opinions on recent videos

[Elliot Temple]

Alan, others, got opinions/feedback/etc on my recent videos? Tutoring InternetRules and Max, and gigahurt discussion tree.

Any ideas for me to be a better teacher? Any parts you’d particularly like or dislike if you were the student? Anything that is particularly good or bad for the video audience? Have you learned much? Do you watch around 100%/80%/60%/40%/20%/0%? Why?

what do you like and dislike about the videos compared to text? would you prefer one or the other, or a mix similar to what i do now, or a different mix?

Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[Andy Dufresne]

I watched the first few tutoring videos you did.

After the first few I stopped watching them unless there was something
mentioned in text elsewhere about a video’s content I was specifically
interested in.

In the last 2 weeks I think I’ve watched most of one video and small
part of another. My guess is that’s ~20% of what you’ve put out,
though I didn’t count/calculate.

I dislike video compared to text. Reasons:
- Harder to multitask (given my specific circumstances - may not apply
to many others).
- Harder to skim for things I might be interested in
- Harder to reply to if something is interesting

--Andy

[Elliot Temple]

Justin has been adding tables of contents FYI. there’s a significant delay but you can find them on some older videos, e.g.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0bOphoclUs&list=PLKx6lO5RmaetREa9-jt2T-qX9XO2SD0l2&index=8

0:00
- Grammar. Analyzing sentence "Nobody's ever been bothered by being dead."

5:10 - Analyzing sentence "He was waiting for the rain to stop"; curi's analysis at 7:30
.

9:04
- Analyzing sentence "Assuming you're an adult, there are some things you're already good at judging."

21:23
- Discussion about progress/goals/stuff to focus on.

23:39 - Analyzing a Szasz sentence; Elliot's analysis compared to Max's at 36:04
.

43:00
- Methods for analyzing paragraphs; outlines.

46:04 - The structure of different types of writing and putting them into trees.

Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[Anne B]

I watch all the videos. I am currently caught up except for yesterday’s video.

About videos versus text:

- I don’t like that videos take longer to watch than comparable text takes to read.

- I like having some more informal stuff to consume (videos).

- I can multitask some while watching videos, which I can’t while reading.

- I’m watching them all because I don’t want to miss something. But I’d prefer more text and less video.


About the teaching:

- The grammar teaching progression seemed too fast both with InternetRules and with Max. I’d have stayed with simple sentences until they seemed to have mastered them, then moved on to clauses and conjunctions until they seemed to have mastered them, or some similar progression. However, I’ve been curious to see how your approach works out. Your students have both learned some grammar, so if the goal was for them to learn some grammar, as opposed to learning grammar solidly, you’ve succeeded.

- I find it more intuitive to think about grammar in a linear way rather than a tree way. Maybe that’s because that’s how I first studied it.

- Generally, during the more teaching-oriented portions of the videos, the pace seemed too fast to me. The following is my impression, but I haven’t gone back to verify and mark spots, so I might be off: you especially asked InternetRules questions that he guessed at, sometimes guessing based on your wording rather than on his knowledge, and then when he guessed right you’d move on, and it didn’t seem to me that he understood the ideas enough to be moving on.

- If I was the student I’d have been asking you to slow down and explain things more.

- I liked where you gave homework suggestions. With the frequency of the Max tutoring, he didn’t always have time to do them, but they are things he could do in the future.

- It seemed like you made an effort after the first few videos to always let the student speak first if you both started to speak at the same time. That seems like a good idea.

- The life advice to Max about motivation and other stuff seemed good as far as I could tell. It’s worth spending time on that kind of thing and not just on subject matter.


About the value to the audience:

- I appreciate watching you make the tree for the gigahurt discussion. It’s what I imagined it would be like, but it’s still good to watch it.

- The analysis of the facebook stuff by Lulie and others was beyond me in places. I decided not to take the time now to study it more and try to understand it better.

- I take notes on the videos, sometimes a lot and sometimes a little.

- Overall, the videos seem worth watching for me, but that’s hard for me to judge. Generally, what I like about your videos is getting a better idea of your process of doing various philosophy things.

[Elliot Temple]

On Aug 26, 2020, at 12:22 PM, Anne B <anne...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Aug 26, 2020, at 12:44 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> Alan, others, got opinions/feedback/etc on my recent videos? Tutoring InternetRules and Max, and gigahurt discussion tree.
>>
>> Any ideas for me to be a better teacher? Any parts you’d particularly like or dislike if you were the student? Anything that is particularly good or bad for the video audience? Have you learned much? Do you watch around 100%/80%/60%/40%/20%/0%? Why?
>>
>> what do you like and dislike about the videos compared to text? would you prefer one or the other, or a mix similar to what i do now, or a different mix?
>
> I watch all the videos. I am currently caught up except for yesterday’s video.
>
> About videos versus text:
>
> - I don’t like that videos take longer to watch than comparable text takes to read.

What speed do you watch at and what speed do you read at?

I both watch and speed read at around the max speed I can hear the words. I usually speed read using text to speech. I do other reading but it’s slower, not faster.

So I videos would take about the same amount of time for me, ignoring silences. Silent parts add extra time. Do you notice silences as a significant problem?

Someone else could also have different reading and watching/listening speeds than me.

Another potential difference is writing in a more condensed way than I talk. I think the less condensed talking way helps people learn someeimes and it’s good to have a mix of both more and less condensed content. Another difference is dialog videos vs. monologue articles.

> - If I was the student I’d have been asking you to slow down and explain things more.

Why don’t you ask those questions, that you apparently have, about things I wrote? (Or things I say in videos.) You post few questions.

> - It seemed like you made an effort after the first few videos to always let the student speak first if you both started to speak at the same time. That seems like a good idea.

I don’t think my policy for that is “always”. I do think about what ordering makes sense – sometimes one thing is a tangent and the other isn’t. I do try to let people speak and avoid interrupting much (which has upsides but does have some downsides too – sometimes some of what’s said is unnecessary).

> - Overall, the videos seem worth watching for me, but that’s hard for me to judge. Generally, what I like about your videos is getting a better idea of your process of doing various philosophy things.

Good. Showing process is one of their purposes. I think that’s important and broadly lacking from text.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com

[Justin Mallone]

On Aug 26, 2020, at 12:44 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> Alan, others, got opinions/feedback/etc on my recent videos? Tutoring
> InternetRules and Max, and gigahurt discussion tree.

I've mostly been watching the Max videos and enjoying them. Generally,
the tutoring videos are nice cuz they are in a discussion format, which
I like. The topics tend to be more concrete and less technical than the
sort of discussion you might have at e.g. less wrong, and the
participants in the videos are friendly. Friendly discussions on
accessible topics are nice.

I find trying to follow along with some of the exercises you do with Max
interesting. Some of it is review but of stuff I haven't looked at in a
while (e.g. some grammar stuff). Some of it is stuff I'm not too good at
(e.g. making certain kinds of trees). I like the mix of difficulty.

When you talk more about personal problem issues like motivation and
whatnot that's enjoyable and interesting as well, and I find it easy to
follow along with that while multitasking other stuff, whereas following
along with the exercises takes my full attention.

> Any ideas for me to be a better teacher? Any parts you’d
> particularly like or dislike if you were the student? Anything that is
> particularly good or bad for the video audience? Have you learned
> much? Do you watch around 100%/80%/60%/40%/20%/0%? Why?

I've been listening to 100% of the videos I've been going through,
though part of that is interest and part of that is to get an idea of
the content so I can more efficiently timestamp later.

BTW re timestamps, one thing I've been thinking about is timestamping
strategy.

I think if there is an overall topic change (like grammar vs philosophy)
I will stamp at the beginning of that and indicate what the new topic
is. However, when timestamping a specific discussion point, I will often
timestamp the part where Elliot starts talking rather than the lead-up.
I do this because 1) the stuff Elliot says is often kind of stand alone
and doesn't need much context to be understood and 2) I figure most
people watching the videos are interested in what Elliot has to say on
some topic X.

However I've been thinking maybe I'm overdoing that a bit and should
include a bit more context sometimes. Still figuring it out.

> what do you like and dislike about the videos compared to text? would
> you prefer one or the other, or a mix similar to what i do now, or a
> different mix?

The videos are easier to follow along with when multitasking than
listening to TTS instapaper or VDR of a blog post, IMHO.

It's harder to quote from videos but you can time stamp and paraphrase
so that's not *too* bad.

I think a mix is good. I don't have strong opinions on whether the
current mix is best, but it seems fine to me.

-JM

[Anne B]

On Aug 26, 2020, at 3:42 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> On Aug 26, 2020, at 12:22 PM, Anne B <anne...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Aug 26, 2020, at 12:44 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>> Alan, others, got opinions/feedback/etc on my recent videos? Tutoring InternetRules and Max, and gigahurt discussion tree.
>>>
>>> Any ideas for me to be a better teacher? Any parts you’d particularly like or dislike if you were the student? Anything that is particularly good or bad for the video audience? Have you learned much? Do you watch around 100%/80%/60%/40%/20%/0%? Why?
>>>
>>> what do you like and dislike about the videos compared to text? would you prefer one or the other, or a mix similar to what i do now, or a different mix?
>>
>> I watch all the videos. I am currently caught up except for yesterday’s video.
>>
>> About videos versus text:
>>
>> - I don’t like that videos take longer to watch than comparable text takes to read.
>
> What speed do you watch at and what speed do you read at?

I usually watch FI videos at 1.5 speed. I don’t know what speed I read at.

> I both watch and speed read at around the max speed I can hear the words. I usually speed read using text to speech. I do other reading but it’s slower, not faster.
>
> So I videos would take about the same amount of time for me, ignoring silences. Silent parts add extra time. Do you notice silences as a significant problem?

No, I don’t notice silences.

> Someone else could also have different reading and watching/listening speeds than me.
>
> Another potential difference is writing in a more condensed way than I talk. I think the less condensed talking way helps people learn someeimes and it’s good to have a mix of both more and less condensed content. Another difference is dialog videos vs. monologue articles.

Yes, I think writing is usually more condensed than talking and it’s good to have a mix of both. Maybe that’s part of what I meant when I said I like having some more informal stuff.

>> - If I was the student I’d have been asking you to slow down and explain things more.
>
> Why don’t you ask those questions, that you apparently have, about things I wrote? (Or things I say in videos.) You post few questions.

I’m not sure. Maybe some of both of these:

1) I try to focus most of my time on the stuff in my learning plan. I feel better when I’m not pursuing too many different things at once. I wonder if that approach is mistaken, but it’s what I’m doing for now.

2) I feel discouraged about asking questions at FI because it’s my impression (I could be wrong) that I’ve been told at least a few times that I asked bad questions, and that when I’ve tried to follow the advice for asking good questions, I’ve not been successful. I also feel discouraged when I ask questions that get no answers. And I feel like I’m bothering people when I ask questions. I don’t think I should have these feelings but I do.