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A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value

A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. There is some dopaminergic itch that must be scratched here, and I find like most itching, it doesn't end up paying off for more than a second.

RobertRoberts 7y ago
I have some relationships where we value trivia as a part of our discussions. And looking stuff up is fun for all of us. Maybe the type of people and the relationships you have determine the experience in this case?
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  Maybe your group is different, but I want someone to engage fully with me as a person, not check their phones for a fact that doesn't matter. Something like, what was Robert de Niro's second major film? This matters zero, can we have screen-free time together?
  - kulahan 7y ago
    If you want them to fully engage with you, then you can't possibly ask them any questions which require any kind of meaningful thought. The human brain can't think deeply about a topic while also holding an attentive conversation with someone. The only difference is that the disengagement for a phone is extremely visible, whereas it's usually just a slight "tell" when they're thinking deeply (the eyes roll to the corner and they squint slightly, for instance). They're still disengaging, though.
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    I think you misunderstood, I said "some relationships". If you don't care about /any/ trivia, perhaps that is why you are annoyed by this? I have a few groups of very deep thinkers where trivia is a waste of breath. And yet, we still want to look things up because the answers deeply matter to us like origins of words (etymology), accurate quotes from like minded researchers, etc... These are things that once answered move our discussions deeper or in unique directions. Maybe next time someone does this ask them why they are interested in the answer at that moment? I feel if you are genuinely interested in the other person's experience (especially if you think it's trivial) they will more likely care about yours.
_Nat_ 7y ago
"Check facts" as in investigating tangential issues, or as in fact-checking assumptions? If the latter, then that'd seem very healthy. People can come to all sorts of strange conclusions about topics like politics if they're allowed seemingly reasonable assumptions that they sincerely believe to be probably true. If they're not fact-checked, then discussions on topics like politics can quickly devolve into meaningless hot air. Wikipedia shows that the [principle of explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion) can quickly lead to absurd results in a few short examples, but the short examples are for brevity. In common practice, it's long discussions involving a lot of seemingly innocent approximations/assumptions that get off the tracks so subtly that many folks don't seem to realize it. ([Obligatory xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2217/ https://xkcd.com/2217/).)
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. Do we need to know completely irrelevant information about famous people, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    > It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. This sounds more like a difference in interests than a difference in conversational etiquette. I do understand the disillusion with how pocket-sized screens have affected human communication, but I also love being able to google citations in the middle of a conversation. I imagine I'd get more annoyed by the behavior if it was related to a topic I had no interest in. Maybe try to find friends with vaguely similar interests? I don't demand that my friends are interested in everything I'm interested in (and I wouldn't have any friends if I did), but if there isn't some decent amount of overlap in interests I'm probably not going to enjoy conversing with somebody for an extended period of time. Edit: quote formatting.
    - 7y ago
dr_dshiv 7y ago
My rule is to only look things up in order to settle bets of at least a dollar. It works.
jasode 7y ago
>A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. >, can we have screen-free time together? >, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens. I wasn't there at your meetings so if you truly felt ignored, I can't argue with feelings. That said, let me offer a different perspective: someone quickly going to a smartphone screen to look something up that's relevant to our conversation shows they are more engaged with me and our conversation. It's like being in a professor's office and we discuss something and it prompts the professor to get up from his chair and pull a specific book from the shelf and page through it to clarify a fact. That shows caring. Or when you talk to a friend and you mention something about a specific place and they say "Oh, I happen to have a photo of that" so they go get their photo album and show it to me. That's staying connected with our conversation. I don't say, "I wish our real-life interactions were book-free and photo-album-free." It really isn't the screen hardware that's the measure of (dis)engagement. It depends on what they're specifically doing on that screen. If the person is distracted with typing Facebook replies, then yes, they're totally ignoring our conversation. On the other hand, if they're visiting wikipedia or doing a google search to enhance our talk, that's great. EDIT to add an example weaving in some "screen time" to enhance a conversation. A priest talking to Google employees on how he uses their search engine during conversations with friends to clarify facts. Deep link at 2m40s and watch for about 1 minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enDhX49F3XI&t=2m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enDhX49F3XI&t=2m40s
- behringer 7y ago
  Not imo. It's like the worst. My experience: We're having a really nice conversation about movies. Oh who was the actor in such and such? Oh I dunno, let me tell you about another movie I he might be in that I really enjoyed. Third guy: Let me read to you some IMDB right now so we can stop talking about what interests anybody and listen to the entire synopsis about the guy that any of us could do in our own time.
- mistersquid 7y ago
  > It's like being in a professor's office and we discuss something and it prompts the professor to get up from his chair and pull a specific book from the shelf and page through it to clarify a fact. As a former professor, visiting a professor during, say, office hours, is not quite the same as spending time with a loved one (whether that be a parent, sibling, spouse, friend, what-have-you). The context for such a meeting is to share knowledge and information, which discursive domain provides the reason for meeting in the first place. In many interpersonal meetings between loved ones, knowledge and information are a secondary or even more remote consideration to the basis of the meeting. In such cases, looking up trivial information is not necessarily a form of care but a form of distraction. It takes judgement to know when looking up a piece of information is germane to the interpersonal context or whether doing so is incidental. EDIT: Furnish missing object "care".
allworknoplay 7y ago
Knowing little facts in a million different areas helps me contextualize and reason about new information, recognize patterns, discern signal/noise, and know when something might be accurate or inaccurate. If something comes up once there’s a good chance it’ll come up again or plays a part in some pattern that will come up again. I’d also argue that most of the time if something as trivial as who was in some movie is already a part of the conversation, then it’s not further trivializing things to go down that rabbit hole vs the original. Obviously being a bad conversationalist or listener is bad, but it’s not necessarily just an itch to want to know things.
fragmede 7y ago
How do you feel about looking up non-trivial facts (eg talking to someone about having a meeting and looking up when you're both free), or answering a text (and how do you know if that text is salient to your conversation or not), or just being bored - reddit/HN/etc. More importantly, how do you tell the difference when the other person whips out their phone? It's downright rude to go off and check reddit if we're in the middle of a conversation, but if we're waiting around for a third person and that person is nowhere to be seen, I welcome that we're both checking our phones for messages from them. I wish there were some way to communicate "hey, no, my phone use is actually importantly relevant to our conversation (wherein, trivia facts, such as found on IMDB, don't count)"
deanCommie 7y ago
While I don't agree with you on the core argument (me and all my friends are instant fact checkers), I do have an anecdote to share. A couple years ago my wife and I spent 3 days on a train through India without any data. A bunch of times subjects came up we couldn't just google. Instead, we discussed them for hours, interrogating and deducing answers to questions we would have jumped straight to the answers for back home. (it wasn't trivia like "who was the actor in the movie", it was curiousity questions like "I wonder what was the origin of so and so law", and "I wonder how so and so mechanical/physical property works"

RobertRoberts 7y ago

I have some relationships where we value trivia as a part of our discussions. And looking stuff up is fun for all of us. Maybe the type of people and the relationships you have determine the experience in this case?

WhompingWindows 7y ago
Maybe your group is different, but I want someone to engage fully with me as a person, not check their phones for a fact that doesn't matter. Something like, what was Robert de Niro's second major film? This matters zero, can we have screen-free time together?
- kulahan 7y ago
  If you want them to fully engage with you, then you can't possibly ask them any questions which require any kind of meaningful thought. The human brain can't think deeply about a topic while also holding an attentive conversation with someone. The only difference is that the disengagement for a phone is extremely visible, whereas it's usually just a slight "tell" when they're thinking deeply (the eyes roll to the corner and they squint slightly, for instance). They're still disengaging, though.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  I think you misunderstood, I said "some relationships". If you don't care about /any/ trivia, perhaps that is why you are annoyed by this? I have a few groups of very deep thinkers where trivia is a waste of breath. And yet, we still want to look things up because the answers deeply matter to us like origins of words (etymology), accurate quotes from like minded researchers, etc... These are things that once answered move our discussions deeper or in unique directions. Maybe next time someone does this ask them why they are interested in the answer at that moment? I feel if you are genuinely interested in the other person's experience (especially if you think it's trivial) they will more likely care about yours.

_Nat_ 7y ago

"Check facts" as in investigating tangential issues, or as in fact-checking assumptions? If the latter, then that'd seem very healthy. People can come to all sorts of strange conclusions about topics like politics if they're allowed seemingly reasonable assumptions that they sincerely believe to be probably true. If they're not fact-checked, then discussions on topics like politics can quickly devolve into meaningless hot air. Wikipedia shows that the [principle of explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion) can quickly lead to absurd results in a few short examples, but the short examples are for brevity. In common practice, it's long discussions involving a lot of seemingly innocent approximations/assumptions that get off the tracks so subtly that many folks don't seem to realize it. ([Obligatory xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2217/ https://xkcd.com/2217/).)

WhompingWindows 7y ago
It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. Do we need to know completely irrelevant information about famous people, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  > It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. This sounds more like a difference in interests than a difference in conversational etiquette. I do understand the disillusion with how pocket-sized screens have affected human communication, but I also love being able to google citations in the middle of a conversation. I imagine I'd get more annoyed by the behavior if it was related to a topic I had no interest in. Maybe try to find friends with vaguely similar interests? I don't demand that my friends are interested in everything I'm interested in (and I wouldn't have any friends if I did), but if there isn't some decent amount of overlap in interests I'm probably not going to enjoy conversing with somebody for an extended period of time. Edit: quote formatting.
  - 7y ago

dr_dshiv 7y ago

My rule is to only look things up in order to settle bets of at least a dollar. It works.

jasode 7y ago

>A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. >, can we have screen-free time together? >, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens. I wasn't there at your meetings so if you truly felt ignored, I can't argue with feelings. That said, let me offer a different perspective: someone quickly going to a smartphone screen to look something up that's relevant to our conversation shows they are more engaged with me and our conversation. It's like being in a professor's office and we discuss something and it prompts the professor to get up from his chair and pull a specific book from the shelf and page through it to clarify a fact. That shows caring. Or when you talk to a friend and you mention something about a specific place and they say "Oh, I happen to have a photo of that" so they go get their photo album and show it to me. That's staying connected with our conversation. I don't say, "I wish our real-life interactions were book-free and photo-album-free." It really isn't the screen hardware that's the measure of (dis)engagement. It depends on what they're specifically doing on that screen. If the person is distracted with typing Facebook replies, then yes, they're totally ignoring our conversation. On the other hand, if they're visiting wikipedia or doing a google search to enhance our talk, that's great. EDIT to add an example weaving in some "screen time" to enhance a conversation. A priest talking to Google employees on how he uses their search engine during conversations with friends to clarify facts. Deep link at 2m40s and watch for about 1 minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enDhX49F3XI&t=2m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enDhX49F3XI&t=2m40s

behringer 7y ago
Not imo. It's like the worst. My experience: We're having a really nice conversation about movies. Oh who was the actor in such and such? Oh I dunno, let me tell you about another movie I he might be in that I really enjoyed. Third guy: Let me read to you some IMDB right now so we can stop talking about what interests anybody and listen to the entire synopsis about the guy that any of us could do in our own time.
mistersquid 7y ago
> It's like being in a professor's office and we discuss something and it prompts the professor to get up from his chair and pull a specific book from the shelf and page through it to clarify a fact. As a former professor, visiting a professor during, say, office hours, is not quite the same as spending time with a loved one (whether that be a parent, sibling, spouse, friend, what-have-you). The context for such a meeting is to share knowledge and information, which discursive domain provides the reason for meeting in the first place. In many interpersonal meetings between loved ones, knowledge and information are a secondary or even more remote consideration to the basis of the meeting. In such cases, looking up trivial information is not necessarily a form of care but a form of distraction. It takes judgement to know when looking up a piece of information is germane to the interpersonal context or whether doing so is incidental. EDIT: Furnish missing object "care".

allworknoplay 7y ago

Knowing little facts in a million different areas helps me contextualize and reason about new information, recognize patterns, discern signal/noise, and know when something might be accurate or inaccurate. If something comes up once there’s a good chance it’ll come up again or plays a part in some pattern that will come up again. I’d also argue that most of the time if something as trivial as who was in some movie is already a part of the conversation, then it’s not further trivializing things to go down that rabbit hole vs the original. Obviously being a bad conversationalist or listener is bad, but it’s not necessarily just an itch to want to know things.

fragmede 7y ago

How do you feel about looking up non-trivial facts (eg talking to someone about having a meeting and looking up when you're both free), or answering a text (and how do you know if that text is salient to your conversation or not), or just being bored - reddit/HN/etc. More importantly, how do you tell the difference when the other person whips out their phone? It's downright rude to go off and check reddit if we're in the middle of a conversation, but if we're waiting around for a third person and that person is nowhere to be seen, I welcome that we're both checking our phones for messages from them. I wish there were some way to communicate "hey, no, my phone use is actually importantly relevant to our conversation (wherein, trivia facts, such as found on IMDB, don't count)"

deanCommie 7y ago

While I don't agree with you on the core argument (me and all my friends are instant fact checkers), I do have an anecdote to share. A couple years ago my wife and I spent 3 days on a train through India without any data. A bunch of times subjects came up we couldn't just google. Instead, we discussed them for hours, interrogating and deducing answers to questions we would have jumped straight to the answers for back home. (it wasn't trivia like "who was the actor in the movie", it was curiousity questions like "I wonder what was the origin of so and so law", and "I wonder how so and so mechanical/physical property works"