> When the latter are used for the former purpose, they are worse than useless.
I passionately disagree with this. I find it much better to focus on a talk (granted, I'm talking here about math talks primarily) if I know that all there is to know is contained in what I'm seeing, and that it's alright if I occasionally don't pay attention to the speaker. (I'm much more attuned to the written word than to the spoken word, and I imagine I'm not alone in this.)
Yeah, the more talks I attend, the more I differ with 'powerpoint minimalism orthodoxy'. I would much rather your presentation be a subset of the slides than a superset. Then I can relax and appreciate it rather than worry about transcribing you or something. If its actually important to me than I will spend much more time reviewing the material than listening to it this once, so focus on providing a comprehensive reference. And we both know you're not going to write up a whole separate document that's the exact same material in more detail, kept up to date, so just make it the slides. The preference for minimalism I think comes from a thought process that conflates entertaining with effective. (all else equal, obviously more entertaining will make you more engaged which is more effective, but the equal is carrying some heavy weight there)
I passionately disagree with this. I find it much better to focus on a talk (granted, I'm talking here about math talks primarily) if I know that all there is to know is contained in what I'm seeing, and that it's alright if I occasionally don't pay attention to the speaker. (I'm much more attuned to the written word than to the spoken word, and I imagine I'm not alone in this.)