This thread is about both evolution and politics, read description.

[Greg the Grouper]

Is English not your first language?

 

[Isaac Clarke]

Where exactly do you get round to making a model of reality?

Certainly not within the first 1000 words.




Not much use if people get bored of all the waffle and give up reading it / listening to it before they hear your idea.




With respect, I am not interested in your C.V. - as you can see from my comments. Your response here indicates that you don't understand this point - why do people need your life history before they're presented the idea you claim to be outlining?




If you don't care: why should anyone else care?




And thus you lose your audience.




Your curriculum vitae may be of interest to you and potential employers, but there's no logical reason why it's relevant or necessary to understand your purported model of reality.




Communication comes in many forms. Dogs barking, for example, indicates their emotional states - but the informational content comparative to the noise is minimal. That's the same problem happening here: you've written a thousand words and said nothing relevant to the presentation of your idea.




It's not the length which is problematic: it's the content, or lack thereof as you can clearly see was the entire point of my feedback.




You're telling me again what I already read and gave you feedback saying: there's no value at all in doing this. No one who might be interested in your idea needs your life history first. Just spit it out.




One thing it certainly isn't is well-structured. If you handed this in as an essay, it would flunk.




Your ability to comprehend feedback is very poor.

I made no mention at all about what was later on in the tract, but rather pointed out to you that your potential audience is not likely ever to get to your point when you spend a thousand words saying nothing at all.




If you think your introduction is well structured, then I don't exactly hold out much hope that you're able to appraise your own ability.




And this is what I've got to say:

If you don't want feedback, were you just looking for someone to blow smoke up your arse?

1) After the intro, prick. Reality, if you've not noticed, is pretty big, and complex.

2) If you've the attention span of a child it's not my problem. Good luck reading legal documents.

3) I AM THE ONE MAKING THE PROJECT, THUS I EXPLAIN WHO I AM AND WHY I AM DOING IT.

3.2) Wow, I mis-numbered the thing...
Anyways, again, attention span of a child.

4) Sure, if you must do tricks or say false things to get them what's the point? I work alone and care just about how the world works.

If you really dislike my project that much then stop watching it.

5) CV CV CV
Just shut up, anyone from the nuttiest of the nuts to the most respected of scientists online gives an introduction to himself to let the audience know who they are watching and why they should be watching him/her. Welcome to [normal human behaviour].

6) Form the high horse to the giraffe.

And your feedback is bad because you're not lamenting about my project but, again, about your attention span.

Yes, there is, shut up.



Ok prof.



no u



I don't care.


----------------
And this is what I've got to say:

If you don't want feedback, were you just looking for someone to blow smoke up your arse?
----------------


And this is the point where I am going to ignore you completely.

You lack the ability to keep your attention focused on anything for more than 3 consecutive minutes. You are unable to follow anything that takes longer than a slogan to be explained. You offer no criticism and thus deserve no time taken from mine. I hope you've a nice day.

 

[Isaac Clarke]

Is English not your first language?

Yes, english is not my first language, but regardless of that the worst mistake that I make is when I misuse or misunderstand figures of speech.


You can say the same thing is any language, it's just the structure of how you say it that has to change.

 

[Deleted member 619]

The video is not rambling, maybe the problem is your attention span.

How the holy fuck would you know? Of course it doesn't seem rambling to you but, as somebody hugely experienced in absorbing complicated ideas sufficiently well to recapitulate them accurately, I'm more than merely confident that the problem is in your lack of coherence.

Of course it makes sense to you, genius. You know what it's supposed to say. Unfortunately, your command of even the basics of presentation is severely lacking,. It's hugely reminiscent of one of those tutorial videos that consists of 29 minutes of rambling about what the video is going to be about with one minute of tutorial. the difference here is that your presentation is so wandering and lacking focus, I couldn't actually discern any critiquable content. It's an incoherent mess of not very much of anything substantive.

Me telling you that saying "[person]" followed by "[emotional reaction meme]" is not an argument, but childish behavior, is not [whatever you are trying to say], but a fact.

I have no argument against what you're proposing, because I can't tell what you're proposing, as it's full of guff.

trust me, I know about presenting ideas. I have some reputation for being very skilled at distilling very complicated ideas to that little pocket between too complicated and oversimplified. I can explain to you some of the most complicated ideas in the history of our species in a way that even you would get them.

Don't piss in my pocket and tell me it's raining. Trust me, it isn't my attention span that's the problem. More importantly, if you can't even be honest with yourself about your cortical turds, I have no interest in wiping your arse.

Have a nice life.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

Yes, english is not my first language, but regardless of that the worst mistake that I make is when I misuse or misunderstand figures of speech.


You can say the same thing is any language, it's just the structure of how you say it that has to change.

Then would you mind going to my initial post and quoting what part of it implied that your work was posted only for the benefit of the two people that opted to critique it for you, as opposed to being there for anyone willing to look at it?

 

[*SD*]

@Isaac Clarke i thought you said you'd read the rules...

 

[Deleted member 619]

given that I routinely read lengthy, technical scientific articles without having attention span problems, then I don't really think this would be accurate

Exactly this.

Also worth pointing out that this is why scientific papers are laid out the way they are, because it promotes concision and accuracy. There's reason we start with an abstract, for example, and that's the thing this is most sorely missing, assuming there's anything worthwhile to mine from it. The whole point of an abstract is to précis the idea and the problem it solves. Then you move to your introduction, wherein you lay out the problem explicitly and with data. Then you move on to your proposed solution and see what testable hypotheses it generates.

The whole point of the layout of a scientific paper is to drill down to what's important and to mitigate people's penchant for rambling.

It's not a criticism that you don't know how to present an idea in an academic setting, but it IS a critique, and it's a serious one. If you ever want to present your ideas in a formal academic setting, this is going to presernt an insurmountable barrier. No journal editor would even read past the first line.

 

[Isaac Clarke]

Not gonna lie, the only thing I'm curious about at this point is why you bothered to engage with us at all, if your response to two people giving you the same criticism of your opening is to assume that they're both just not capable of grasping your genius. Why waste your time on us at all?

This is the part:
"why you bothered to engage with us at all"
"Why waste your time on us at all?"

Because you're part of anyone. Anyone is part of anyone. Anyone can be wrong and I've the freedom to talk to anyone as anyone has the freedom to not listen to me and vice versa.

 

[Isaac Clarke]

Anyways, just for the record, I "ignored" the accounts of the fuchsia guy and the [vomit gif] guy because they did not present any criticism. My time is important, so I don't want to waste it by reading "your project isn't well made because I can not pay attention to get to the end of a section of the intro" or "[person I don't like] [vomit emoji]".

 

[Deleted member 619]

An accurate model of reality?

Something just clicked, and I suddenly know who this guy reminds me of. Remember Edgar Postrado, a.k.a. Mr Intelligent Design?

I have the true science!

 

[Greg the Grouper]

This is the part:
"why you bothered to engage with us at all"
"Why waste your time on us at all?"

Because you're part of anyone. Anyone is part of anyone. Anyone can be wrong and I've the freedom to talk to anyone as anyone has the freedom to not listen to me and vice versa.

Well, fair enough. I see how you came to your conclusion, now.

Though to be honest, I highly doubt that the other regular posters would come to a different conclusion.

 

[Isaac Clarke]

Well, fair enough. I see how you came to your conclusion, now.

Though to be honest, I highly doubt that the other regular posters would come to a different conclusion.

It's normal that the average population of any place, be it virtual or physical, makes an "internal language" and creates an echo-chamber. I keep on forgetting it, but I hoped for someone, anyone, to actually have criticisms about my project instead of lamenting that they can't get to the end of a sentence without forgetting the beginning (not attacking you here).


The truth about people is that if they get comfortable and nothing forces "them to move" then they will reject any change because, in nature, laziness helps survival by not taking useless risks.

 

[Isaac Clarke]

What I'm trying to say is that the people of a place tend to show some level of homogeneity.

 

[Deleted member 619]

1) If I'm describing reality I need to make a model about it.

Which begs the question of why you're not getting on with explaining your model.

2) I explain it in the next section.

The explanation should follow the description. Where's the description? I've read lots about you, but I have no idea of what your idea is. Are you presenting you or your idea? I'm sure your intent is the latter, but the impact is the former thus far.

3) I've both problems communicating (I may be autistic, I'm doing the tests "now" and the results will come around tomorrow) and usually I don't talk in echo chambers or with friends, plus I try to make conversations about politics & Co. with people way different from me, like conservatives, republicans, democrats, socialists, and so on, so I get pushed back a lot more.

That's not what's happening here. We genuinely get that communicating ideas can be hard. Trust me, we here know that better than anyone, because we all present complicated technical stuff for lay audiences. It's pretty much what we do and who we are here.

The important thing that you could be taking away here is that, if we can actually drill down to what it is you're trying to tell the world, we can actually help you improve your presentation, because we've all been where you are (at least, assuming there's an idea in there.

4) Too bad, because I'm explaining what "a good source" is. My project is directed to anyone, even people that have never heard anything particular about politics or evolution.

Does it not concern you that the members here, who not only most definitely have heard things about politics, but have between them definitely forgotten more about evolution than anybody you've ever met has known, are struggling to get to the meat of your idea? Seriously, I don't think there's an active member who hasn't written between thousands and millions of words on the subject. For example, I have on post on my blog purely about evolution, read almost 20,000 times on a niche science blog, and recommended by university level academics as an evolution primer to their students.

This is not your average venue. We breathe this shit. If you have a good idea, we can help you find it and tease it out to a presentable format. Including, for example, where to go to find the data you'd need, the best language to use to express your ideas including all the terms of art and technical jargon...

If you have a solid idea about politics and evolution, I want it; I need it. However, I'm always guided by Einstein's admonition; if you can't explain it to a six year-old, you don't understand it well enough.

It really is that straightforward. I can explain Special Relativity to a six year-old.

5) I show my political position to explain, in broad terms, what "I am like" and because so that people may not waste time trying to figure out from what POV my points are coming from. Both me and whoever would watch my project have biases, different biases, so I exposed mine.

This does exactly the opposite of helping. Epistemology is pragmatic. The idea should stand or fall on its own merits. Either it has legs or it doesn't, regardless not only of your personal ideology but also, critically, regardless of whether your ideology is what motivated it. The only things relevant are the data and whether they support your thesis.

Which reminds me; what is your thesis? Write me an abstract. Look at an academic paper and see how it's done.



1. Problem
2. Proposed solution
3. Mechanism
4. Data.
5. Conclusion.

Even if you're writing informally, your presentation should follow roughly this format. It's fine to present in a conversational, informal tone (I do it all the time, with jokes), but the layout should have some sort of linear coherence. This is what we mean by 'rambling'. Your presentation seems to leap from place to place and only ever seems to obliquely gesture in the vague direction of the existence of an idea without ever voicing what it is as far as I can tell, and with perpetual digression to biographical information that can't possibly have any bearing on the idea. It makes it impossible to pull a thread through it.

Let me show you, with on of my shorter offerings on a simple but not obvious idea about evolution and thermodynamics:

All Downhill From Here!

As you can see, brief preamble to allude to earlier writing on the subject explaining why this was being covered separately from the more complete post on evolution and thermodynamics, then straight into the idea, which is expressed up front unambiguously. This is how every presentation should start. State up front in the most accurate terms possible and in a single sentence the limiting idea, so that the reader/listener has something to hold onto throughout. You don't even have a title that alludes to the idea, so there's no fixed point to give context at any point in the piece, or at least as far as I could be bothered to get before I glazed for the third and final time.

Even the rambling, which was excessive even to somebody like myself who goes off on thousand-word tangents routinely, is at least mitigated to some degree by having that central theme to cling to, the idea that gives context to everything you're saying.

It's fine to ramble, it really is, but it's not fine if your entire presentation is ramble with nothing to connect the dots between opening and conclusion, you're not communicating, you're talking past your audience. Your idea is worthless if you can't present it. Many's the genius buried a fool for want of words, as they say. Actually, they don't, I just made that up, which doesn't diminish the truth of it.

6) Yes, words, that's one way in which humans communicate. Plus Here I was explaining WHY some arguments would not be in the project.

That sort of thing shouldn't be anywhere near your opening presentation. They should be reserved for an appendix. Why? Because they constitute ramble here, but also for academic reasons, in that it's silly to restrict yourself up front when you have no idea what might motivate you to change your mind, such as a troublesome question from a knowledgeable academic who likes your idea but sees pitfalls. Saving them for an appendix allows you both to explain why you didn't (tensing it this way circumvents the potential for future contradictions) and cuts out the irrelevant rambling. Your opening should be contained to your idea and the problem you think it solves.

The project, mate, is more than two hours long. This is the opening to it.

If it's more than two hours like this, I'd posit your thesis could be written on a post-it note. The signal-to-noise ratio is orders of magnitude out of balance.

The initial draft was way more different because, as I was developing the project, I needed to rework it.

I have just made a really condensed opening which explains who I am, what I'm going to explain and how I to know that something is correct. It is well structured and your "This is constructive feedback." amounts to "I have read just the introduction to this 300 pages book, this means that I have read the entire thing. In the introduction not much is explained, so it is not in the entire book neither".

If you sent a book with an intro like this to a publisher with whom you already had a book deal, they'd be seeking legal advice on escaping from contract. It's awful. Sorry. It simply doesn't convey anything useful.

I've already uploaded the script of the first half of the project in this chat // the second half is not scripted because I made it in a different and faster way, plus the visuals are absolutely needed for the context // , so pick any random part and try to see if you may understand more about what I am talking about compared to the almost nothing that you've got from my well structured intro.

Unstructured is what your intro is. It has exactly zero structure. It's only the waffle holding it together.

The people here can help you. I won't be offering any more unless and until you show a little humility and academic integrity. The way you've behaved here would get you tossed out of any university on your ear.

This is what I've to say.

If you don't do such I'll learn from your "CoNsTrUcTiVe FeEdBaCk" and read just 5% of anything that you will ever write and then judge/respond just to that.

You need to work on your flounce, dear.

 

[Deleted member 619]

What I'm trying to say is that the people of a place tend to show some level of homogeneity.

The homogeneity you're experiencing here is academic and scientific literacy. As in, we all know how this shit works. You do not.

 

[Isaac Clarke]

Anyways, to make an example, later on in the project I talk about too, showing that, as the video linked itself explains partly, you can not be defined a "good" or a "bad" person because you may have had the luck to never have been put in the situation that would've made you "bad"
or that you, even from birth, never had the chance to do the things that would have let you be "good" either because of the lack of education, being born in a bad country or in a bad situation or being "robbed" of your possibilities to have a normal life because someone else ruined it early.


In short you can not considered "good" or "bad" if you have not fully understood yourself and your situation.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

Seriously, I don't think there's an active member who hasn't written between thousands and millions of words on the subject.

I mean, I'm just some random dude that got into arguments with strangers on the internet about shit.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Oh, fuck. Now the infantile good/bad dichotomy applied to people.

I think that, ladles and jellyspoons, tells us all we need to know.

 

[Deleted member 619]

I do have to thank our interlocutor here. This thread has given me a great idea for a blog post, wherein I'm going to talk about how to write a presentation of ideas if you really want anybody with a clue to take them seriously.

It has begun:

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

@Isaac Clarke, do you have text files for the rest of the videos in your project? If so, could you post them and/or copy/paste them, please?

Kindest regards,

James