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"Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."
- reader5000 16y agoKeyword here is active listening: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_listening http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_listening
- mike_h 16y agoKey concept is that if people want to submit themselves to a one-way stream of communication, they have TV and the internet for that. If a conversation isn't two-way, you're alienating someone.
- Goosey 16y agoA proper conversation should be an exchange of gifts. Your words are a gift to them, and theirs to you. Never give yourself a gift.
- ambulatorybird 16y agoOther kinds of conversational rules, perhaps of more interest to linguists, programmers, philosophers, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gricean_maxim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gricean_maxim
- sp332 16y agoAnd my favorite: Grice's paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Grice#Grice.27s_Paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Grice#Grice.27s_Paradox
- crux 16y agoI came here to provide just those links. Not only are the rules of conversation written down, but they're often very heavily discussed and analyzed—even by people who aren't autistic. And of course, the rules of conversation vary very widely across the globe. Of particular note is the rules of conversation in Malagasy, where to be polite is to be so oblique that in America folks would think you're being purpusefully rude.
- lionhearted 16y ago> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature Hey, that's really, really fantastic and useful. I can't believe I've never seen it before. Are you in linguistics? Care to recommend some more reading, articles, essays?
- ambulatorybird 16y agoI took some philosophy classes in college, where I learned about the concept. If you want to read more, the best place to start would be the references and external links provided in the Wikipedia articles. Also try googling for papers by Grice.
- lionhearted 16y agoI'm skimming and bookmarking some Grice right now. Exciting stuff. Thank you :)
- saint-loup 16y agoJust to add few links basically in the same field: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle#Speech_acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle#Speech_acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_theory
- BoppreH 16y ago> implying implicature is not widely used
- Amnon 16y agoI wanted to write about how linguistics should be handled by linguists not philosophers, so I checked the citations. I noticed that Wikipedia says implicature was coined by Patrick McBride which, according to Wikipedia is "a retired American soccer midfielder". Turns out the article was edited some time ago by an anonymous user. I guess not enough people visited it to notice.
- nandemo 16y agoI've tried to use the rules of implicature to understand your comment but I couldn't. You seem to be implying that one of the Wikipedia articles is wrong since it's unlikely that a soccer player would do advanced linguistics research. But you should consider a more likely hypothesis, namely, Wikipedia is correct and Patrick McBride the scholar and Patrick McBride the soccer player are different persons.
- Amnon 16y agoI wasn't explicit enough about the fact that the article originally attributed the term to Grice, and then an anonymous editor changed it to this scholar who isn't mentioned anywhere else on the Web. Also, in many cases the hypothesis that Wikipedia is correct isn't /very/ likely.
- philwelch 16y agoThere's linguistics and then there's philosophy of language. Don't confuse the two.
- GFischer 16y agoAre programmers and similar more likely to "break" the second Gricean maxim? From the link: Quantity of Information * Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). * Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. I recall a discussion here about the quantity of information we tend to give relative to the "average" person
- sp332 16y agoI think people in general, once they start talking about a subject they are passionate about, will start giving way more information than necessary.
- spiffytech 16y agoI think that was Philip Guo's "Geek Behaviors" piece. He writes some pretty interesting stuff: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078529 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078529
- Medulla 16y agoHere's a more programmatic theory, more pragmatic based, but IMO it's more valid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_analysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_analysis
- xenophanes 16y ago> Would the alien ever learn to distinguish good dancers from poor dancers? He could hack the problem like this: instead of figuring out which type of dancing is impressive directly, just watch reactions. People react to what they think is good dancing, so by watching people he can learn what's considered good dancing.
- faboo 16y agoThat's exactly what I thought. In the context of Adams' mind experiment there's a problem with this approach: the aliens need to now both there is a goal to dancing or conversing well, and what that goal is. (Which is confounded a bit by there being multiple goals for these activities, and not everybody's going for the same ones in any given context. Two people who just met will want a different thing from conversation than two friends shooting the shit.) However, Adams' rhetorical questions (though not, I think, his mind experiment itself) have a flaw: people with Asberger's syndrome generally know what the goal of those activities is (or at least, what they want out of it), but are unable to judge whether they're actually achieving those goals (since they have a hard time gauging other peoples reactions as you suggest). This fits with the mind experiment though. Suppose the aliens figure out that conversation and dancing have goals - even what those goals are. The alien still can't tell who the good conversationalists or dancers are without understanding things like human body language, vocal inflection, or subtle word choice - which is nearly the same set of problems people with Asberger's have.
- wallflower 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof
- zck 16y agoBut people also react to what is bad dancing; you'd have to know what reactions are favorable, and what reactions indicate displeasure. This would be hard for aliens, who wouldn't know what facial expressions mean.
- username3 16y ago
- maukdaddy 16y agoI wish that both CS and MBA programs taught students to listen more. One of the few similarities I find between programmers/engineers and MBAs is the need to completely dominate a conversation. A few seminars on active listening would help everyone :)
- dasil003 16y agoOr you could just throw them both into a startup and let them have it out cage match style
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ora600 16y agoYou may have sampling bias - you tend to hear more the ones that completely dominate conversations. This doesn't immediately mean they are really the majority. Personally, I wish my CS program taught me to speak more at a conversation setting (as opposed to "raise your hand to speak" classroom). I spent the first 3 years of my career unable to get a word in at meetings.
- hunterjrj 16y agoIf you haven't already read How to Win Friends and Influence People, you definitely should.
- ja27 16y agoOne of my bosses made a difficult coworker take a Dale Carnegie class. Afterward he said that it "changed his life." I thought it made him even creepier with the constant fake smile, eye contact and repetition of people's first name in conversation.
- rix0r 16y agoI agree. To me it sounds rather aggressive if people keep repeating my name while they already have my attention.
- pbhjpbhj 16y agoI meet up to about 20 children a day (sometimes a lot more, often a lot of adults too, but more often more children) that I don't know and need to communicate with. The kids are generally 4-10 years old but, as I said, it can be all ages. I find that the children respond far better if I use their names when talking with them - but this is short snippets of talk (maybe 30s) with longer (20+min) gaps between. I always introduce my self by given-name and am surprised by how many of them remember me months later. Partly I use their names as an attempt to remember them, partly to ease any discomfort or reluctance they have communicating with me and partly because I find it awkward starting a conversation or getting someone's attention without using their name.
- marilyn 16y agoWhen they remember your name 3 weeks later, how do you feel?
- billybob 16y agoI haven't taken a course, but have read (most of) "How to Win Friends and Influence People." While what you describe sounds creepy, there are good principles in there, and you don't have to take it so far. For example, he points out that most people never accept blame for anything. From CEOs to convicts, we generally blame our failures on circumstances or other people. So with this in mind, he gives ways of steering people away from errors without raising their self-defense mechanisms or forcing them to admit that they're wrong. After all, do you want to defeat and humiliate them, or do you want to help them? Indeed, the reason I liked the book was that generally, it DIDN'T seem fake. It encourages you to genuinely care about people. And says that, as it happens, this actually works better, too.
- MartinCron 16y agoAnyone who is really interested in this concept should pick up "Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships" by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron. Dr. Grandin is herself autistic, and asserts that people along the autism-Asperger's spectrum need to learn the rules explicitly, like actors learning their lines in a play.
- lotharbot 16y agoLearning the rules is the easy part. The hard part is training yourself to do them consistently. It takes some mental energy and effort. For example, I've learned that eye contact is important, and have trained myself to do it subconsciously, but when I'm tired or have just given blood, I stop doing it.
- MartinCron 16y agoAbsolutely. Even though she has worked hard to study and understand the rules, Dr. Grandin has explicitly given up on the idea of ever being in a romantic relationship, as it's just too much work for her.
- jpr 16y agoUh-oh, if 3/4 of people can't conversate, couldn't it just be that people aren't meant to do that?
- zupatol 16y agoThere are countries where people are not used to having conversations. I've heard of a wedding of a cameroonian to an american, where the cameroonian guests thought the american guests were crazy because they spoke so much.
- hugh3 16y agoI've never been to Cameroon, but I've been to a lot of countries where they think Americans speak too much (and too loudly!). That doesn't mean that they don't have conversations, just that they don't yabber on quite so incessantly about nothing as Americans do. Americans really do talk a lot, and about nothing. One of my first exposures to real-life Americans was riding a bus in London with a bunch of American tourists who kept saying "Ooooooooohhh, look at all those _peeeeoplee!" as if they were shocked that one of the major streets in one of the world's largest cities should have a lot of people on it.
- DLWormwood 16y agoI know I’m going against the grain here, but I’ve always been suspicious of people who claim that humans are a “social animal.” Thing is, the concept is a continuum, yet most people who say it mean it in a context like ants, bees and bonobo apes, when I happen to believe that the social behavior of lions and wolves is more apt. (Humans are best off in small family clusters, with significant periods of time in their life alone or paired off.) Humans have engaged in antisocial and asocial activities (monasteries, homesteads, and hermitage) for all of recorded history, and I resent those today who seem to delight in trying to make other gregarious like themselves.
- philwelch 16y agoMonasteries and homesteads have never attracted a significant proportion of the population, and they're not all that solitary, either. Humans are a social animal, and if you're not convinced of that, study the psychological effects of feral children and solitary confinement.
- johnfn 16y agoI realized a few months ago that I was talking too much in conversations, and not listening nearly enough. So for the last few months, I've decided to talk a lot less, and spend a lot more time just listening to people. In one on one conversation, I mostly just ask the other guy about the things he's talking about, to lead him into deeper (perhaps more interesting) areas. This is a great way to talk about interesting things.
- jholman 16y agoI have a similar project of self-improvement going on, but I find the problem much subtler than what you describe. First off, yeah, with the people I most value, I talk too much and don't listen enough. Mea culpa, must improve. On the other hand, perhaps I just need to level up my skill at asking guiding questions, and perhaps I just need to widen my interests, but I frequently have trouble being interested in what people want to talk about. In particular, I often find people want to tell stories about a particular experience they have, for the purpose of complaining about other people, refusing to generalize the experience, and refusing empathize with the person they're complaining about. That's boring! Perhaps relatedly, I've recently been thinking that maybe I should put a little more work into consciously deciding if a conversant is interesting to me, and then choosing to pursue a boorish strategy or a collaborative strategy appropriately (perhaps erring on the side of collaborative). I've definitely had some totally boring people recently exclaim how fun I am to talk to and how much they'd like to hang out more in the future. Oops. It's probably imprudent, though, to attempt this strategy in groups with more than one other person present.
- TheSOB88 16y agoI tend to play mind games with the people who do nothing but complain. Ask slightly "off" questions, agree with them on the wrong points, etc. It's slightly more entertaining, at least!
- johnfn 16y agoYeah; I like to assume that the fault always rests on me. Perhaps it's not always true, but I think that's the fastest way to improve. As for what you specifically mention, I would try to find a deeper cause of complaints. I ask stuff like "does this happen often?" or "do you find that other people are like these people? Why?" I think that there are always ways to (gradually!) steer a conversation to what you both find mutually interesting. It is an art, though.
- zoba 16y agoI would agree that there are few people with even minimal conversational skills. It is fantastic though when you run in to someone who really knows how to have a good conversation! I've only run in to one or two of these conversation super stars in my lifetime though. I'd be really interested in a book that outlines the rules for a relationship... It would be nice to have something authoritative to point to when disagreements crop up.
- c00kie 16y agoAn authoritative source would need to cover all possible contexts (not to mention the problem of actually being right), which would make it infinite in length....
- Quarrelsome 16y agoI don't particularly agree with his definition of good dancing. Sounds to me like his pinnacle of dance is just "fitting in". Good dancing IMO is about enjoying yourself, effectively translating the sound into movement and/or letting yourself go.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- byw 16y agoFor me, a big part of it isn't so much learning the rules, but unlearning the non-rules. In hindsight, a lot of the rules really aren't that complex, and can be easily picked up through observation. The problem is that some people have overly sensitive radars, so we tend to pick up the noise along with the signal. On top of that we have a questioning nature, and we don't like to follow a rule based on its face value, we end up lingering in doubts on the universality of the rule, or its moral justifications. Other times we hold a rule in contempt, seeing it as cliche. All these get in the way when a social exchange demands you to apply the rules swiftly without thinking.
- lvecsey 16y agoIt's interesting to consider that entire societies have been built around these concepts. Usually when I see the Implicature thing that has been mentioned here, I often question whether the exact opposite (or something else all together) should be considered first; from there, you can think about whether everyone might be right. Similarly, with those maxims about communication it's as if everyone is striving for a genuine meaning. However, if you take things to their limit there is nihilism everywhere. The aliens, asper people, and 3/4's of everyone could just be unaware but also just rejecting the conventional notions of conversation.
- culebron 16y agoThis article seems too simplistic and an immature viewpoint to me. 1. People do note if you are interested or not. Speaking all the time mostly equals to being self-centered. Making questions all the time can certainly please a self-centered person, but not those who note subtleties: getting a disinterested or a stock question is the same repelling as domineering. 2. People are adaptive and notice patterns. A good way to be boring is to do the same pattern in conversations. Try to seduct a girl by just making questions to her. (Where do you live; Are you stydiyng or working; etc.) That doesn't work. 3. Those who follow such too simple rule can easily be abused: a lot of people complain to others and search for those who'd just listen. They can never get enough, and what's worse they don't value you. You have to be able to tell some words of support, but also, to not become a moral drainage to someone, you need to LEAD. This is a complicated thing, so I don't extend it here. 5. Making questions takes skill. Questions may be stupid, irritating, insulting or nerdy and boring. There's no boolean choice, to speak or to make questions, as it is presented in the article. 6. A good story teller is better than a good question maker. This also takes skill and the sense of what's a good place to which story. For talks as an entertainment, which is my primary concern here, the difficulty is in INVOLVING THE interlocutor's PERSONALITY. Consider 2 questions one might ask: (a) Do you think Paris Hilton's recent behavior is acceptable? (b) What would you do if you were Paris Hilton? (her father, brother, etc) The second one lets the inerlocutor imagine oneself in an interesting situation and involves the personality. This thing is rare, I do value it high; too many talks happen in the upper atmosphere without involving you, and too many people don't get it and don't try to involve others, thinking that just smiling or being joyful, or flattery is the key. Though, this also takes skill, and I suppose that if you try too hard, people can get bored even of being _tried_ to involve: we all are good at noticing patterns.
- preavy 16y ago"I HAVE observed few obvious subjects to have been so seldom, or, at least, so slightly handled as this; and, indeed, I know few so difficult to be treated as it ought, nor yet upon which there seemeth so much to be said." - Jonathan Swift, Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation. http://www.bartleby.com/27/8.html http://www.bartleby.com/27/8.html