> A few years later I heard a talk by someone who
> was not merely a better speaker than me, but
> a famous speaker. Boy was he good. So I
> decided I'd pay close attention to what he
> said, to learn how he did it. After about ten
> sentences I found myself thinking "I don't
> want to be a good speaker."
I'll go ahead and assume that you're simply offering the passage as an anecdote. In that case, however, you're doing what you condemn -- rhetorics over conceptual purity and ideas. Can you elaborate a little?
A. regardless of how good someone is at public speaking, it is largely independent of their writing skill.
An additional possible inference from the article is:
B. they may/should find it significantly more efficient to impart those or even more ideas in writing than in speech. That is, some aspect of writing itself is simply more efficient than speech for transfer of idea information.
However, I do agree that pg's article does seem to gloss over,
1. the binding effect of emotion to ideas. Emotion is far easier to impart and create via public speaking due to intonation, pauses, story-telling, comedy, body language etc (not even going to add side channels like slides, though they are likely important). Several studies have shown that, for example, comedy is an extremely strong means to reinforce the transfer of new information or complex ideas due to the body's physical and biochemical response.
2. audience interaction does not have to be negative or neutral, but can often reveal how much is new information or what those participants value the most.
Of course, ultimately, to expect pg to cover even a fraction of the full dynamics of public speech and language writing in one blog article maybe is asking a little too much :)
Playing soccer well depends little on having good ideas. Is someone who says that saying "clarity of thought or soccer ability, pick one?"
"As I was doing it I tried to imagine what a transcript of the other guy's talk would be like, and it was only then I realized he hadn't said very much."
"Being a really good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction."
"But here again there's a tradeoff between smoothness and ideas. All the time you spend practicing a talk, you could instead spend making it better."
I know quite a few people who are great thinkers and great speakers and maybe that is why I found the article a bit offensive in that regard.
Though the difference in meaning between what you claim I said and what you're able to quote me as saying may seem small to you, there is a critical difference between them: what you claim I said is false, and the sentences you quote are true. I think we both agree on that. Or do you think any of the sentences I actually wrote are false?
You didn't say "trying to be a good speaker pushes you in the opposite direction of having good ideas"; you said "being", which implies some kind of essence / gift. You are effectively saying, in this sentence, that the gift of speak hinders one's ability to produce good ideas.