The rules of effective, efficient discussion are universal; if they're ignored in various settings I'll consider offering a cash wager that those are rarely set

The rules of effective, efficient discussion are universal; if they're ignored in various settings I'll consider offering a cash wager that those are rarely settings (engineering, surgery, etc) in which careful thought and attention to detail are high priorities. Participants who respect each other observe The Cocktail Party Protocol, which is so obvious it's enshrined in silicon: when you sense that the shared medium is available, you may begin transmission. If you discover that somebody else has also done so, back off for a short randomly variable interval and then try again. Multiple simultaneous transmissions are well understood to be a degenerate case to be avoided, with participants who fail to follow protocol regarded as defective and, in at least one case I've seen, tagged with error code BABBLING_TRANSMITTER. SEE ALSO: CSMA/CD