by Scott Samuelson
I’ve noticed something peculiar when I’m at an academic talk. While the paper is being read, I tend to become increasingly skeptical of it. Sometimes I dismiss it because I can’t track its jargon or follow its argument. But even when I do follow its every twist and turn, I often experience a strange resistance to it.
In the Q and A after the talk, the audience seems in a similar boat. They raise objections of their own and are rarely enthusiastic about the consequent rebuttals. When they’re not making objections, they end up asking one of two questions. How does this relate to my work? Or: why doesn’t this relate to my work?
In short, a paper that’s meant to win over its audience tends to have the exact opposite effect. This is especially true at philosophy talks.
Here’s the really curious thing. When I happen to have drinks or dinner afterwards with the speakers, they become way more fascinating, way more winning. They tell the story of how they got into their subject. They joke around. They confess their nagging doubts. They relate their ideas to their personal lives and to contemporary events. I see the value in the very points that had me dreaming up objections a short while ago. Now I’m enjoying myself and having new ideas of my own. When they stop trying to convince me they’re right, I start to come around to their ideas.
I’ve experienced a related phenomenon at poetry readings. A poet will recite a poem full of references to, say, up-to-date hospital equipment and mid-century European train commerce. After intoning the last bewildering line, the poet will start talking like a normal person and tell the backstory of writing the poem by a dying grandpa’s bedside, listening to the bleeping EKG and thinking about tales of his escape from Nazi Germany hidden among boxcar freight. I’ll go from being completely baffled to being immensely moved.
What I’ve long wondered is why thinkers and writers don’t think and write the interesting stuff, the stuff that actually convinces us and moves us. Read more »