this, and the further and further ahead your work will actually get over time. Really good scientists do this. Their talks aren't often entertaining, at least not in a lazy, passive, uncritical way. They talk about science that's engaging, to scientists.
Anyway, that's just one example here, and I'm critiquing the norm, not this post. This post is good in the sense that it's trying to explain a decent version of mainstream communication. It's does a good job of identifying instances where people are just bullshitting about communication/story/narrative. Those are instances of my point really. This stuff is really prevalent. If you've made it this far, and I'm not going to proof read this, so not even I'm really here, it's probably because you care about the subject matter to which I'm speaking. It's going to ring true to you, and not because I held your hand to get here. I didn't. Choosing an audience by definition means you will not be focussing on people outside that audience. I chose not to do the work of explaining how and why we live in the society we do, that has the Science we do. This is long enough, and leaving those people behind is the cost. Just own it. In my case here, basically no one is going to be interested but it's something to treasure if they are. And, if you really just stuck this out but completely disagree, I at least think consciously owning deploying a balance of truth and deception in your presentations will improve your effectiveness and career. It is what your audience involuntarily expects.
I’ve told people to develop a lesson plan - but an engaging lesson plan (and yes there is structure for that too) - the goal is to have them learn new facts about your work - I’m not sure emotion is involved other than curiosity
Nice post Claus! Keeping things above board, maybe link to this one instead of my screenshot: https://rdcu.be/fskvC
Done, thanks.
Communication is an interesting human endeavour, including the institutionalised/captured version of it, which is more or less what's being discussed here. A fairly standard axiom of institutionalised comms is they aim to manipulate the intended audience, which is quite effectively implied here. I get that ethics as a subject matter isn't really up for discussion in this forum, but I think manipulation of others is worth reflection, both in the parochial and normative senses. In my experience, including as a professional communicator, the semantics of 'manipulation' can be pretty variable and it's worth clarifying my own here. I've seen some people consider manipulation to be anything that influences decision making in another. I do not mean this. I mean any kind of deception employed to influence decision making. I do not include sincere expressions of truth in my definition of manipulation, obviously. I feel inclusion of expression of truth and deception in the same definition allows people to justify the latter by muddying its distinction from the former. And, that's not just theoretical; not only have I witnessed it, it's commonplace.
So in the context here, say in relation to the first story type explained, this point was made:
"Audiences are quite sensitive to challenges that weren’t fully resolved. They will typically describe such situations using words such as “the ending was disappointing.” They may not know exactly why they feel this way, but they know that something was off. Don’t put your audience into this position."
Why is putting your audience in this position bad? Is it not pretty great that they're sensitive to holes or flaws in our knowledge, including that which we're discussing in the moment. Well, we're not really giving presentations to inform, are we. Not in this society, and not in contemporary institutionalised science (let's call it Science). These presentations are undertaken primarily to impress. Truth is unquestionably a lesser priority, and I get the necessary implication of fraud there, but truth is still a priority. If it wasn't, Science wouldn't have any utility at all, not even to the technocracy that upholds it. Anyway, radical politics mostly aside, how do you engage in narrative without deprioritising truth to unconscionable levels, or even at all. One piece of advice I have is do really good fucking work. Spend less time figuring out how to bullshit audiences, and spend it in service of your work. Like, the first principles work. The (small s) science. Do this, and the further and further ahead your work will actually get over time. Really good scientists do this. Their talks aren't often entertaining, at least not in a lazy, passive, uncritical way. They talk about science that's engaging, to scientists.
Anyway, that's just one example here, and I'm critiquing the norm, not this post. This post is good in the sense that it's trying to explain a decent version of mainstream communication. It's does a good job of identifying instances where people are just bullshitting about communication/story/narrative. Those are instances of my point really. This stuff is really prevalent. If you've made it this far, and I'm not going to proof read this, so not even I'm really here, it's probably because you care about the subject matter to which I'm speaking. It's going to ring true to you, and not because I held your hand to get here. I didn't. Choosing an audience by definition means you will not be focussing on people outside that audience. I chose not to do the work of explaining how and why we live in the society we do, that has the Science we do. This is long enough, and leaving those people behind is the cost. Just own it. In my case here, basically no one is going to be interested but it's something to treasure if they are. And, if you really just stuck this out but completely disagree, I at least think consciously owning deploying a balance of truth and deception in your presentations will improve your effectiveness and career. It is what your audience involuntarily expects.