Fighting Biases and Bad Habits like Boggarts

33 palladias 21 August 2014 05:07PM

TL;DR: Building humor into your habits for spotting and correcting errors makes the fix more enjoyable, easier to talk about and receive social support, and limits the danger of a contempt spiral. 

 

One of the most reliably bad decisions I've made on a regular basis is the choice to stay awake (well, "awake") and on the internet past the point where I can get work done, or even have much fun.  I went through a spell where I even fell asleep on the couch more nights than not, unable to muster the will or judgement to get up and go downstairs to bed.

I could remember (even sometimes in the moment) that this was a bad pattern, but, the more tired I was, the more tempting it was to think that I should just buckle down and apply more willpower to be more awake and get more out of my computer time.  Going to bed was a solution, but it was hard for it not to feel (to my sleepy brain and my normal one) like a bit of a cop out.

Only two things helped me really keep this failure mode in check.  One was setting a hard bedtime (and beeminding it) as part of my sacrifice for Advent.   But the other key tool (which has lasted me long past Advent) is the gif below.

sleep eating ice cream

The poor kid struggling to eat his ice cream cone, even in the face of his exhaustion, is hilarious.  And not too far off the portrait of me around 2am scrolling through my Feedly.

Thinking about how stupid or ineffective or insufficiently strong-willed I'm being makes it hard for me to do anything that feels like a retreat from my current course of action.  I want to master the situation and prove I'm stronger.  But catching on to the fact that my current situation (of my own making or not) is ridiculous, makes it easier to laugh, shrug, and move on.

I think the difference is that it's easy for me to feel contemptuous of myself when frustrated, and easy to feel fond when amused.

I've tried to strike the new emotional tone when I'm working on catching and correcting other errors.  (e.g "Stupid, you should have known to leave more time to make the appointment!  Planning fallacy!"  becomes "Heh, I guess you thought that adding two "trivially short" errands was a closed set, and must remain 'trivially short.'  That's a pretty silly error.")

In the first case, noticing and correcting an error feels punitive, since it's quickly followed by a hefty dose of flagellation, but the second comes with a quick laugh and a easier shift to a growth mindset framing.  Funny stories about errors are also easier to tell, increasing the chance my friends can help catch me out next time, or that I'll be better at spotting the error just by keeping it fresh in my memory. Not to mention, in order to get the joke, I tend to look for a more specific cause of the error than stupid/lazy/etc.

As far as I can tell, it also helps that amusement is a pretty different feeling than the ones that tend to be active when I'm falling into error (frustration, anger, feeling trapped, impatience, etc).  So, for a couple of seconds at least, I'm out of the rut and now need to actively return to it to stay stuck. 

In the heat of the moment of anger/akrasia/etc is a bad time to figure out what's funny, but, if you're reflecting on your errors after the fact, in a moment of consolation, it's easier to go back armed with a helpful reframing, ready to cast Riddikulus!

 

Crossposted from my personal blog, Unequally Yoked.

Change Contexts to Improve Arguments

31 palladias 08 July 2014 03:51PM

On a recent trip to Ireland, I gave a talk on tactics for having better arguments (video here).  There's plenty in the video that's been discussed on LW before (Ideological Turing Tests and other reframes), but I thought I'd highlight one other class of trick I use to have more fruitful disagreements.

It's hard, in the middle of a fight, to remember, recognize, and defuse common biases, rhetorical tricks, emotional triggers, etc.  I'd rather cheat than solve a hard problem, so I put a lot of effort into shifting disagreements into environments where it's easier for me and my opposite-number to reason and argue well, instead of relying on willpower.  Here's a recent example of the kind of shift I like to make:

A couple months ago, a group of my friends were fighting about the Brendan Eich resignation on facebook. The posts were showing up fast; everyone was, presumably, on the edge of their seats, fueled by adrenaline, and alone at their various computers. It’s a hard place to have a charitable, thoughtful debate.

I asked my friends (since they were mostly DC based) if they’d be amenable to pausing the conversation and picking it up in person.  I wanted to make the conversation happen in person, not in front of an audience, and in a format that let people speak for longer and ask questions more easily. If so, I promised to bake cookies for the ultimate donnybrook.  

My friends probably figured that I offered cookies as a bribe to get everyone to change venues, and they were partially right. But my cookies had another strategic purpose. When everyone arrived, I was still in the process of taking the cookies out of the oven, so I had to recruit everyone to help me out.

“Alice, can you pour milk for people?”

“Bob, could you pass out napkins?”

“Eve, can you greet people at the door while I’m stuck in the kitchen with potholders on?”

Before we could start arguing, people on both sides of the debate were working on taking care of each other and asking each others’ help. Then, once the logistics were set, we all broke bread (sorta) with each other and had a shared, pleasurable experience. Then we laid into each other.

Sharing a communal experience of mutual service didn’t make anyone pull their intellectual punches, but I think it made us more patient with each other and less anxiously fixated on defending ourselves. Sharing food and seating helped remind us of the relationships we enjoyed with each other, and why we cared about probing the ideas of this particular group of people.

I prefer to fight with people I respect, who I expect will fight in good faith.  It's hard to remember that's what I'm doing if I argue with them in the same forums (comment threads, fb, etc) that I usually see bad fights.  An environment shift and other compensatory gestures makes it easier to leave habituated errors and fears at the door.

 

Crossposted/adapted from my blog.

False Friends and Tone Policing

45 palladias 18 June 2014 06:20PM

TL;DR: It can be helpful to reframe arguments about tone, trigger warnings, and political correctness as concerns about false cognates/false friends.  You may be saying something that sounds innocuous to you, but translates to something much stronger/more vicious to your audience.  Cultivating a debating demeanor that invites requests for tone concerns can give you more information about about the best way to avoid distractions and have a productive dispute.

 

When I went on a two-week exchange trip to China, it was clear the cultural briefing was informed by whatever mistakes or misunderstandings had occurred on previous trips, recorded and relayed to us so that we wouldn't think, for example, that our host siblings were hitting on us if they took our hands while we were walking.

But the most memorable warning had to do with Mandarin filler words.  While English speakers cover gaps with "uh" "um" "ah" and so forth, the equivalent filler words in Mandarin had an African-American student on a previous trip pulling aside our tour leader and saying he felt a little uncomfortable since his host family appeared to be peppering all of their comments with "nigga, nigga, nigga..."

As a result, we all got warned ahead of time.  The filler word (那个 - nèige) was a false cognate that, although innocuous to the speaker, sounded quite off-putting to us.  It helped to be warned, but it still required some deliberate, cognitive effort to remind myself that I wasn't actually hearing something awful and to rephrase it in my head.

When I've wound up in arguments about tone, trigger warnings, and taboo words, I'm often reminded of that experience in China.  Limiting language can prompt suspicion of closing off conversations, but in a number of cases, when my friends have asked me to rephrase, it's because the word or image I was using was as distracting (however well meant) as 那个 was in Beijing.

It's possible to continue a conversation with someone who's every statement is laced with "nigga" but it takes effort.  And no one is obligated to expend their energy on having a conversation with me if I'm making it painful or difficult for them, even if it's as the result of a false cognate (or, as the French would say, false friend) that sounds innocuous to me but awful to my interlocutor.  If I want to have a debate at all, I need to stop doing the verbal equivalent of assaulting my friend to make any progress.

It can be worth it to pause and reconsider your language even if the offensiveness of a word or idea is exactly the subject of your dispute.  When I hosted a debate on "R: Fire Eich" one of the early speakers made it clear that, in his opinion, opposing gay marriage was logically equivalent to endorsing gay genocide (he invoked a slippery slope argument back to the dark days of criminal indifference to AIDS).

Pretty much no one in the room (whatever their stance on gay marriage) agreed with this equivalence, but we could all agree it was pretty lucky that this person had spoken early in the debate, so that we understood how he was hearing our speeches.  If every time someone said "conscience objection," this speaker was appending "to enable genocide," the fervor and horror with which he questioned us made a lot more sense, and didn't feel like personal viciousness.  Knowing how high the stakes felt to him made it easier to have a useful conversation.

This is a large part of why I objected to PZ Myers's deliberate obtuseness during the brouhaha he sparked when he asked readers to steal him a consecrated Host from a Catholic church so that he could desecrate it.  PZ ridiculed Catholics for getting upset that he was going to "hurt" a piece of bread, even though the Eucharist is a fairly obvious example of a false cognate that is heard/received differently by Catholics and atheists.  (After all, if it wasn't holy to someone, he wouldn't be able to profane it).  In PZ's incident, it was although we had informed our Chinese hosts about the 那个/nigga confusion, and they had started using it more boisterously, so that it would be clearer to us that they didn't find it offensive.

We were only able to defuse the awkwardness in China for two reasons.

  1. The host family was so nice, aside from this one provocation, that the student noticed he was confused and sought advice.
  2. There was someone on hand who understood both groups well enough to serve as an interpreter.

In an ordinary argument (especially one that takes place online) it's up to you to be visibly virtuous enough that, if you happen to be using a vicious false cognate, your interlocutor will find that odd, not of a piece with your other behavior.

That's one reason my debating friend did bother explaining explicitly the connection he saw between opposition to gay marriage and passive support of genocide -- he trusted us enough to think that we wouldn't endorse the implications of our arguments if he made them obvious.  In the P.Z. dispute, when Catholic readers found him as the result of the stunt, they didn't have any such trust.

It's nice to work to cultivate that trust, and to be the kind of person your friends do approach with requests for trigger warnings and tone shifts.  For one thing, I don't want to use emotionally intense false cognates and not know it, any more than I would want to be gesticulating hard enough to strike my friend in the face without noticing.  For the most part, I prefer to excise the distraction, so it's easier for both of us to focus on the heart of the dispute, but, even if you think that the controversial term is essential to your point, it's helpful to know it causes your friend pain, so you have the opportunity to salve it some other way.  

 

P.S. Arnold Kling's The Three Languages of Politics is a short read and a nice introduction to what political language you're using that sounds like horrible false cognates to people rooted in different ideologies.

P.P.S. I've cross-posted this on my usual blog, but am trying out cross-posting to Discussion sometimes.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101

7 palladias 12 December 2013 05:10AM

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 99, 100, and 101The previous thread is at nearly 500 comments. 

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  1415,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  24,  252627

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Help CFAR Take Manhattan

8 palladias 18 September 2013 06:40PM

CFAR is coming to New York City at the beginning of November for our first full-scale workshop outside the Bay Area.  And we need your help to run it smoothly.

We're looking for volunteers in the tri-state area who can help us carry out all the behind the scenes logistics that keep our workshops running smoothly.  And we'll need a bit more help this time, since we'll be in this location for the first time.

Our volunteers help us with tasks like:

 

  • Set up/Break down for meals
  • Organization for the end of workshop parties
  • Running errands to replenish supplies
  • Filming some presentations
  • etc
Usually, volunteers get the chance to sit in on a handful of the classes we run during the workshop.  For our Berkeley workshops, our volunteer ranks have been largely filled out by alumni, who want to make sure other people get to experience the workshop experience they enjoyed.

If you think you might be interested and available to help us out this November in New York, please fill out this five question survey, and we'll be in touch.  And if you have questions, I'll meet you in the comments.

 

Two special CFAR classes in Sept: Installing Habits and Rationality for Programmers

5 palladias 10 September 2013 08:29PM

The next four-day CFAR workshops are in October (Bay Area) and November (NYC), but there are two upcoming one-day classes that may be of interest to LessWrongers.

 

Making Habits that Stick - Sept 15, 3hrs, $90

Learn how to make new, useful habits and replace pernicious old ones.  Andrew Critch, one of CFAR’s instructors will be teaching you how the brain holds on to patterns and cached responses. And then you’ll make use of your brain’s circuitry to set new habits deliberately.

Alumni of our four-day workshops have used this material to do anything from remembering to check a to do list, right when you walk through the door at home, to making sure that a feeling of confusion triggers you to speak up and ask for an example.


One-Day Workshop for Programmers - Sept 29, full day, $330

Take a selection of classes from our four-day workshop that have been tailored for relevance to people in programming careers.  Why? Programmers continually manage huge amounts of their own time on large projects, and they know that anything you do continually is worth setting aside time to optimize.

After spending a day with CFAR, you can expect to catch yourself making a lot more mistakes. They won’t be new; you’ll just be more attuned to how your brain’s innate heuristics can lead you astray, so you’ll catch on to slip-ups faster. And instead of feeling bad about these failure modes, you’ll have the tools you need to jump out of them quickly. In fact, it won’t feel as much like making mistakes as discovering bugs — you’ll be curious and confident about figuring out a solution, and proud of yourself for catching the opportunity.

 

If you're interested in our curriculum, but would like to do something smaller than a workshop because of time or money constraints, these two September offerings may be of interest.  

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97

5 palladias 15 August 2013 02:18AM

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 97The previous thread is at nearly 500 comments. 

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  1415,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  24,  25.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95

6 palladias 18 July 2013 02:23AM

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 95The previous thread has passed 300 comments. 

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  1415,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22, 23, 24.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90

9 palladias 02 July 2013 02:13AM

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 90The previous thread has passed 750 comments. 

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.  Also: 1234567891011121314151617,18,19.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Four Tips for Public Speaking

39 palladias 15 April 2013 02:56PM

TL;DR, I offered and promised in the Post Request Thread a guide to the four highest value tips I know for doing public speaking. Here they are, with explanations below:

  1. Fortissimo! Don't apologize for talking
  2. Know the first and last line of your comment before you open your mouth
  3. Think about speeches/comments as having a narrative arc
  4. Look for additional emotional tones to layer on the content


My background: I was a debater in college, but not in the Gatling-gun style of competitive debate. We did philosophical debate, where you only argued for propositions you actually believed.  So, style was supposed to make it easier to get interested, but not be too Dark Arts-persuasive.  I coached younger members on how to present their speeches and have spent a fair amount of time murderboarding people (helping people prepare for interviews or presentation).  

I think the tools in this post are useful both for speeches you prepare and polish ahead of time, but also to be better at speaking coherently off the cuff (long and short form).  You can check out my speaking style here.  (I'm not using notes, and I didn't memorize a speech -- I memorized an arc which gave me room to improvise).  So, here are the habits that help:


1) Fortissimo!  Don't apologize for talking.

In E.L. Konigsberg's About the B'nai Bagels, the protagonist is preparing for his bar mitzvah and asks his brother for advice on how to sing his Torah portion.  After listening to him, his brother has the following feedback:

“I have only one word of advice to give you”
“Give already”
“That word is fortissimo… it’s Italian for loud.  When in doubt, shout, that’s what I’m telling you.”
“I should shout? Everyone will hear for sure how bad I am.”
“But, my dear brother, if you sing loud and clear, it will be easier on the audience.  You’re making it doubly hard on them.  Hard to listen to and hard to hear.”

Not everyone needs to be louder when they speak, but a lot of people who are uncomfortable with public speaking signal that discomfort in posture or vocal tone (a lot of freshman and sophomores had an about-to-cry sounding tension in their voices when they were speaking).  If you're apologizing for talking, your audience will assume there's a reason and start to resent it or feel uncomfortable.

So, don't apologize for talking.  Don't start with disclaimers ("I'll be fast, I don't want to waste anyone's time").  And don't apologize with your voice or your body language.  You can get specific feedback by taping yourself talking and have a friend watch it with you and have you practice standing taller or speaking a bit more intently.  You can pay a theatre grad student to meet with you a couple times about posture of voice projection.  You can also just consciously review why you are talking in the first place before you open your mouth, so you remember why your comment is useful and you're giving people a gift by talking, not being an imposition.


2) Know the first and last line of your comment before you open your mouth

It's pretty obvious why you want to know the first line of your speech/answer/whatever before you start talking; you don't want an awkward lag or a spot where you might panic.  But most people don't plan their conclusion ahead of time (totally neglecting the peak-end rule!).

I hear a lot of novice speakers start strong, and then kind of peter out at the end of their response.  Sometimes people will just trail off, hoping someone else will pick up the slack.  Sometimes people have essentially already given their closing thought, but not noticed, and then they end up repeating it awkwardly.

If you know what your closing image/sentence/line/etc is when you start talking, you know what you're aiming at from the beginning, so you won't get diverted as easily.  You've removed one common cause of failure/panic in speaking, so you can speak more confidently in the first place.  And your point will be more memorable/easier to engage with if you have a strong conclusion.


3) Think about speeches/comments as having a narrative arc

So that's the opening and the closing of the talk, but what goes in the middle?  In English class, you probably leaned this model:
  • Thesis
  • Evidence 1
  • Evidence 2
  • Evidence 3 
  • Thesis restated
This is terribly boring and difficult for people to retain.  It's a lot more fun and memorable if you can put things in the framework of a story.  Here's one formula for creating a narrative structure from Miss Snark:
X is the main guy; he wants to do:
Y is the bad guy; he wants to do:
they meet at Z and all L breaks loose.
If they don’t resolve Q, then R starts and if they do it’s L squared.

When I'm teaching class, I tend to use one that's more like:
Ever notice how you always X when you'd really like to Y?  So did I!  I tried Z and it turned out to work, but I wasn't sure why!  I poked around in the literature and found A,B, and C, which caused me to tweak my solution to Z' and now I Y all the time, and you can too!

Basically, instead of just having a point and supporting data, you take your audience through a couple emotional arcs.  It's easier to remember stories than just data.  It's also more fun for your listeners to repeat, so they'll get to share your idea with others.  It helps you stay away from a monotone or totally even affect while speaking (more in the next tip) and keeps the structure of your comment really clear in your own head.

Planning plot summaries of my speeches means I don't need to carry notes or memorize lines, anymore than I recite funny stories I share with friends.  I can just remember the outline of the story and then expand or contract individual parts depending on what the audience responds to.  The structure gives me a safety net.  This way, I'm not unsure what I'm saying when I open my mouth, but I'm not stuck saying specific lines.


4) Look for additional emotional tones to layer on the content

It's boring to just listen to someone explain facts.  Having a narrative arc (as above) will automatically inject some variance into your tone and affect.  In my teaching example above, the emotional notes look something like this:

Frustration: [Ever notice how you always X when you'd really like to Y?]  Shared identity, all of us looking at the frustration together: [So did I!]  I tried Z and it turned out to work, but pleased but perplexed: [I wasn't sure why!]  I poked around in the literature and surprise, but increasing feeling of catharsis: [found A,B, and C, which caused me to tweak my solution to Z'] and triumph: [now I Y all the time], return of fellow feeling and pleasure at sharing something cool: [and you can too!]

But there's more you can add.  One friend of mine was explaining a counterintuitive study in a fairly matter of fact way, but it was a lot more enjoyable and memorable to hear about if she shared her surprise at how it turned out.  A lot of the time, it's simplest to just make sure you're letting your honest reactions to what you're saying come across.

But, if you're not sure what those are, or want to explore other options, you can try dividing what you're saying into beats.  (Beats is a phrase used in theatre for subdivisions within scenes.  In one conversation or story, the dominant emotional tone can change, and that transition is the start of a new beat).  So, try dividing up your notes or your outline into sections and just experiment with the dominant tone for the section.  Here's a reworking of the emotional beats in my teaching outline:

Sadness, regret: [Ever notice how you always X when you'd really like to Y?]  Shame shared as vulnerability: [So did I!]  I tried Z and it turned out to work, but tentative, a little uncertain: [I wasn't sure why!]  I poked around in the literature and feeling of tinkering and assembly: [found A,B, and C, which caused me to tweak my solution to Z'] and peace, tranquility: [now I Y all the time], warmth, joy: [and you can too!]

Try looking at this list of some possible emotional tones, and see what it's like when you using them as you talk through your outline.  Try reading wrong tones to a friend, to notice why they're wrong or to catch yourself if you were unnecessarily restricting your options.  Sometimes tone can change a number of times in one passage (as in this marked up example), just pay attention to what prompts the shift.  You can try picking a speech or a sentence that already exists, and reading it deliberately with different tones each time to get some practise and comfort using them.

 

So, if you work on these tips, people will be more comfortable listening to what you say (1), you'll open and close strongly (2), with a narrative arc that keeps you on track and makes your points memorable (3), and enough emotional variation to keep your audience engaged with you and your content (4).  Huzzah!

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