handoflixue comments on Overcoming bias in others - Less Wrong

10 Post author: homunq 12 August 2011 03:38PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (15)
Tags: cognitive bias overcoming rhetoric

Comments (15)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: handoflixue 12 August 2011 07:55:36PM 5 points [-]

The second paragraph hooked me much better than the first paragraph did. I have a strong bias to ignore hooks without any interesting bait on them, though :)

Comment author: Raemon 12 August 2011 08:23:32PM *  7 points [-]

Agreed - I was mildly interested with the first line, much more interested with the second paragraph. I'd condense it to:

No way do you have 500 words. You have about 30 seconds. Forget about disrupting biases for a moment - you are a salesperson making a difficult sale with the odds stacked heavily against you. Your goal is to obtain more attention and face time.

(Long winded communication is a problem of mine, which I should be doing more to correct)

Comment author: handoflixue 12 August 2011 08:53:29PM 7 points [-]

Some changes to tighten it up a bit. Wiggle words aren't good hooks, and they rarely add useful information content:

You don't get 500 words. You get 30 seconds. Forget about disrupting biases - you are a salesperson making a difficult sale with the odds stacked heavily against you. Your goal is to obtain more attention and face time.

Also re-arranged the flow somewhat in the third and fourth sentences, but I think that's iffier:

You don't get 500 words. You get 30 seconds. Forget about disrupting biases - your goal is to obtain more attention and face time. You are a salesperson making a difficult sale with the odds stacked heavily against you.

Comment author: shminux 12 August 2011 09:18:55PM *  2 points [-]

Very interesting. Thanks for the comments! I apologize to homunq for unintentionally hijacking the post.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit