Vladimir_Golovin comments on "Open-Mindedness" - the video - Less Wrong

18 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 May 2009 06:17AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Golovin 14 May 2009 02:19:52PM *  0 points [-]

There is something poisonous about this presentation, that I can't quite verbalize.

Here's my verbalization attempt:

First, it's way too complex -- too much stuff on the screen. I'd simplify it to the limit.

Second, personally, I don't like the color scheme and style they used -- I always found colors like these depressing (this is purely subjective impression, others may like it.) Since the video is about the art of clear thinking, I'd use a clearer, simpler, less muddy palette (varied grays/blues, white, and occasional concentrated orange/red/yellow for accenting). Perhaps the muddy colors can be employed to convey unclear thinking (as contrasted by clear thinking) - e.g. the scenes with the irrationalist guy can use this scheme.

Third, the characters seem the same -- it's hard for me to visually distinguish the "good guy" from the "bad guy" -- they all look like "American comic book guys from the sixties" to me. Perhaps some stereotyping would help here.

Fourth, the voiceover (and/or) the script seemed boring to me. No turning points, no accents, just several minutes of uninspired monotonous speech.

Two ideas how to fix this: 1. use a professional voice actor, and 2. rewrite the plot to include accents / turning points / reversals etc. (the Bardic conspiracy should have some advice on this). Adding some striking / scary examples would help as well (e.g. Solomon Asch conformity experiment.)

Finally, the video is way too long for today's attention spans. Should be a couple of minutes maximum.