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>“I just started taking guitar lessons.” >You might expect another person to respond with something like: >“How exciting! My mom has a vintage Martin that she

>“I just started taking guitar lessons.” >You might expect another person to respond with something like: >“How exciting! My mom has a vintage Martin that she loves to play.” Not really IMO, I think they just pushed it to just say "whatever's related to the topic". People who behave like that irl come off as self-absorbed and obnoxious most of the time, hope future AIs are not like that!

Mizza 5y ago
I came here to point this out - this is how people from California communicate. They simply take turns talking about themselves, orbiting around the same subject until somebody says something with enough gravity to drag the conversation into its next orbit. It was really off-putting when I first arrived, I got used to it over time, though I still don't like it and it's sad to see it used as the default model for this type of application. California is Borg. All will be assimilated.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >They simply take turns talking about themselves ... This so much! One thing about the UX of all conversational products, in stark contrast with real conversations, is that it forces you into a dynamic of "one question, one answer", "one message, one reply". I can imagine it could be pretty hard to break this paradigm, but for me it's like the equivalent of the uncanny valley in this context. No matter how good the replies are, if I'm forced into this dynamic, I just know that I'm talking to a robot.
- notyourwork 5y ago
  Midwest small talk is something to be cherished. I remember growing up having pleasant conversations with people. Moving west I found that conversations are more like a combative 1-upping of each other. It gets tiring listening.
- thanhhaimai 5y ago
  I'm not sure this is something unique to California. Travelling around, it seems that it's more correlated to people's income level. Richer people tend to talk about themselves more, in both Asia and EU. Maybe it's because they are able to experience more given their wealth/status, thus having more topic to talk about. Or maybe they get wealthy because of that self-centric attitude. In short, I don't think it's a California unique characteristic.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > Richer people tend to talk about themselves more, in both Asia and EU. Maybe it's because they are able to experience more given their wealth/status, thus having more topic to talk about. Or maybe they get wealthy because of that self-centric attitude. Interesting. My experience (Poland/EU) is pretty much the reverse. That is, I expect a richer person to take less about themselves, and more about the topic at hand. That is (generalizing), a rich person will say things like, "$Person is a great $X-maker, you should check them out", or "yeah, X is great, especially ${some refined form}", whereas a less well-off person will keep saying things like "yes, I love X", or "I hate X", or "I'm taking X classes", or "I know ${list of famous people doing X}". My provisional explanation is that the rich person doesn't feel the need to prove anything to you, or to themselves, so they can just talk about the topic itself, instead of trying to position themselves within it.
- goliatone 5y ago
  I often interpreted this as a conservative interpersonal communicative approach. It is safer to talk about yourself than to ask questions from people because there risk of inadvertently saying something offensive. Sure, you will find people that are a bit more self absorbed and would just pong about themselves. But there are so many conversational constraints- asking “why” is aggressive, direct feedback is discouraged, slipping pronouns or other identity traits is a minefield, etc. You should not follow up when others say something because they were being polite and you’re putting them in evidence… If you get to engaged in a conversation people can feel weirded out, like you’re supposed to go through the motions but that’s it. Not talking also can get you in trouble. Talking about yourself is probably the safest thing to do.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    I think if you find that engaging with people is such a minefield that's probably on you. It's not hard at all to have an engaging conversation with someone without accidentally offending them... People talk about themselves because conversations can be intimate - they're a two way street where both parties are sharing and relating.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      I believe the OP. There's always a minefield when cultures collide. This is evident when someone from the US Midwest/Mountain West moves to SF for work. Just very different norms for how interactions are structured, and how good faith is communicated. Because all involved parties basically look and sound the same, they judge one another according to their own local standards, instead of recognizing that they are actually interacting with a different culture. Edit: for an additional existence proof of this midwest/coastal clash, see this comment which I had not yet read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199709
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - 5y ago
- staticassertion 5y ago
  When I talk to someone and they share an experience, I like to ask questions, or relate to the experience by sharing my own. This is not "self absorbed" it's really normal... Mountains out of molehills here.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  Oh my. This so much. To be honest, it came across as incredibly selfish and self-centered when I was there, as a person from the east coast. It was as if people talk at each other instead of with each other. One element of this I think is that California is highly individualistic. The people there ARE self-absorbed. It is a celebrated cultural value. It's the exact mirror of Tall Poppy Syndrome. No one cuts you down for talking about your own interests and uniqueness instead of collectivist and egalitarian topics like sports or the weather. There's also a less intricate social code that comes from mixing together many people from different cultures. In a high-context, temporarily stable society, things get stratified and the litte social lubricants, expectations, and niceties get written into the socal contract and within the structure of the language itself (formal vs. informal forms). In a low-context and dynamic society, you are basically free to communicate without referencing the rulebook on what you should be saying or how you should be saying it and you bring less expectation that the other party will respond in some particularly scripted way.
- cowvin 5y ago
  People everywhere tend to talk about themselves a lot, in my experience. I'm not sure why you think it's only in California. What do people talk about where you're originally from?
karolist 5y ago
Spot on! A close friend might respond with something like "oh really, how do you find the time between work and <insert other things>" or "nice, are you taking classes or using some resources online?" and continue from there. The style where one responds with "nice, now switch back to MY story!" is natural only in some parts of US or superficial work relationships... If such models condition all humans to converse like that then the future is even more lonely, despite us all being connected all the time.
crsr 5y ago
What would your response be?
- inssein 5y ago
  That's amazing! What have you learned to play so far? --- You could even ask to hear them play when you see them next.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  "Hey, that's nice", "How's that going?" or something like it. Also, no response is also a response, you could just listen to them. No one's going to say "I just started taking guitar lessons" and remain silent for the rest of the evening; for sure they have much more to say about it.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    Wait. Why is it self-absorbed for someone to include themselves in the conversation, but it's not self-absorbed for you to come up to me and talk to me about your guitar playing? You can come up to me and say, "Hey, guess what!? I just started playing guitar!" And I can't say, "No kidding? My mom just started playing guitar, too!" or, "No way! I just started drumming a few weeks ago. Maybe we can jam soon?" How is my response "self-absorbed" but you starting a conversation about yourself isn't? If you start the conversation, I'm just supposed to keep asking you questions about your experience until you're done talking about it? I mean, if we're friends, shouldn't you care about what I think is relevant as much as I should care about what you think is relevant? And anyway, if you _really_ want to talk about how it's going - can't you just take the conversation there? I understand if you say something like, "Nice. I've always wanted to learn to play, and I never thought I could, and already I've learned so much, and I'm getting close to being able to play my favorite song." And I say, "Oh, cool. Hopefully you can play my favorite song next. But it's really hard, you'll probably need a few years. You know, I used to be friends with Kurt Cobain's assistant, right? That's how I got into music in the first place....." ^ That seems self-absorbed. The first seems like genuine conversation.
    - 5y ago
pfortuny 5y ago
So much this! Nothing like “are you enjoying them?”... Totally weird.
yumraj 5y ago
Exactly! I'll probably say, "Cool!!.", "Electric or Acoustic?", "Why guitar?", "How are you finding it, easy or hard - I've been meaning to take lessons". "Do you like your teacher?" .... I guess, if my mom played and had a vintage Martin then... who knows?... I believe the primary issue with conversational AI is that, at best, is 1-person, while humans are infinite-people. Hell, even a single person is multiple-people depending on the context and mood at that moment and other factors - in the sense that depending on context/mood/etc. a person may reply in different ways. Conversational AI cannot capture that, it can be simply a drone..
optymizer 5y ago
A lot of this is cultural, imo. I grew up in Eastern Europe, where it's very common to have two people talking exactly in that way about a common topic: "X? Yeah, my mom Y". It took me a while to learn that I can come across as self-absorbed and obnoxious in the US when speaking that way, so I have to consciously remember to ask questions about the person or the topic they presented, and avoid introducing my own related topic, but then I never know when it's OK or how to actually switch topics (since, like the article mentions, conversations do flow from on topic to another) and I become anxious during the conversation. Even this comment is about me. Could someone suggest how I could have responded in a way that doesn't sound self-absorbed?
- simtel20 5y ago
  First, please don't take this as a personal criticism, or that I'm saying that you do sound self-absorbed - we are in a comment section where people share their own experiences and opinions, so I don't think that expressing yourself in the first person is in any way negative. However, to answer your question about how to appear less "self-involved", perhaps there's a structural trick you can use, which is to shift some of your writing from first-person to second-person and speak from the outside? How does this sound to you: "It can take a while to learn that this can come across as self-absorbed and obnoxious in the US when speaking that way, so I've learned to consciously remember to ask questions about the person or the topic they presented, and void introducing related topics. This does make it more challenging to know when it's OK or how to actually switch topics (since, like the article mentions, conversations do flow from one topic to another) and this uncertainty can be anxiety-inducing" I'm not saying it's essential, but as an exercise if you imaging talking about the situation that way, it can influence the tone. I will repeat that I think your fear about sounding self-absorbed does not come out, to me, in your paragraph. I have worked with colleagues whose conversations do wander off on their own tangents if they're not asked to focus, and that may be similar to what you're talking about? But I can't be sure. If so, that is the difference between conversation for its own sake where sharing and opinion and life experiences are related, and workplace conversations which often have an objective, etc.
- drusepth 5y ago
  Yeah, I grew up in the Midwest and even there it's super common to respond to X with a personal anecdote about X. I think it makes the conversation more personal. Anyone can say, "Oh cool! What songs have you learned?" Only _you_ (you know, the friend they chose to talk to) can say, "Oh, that's cool! My grandpa gave me a cool guitar that I've been meaning to learn to play." I find the best approach is to sandwich a personal anecdote between two "you" statements for the people who need a prompt to carry the conversation. For example, "That's really interesting. I've also been thinking about learning guitar. How are you liking your lessons?"
robertlagrant 5y ago
> People who behave like that irl come off as Perhaps it would be better to specify that that's how you interpret this. Your own proclivities do not represent the world.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  IMO means In My Opinion
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    And that related to the "Not really". Not the bit I was talking about: > Not really IMO, I think they just pushed it to just say "whatever's related to the topic". People who behave like that irl come off as self-absorbed and obnoxious most of the time, hope future AIs are not like that!
Stratoscope 5y ago
I read that reply rather differently. It didn't sound self-absorbed, as if they were saying "let's talk about me, not you." It was more like "how cool, we have a common interest, lots to talk about!" I could imagine better responses, but I didn't see much wrong with that one.
toxik 5y ago
I think it depends on context. Idle chat at the coffee machine? Fair game to inject trivia like that. Somebody who maybe is looking for support in their new hobby? Different altogether.
skybrian 5y ago
Technically, that example is supposed to be something a person might say. They didn't claim that LaMBA said it. If the computer says it then it's confabulating. It doesn't have a mother. Unless they're working on role-playing, maybe it would be better to somehow remove responses that a computer shouldn't say from the training set?

Mizza 5y ago

I came here to point this out - this is how people from California communicate. They simply take turns talking about themselves, orbiting around the same subject until somebody says something with enough gravity to drag the conversation into its next orbit. It was really off-putting when I first arrived, I got used to it over time, though I still don't like it and it's sad to see it used as the default model for this type of application. California is Borg. All will be assimilated.

moralestapia 5y ago
>They simply take turns talking about themselves ... This so much! One thing about the UX of all conversational products, in stark contrast with real conversations, is that it forces you into a dynamic of "one question, one answer", "one message, one reply". I can imagine it could be pretty hard to break this paradigm, but for me it's like the equivalent of the uncanny valley in this context. No matter how good the replies are, if I'm forced into this dynamic, I just know that I'm talking to a robot.
notyourwork 5y ago
Midwest small talk is something to be cherished. I remember growing up having pleasant conversations with people. Moving west I found that conversations are more like a combative 1-upping of each other. It gets tiring listening.
thanhhaimai 5y ago
I'm not sure this is something unique to California. Travelling around, it seems that it's more correlated to people's income level. Richer people tend to talk about themselves more, in both Asia and EU. Maybe it's because they are able to experience more given their wealth/status, thus having more topic to talk about. Or maybe they get wealthy because of that self-centric attitude. In short, I don't think it's a California unique characteristic.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Richer people tend to talk about themselves more, in both Asia and EU. Maybe it's because they are able to experience more given their wealth/status, thus having more topic to talk about. Or maybe they get wealthy because of that self-centric attitude. Interesting. My experience (Poland/EU) is pretty much the reverse. That is, I expect a richer person to take less about themselves, and more about the topic at hand. That is (generalizing), a rich person will say things like, "$Person is a great $X-maker, you should check them out", or "yeah, X is great, especially ${some refined form}", whereas a less well-off person will keep saying things like "yes, I love X", or "I hate X", or "I'm taking X classes", or "I know ${list of famous people doing X}". My provisional explanation is that the rich person doesn't feel the need to prove anything to you, or to themselves, so they can just talk about the topic itself, instead of trying to position themselves within it.
goliatone 5y ago
I often interpreted this as a conservative interpersonal communicative approach. It is safer to talk about yourself than to ask questions from people because there risk of inadvertently saying something offensive. Sure, you will find people that are a bit more self absorbed and would just pong about themselves. But there are so many conversational constraints- asking “why” is aggressive, direct feedback is discouraged, slipping pronouns or other identity traits is a minefield, etc. You should not follow up when others say something because they were being polite and you’re putting them in evidence… If you get to engaged in a conversation people can feel weirded out, like you’re supposed to go through the motions but that’s it. Not talking also can get you in trouble. Talking about yourself is probably the safest thing to do.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  I think if you find that engaging with people is such a minefield that's probably on you. It's not hard at all to have an engaging conversation with someone without accidentally offending them... People talk about themselves because conversations can be intimate - they're a two way street where both parties are sharing and relating.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    I believe the OP. There's always a minefield when cultures collide. This is evident when someone from the US Midwest/Mountain West moves to SF for work. Just very different norms for how interactions are structured, and how good faith is communicated. Because all involved parties basically look and sound the same, they judge one another according to their own local standards, instead of recognizing that they are actually interacting with a different culture. Edit: for an additional existence proof of this midwest/coastal clash, see this comment which I had not yet read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199709
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- 5y ago
staticassertion 5y ago
When I talk to someone and they share an experience, I like to ask questions, or relate to the experience by sharing my own. This is not "self absorbed" it's really normal... Mountains out of molehills here.
dougmwne 5y ago
Oh my. This so much. To be honest, it came across as incredibly selfish and self-centered when I was there, as a person from the east coast. It was as if people talk at each other instead of with each other. One element of this I think is that California is highly individualistic. The people there ARE self-absorbed. It is a celebrated cultural value. It's the exact mirror of Tall Poppy Syndrome. No one cuts you down for talking about your own interests and uniqueness instead of collectivist and egalitarian topics like sports or the weather. There's also a less intricate social code that comes from mixing together many people from different cultures. In a high-context, temporarily stable society, things get stratified and the litte social lubricants, expectations, and niceties get written into the socal contract and within the structure of the language itself (formal vs. informal forms). In a low-context and dynamic society, you are basically free to communicate without referencing the rulebook on what you should be saying or how you should be saying it and you bring less expectation that the other party will respond in some particularly scripted way.
cowvin 5y ago
People everywhere tend to talk about themselves a lot, in my experience. I'm not sure why you think it's only in California. What do people talk about where you're originally from?

karolist 5y ago

Spot on! A close friend might respond with something like "oh really, how do you find the time between work and <insert other things>" or "nice, are you taking classes or using some resources online?" and continue from there. The style where one responds with "nice, now switch back to MY story!" is natural only in some parts of US or superficial work relationships... If such models condition all humans to converse like that then the future is even more lonely, despite us all being connected all the time.

crsr 5y ago

What would your response be?

inssein 5y ago
That's amazing! What have you learned to play so far? --- You could even ask to hear them play when you see them next.
moralestapia 5y ago
"Hey, that's nice", "How's that going?" or something like it. Also, no response is also a response, you could just listen to them. No one's going to say "I just started taking guitar lessons" and remain silent for the rest of the evening; for sure they have much more to say about it.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Wait. Why is it self-absorbed for someone to include themselves in the conversation, but it's not self-absorbed for you to come up to me and talk to me about your guitar playing? You can come up to me and say, "Hey, guess what!? I just started playing guitar!" And I can't say, "No kidding? My mom just started playing guitar, too!" or, "No way! I just started drumming a few weeks ago. Maybe we can jam soon?" How is my response "self-absorbed" but you starting a conversation about yourself isn't? If you start the conversation, I'm just supposed to keep asking you questions about your experience until you're done talking about it? I mean, if we're friends, shouldn't you care about what I think is relevant as much as I should care about what you think is relevant? And anyway, if you _really_ want to talk about how it's going - can't you just take the conversation there? I understand if you say something like, "Nice. I've always wanted to learn to play, and I never thought I could, and already I've learned so much, and I'm getting close to being able to play my favorite song." And I say, "Oh, cool. Hopefully you can play my favorite song next. But it's really hard, you'll probably need a few years. You know, I used to be friends with Kurt Cobain's assistant, right? That's how I got into music in the first place....." ^ That seems self-absorbed. The first seems like genuine conversation.
  - 5y ago

pfortuny 5y ago

So much this! Nothing like “are you enjoying them?”... Totally weird.

yumraj 5y ago

Exactly! I'll probably say, "Cool!!.", "Electric or Acoustic?", "Why guitar?", "How are you finding it, easy or hard - I've been meaning to take lessons". "Do you like your teacher?" .... I guess, if my mom played and had a vintage Martin then... who knows?... I believe the primary issue with conversational AI is that, at best, is 1-person, while humans are infinite-people. Hell, even a single person is multiple-people depending on the context and mood at that moment and other factors - in the sense that depending on context/mood/etc. a person may reply in different ways. Conversational AI cannot capture that, it can be simply a drone..

optymizer 5y ago

A lot of this is cultural, imo. I grew up in Eastern Europe, where it's very common to have two people talking exactly in that way about a common topic: "X? Yeah, my mom Y". It took me a while to learn that I can come across as self-absorbed and obnoxious in the US when speaking that way, so I have to consciously remember to ask questions about the person or the topic they presented, and avoid introducing my own related topic, but then I never know when it's OK or how to actually switch topics (since, like the article mentions, conversations do flow from on topic to another) and I become anxious during the conversation. Even this comment is about me. Could someone suggest how I could have responded in a way that doesn't sound self-absorbed?

simtel20 5y ago
First, please don't take this as a personal criticism, or that I'm saying that you do sound self-absorbed - we are in a comment section where people share their own experiences and opinions, so I don't think that expressing yourself in the first person is in any way negative. However, to answer your question about how to appear less "self-involved", perhaps there's a structural trick you can use, which is to shift some of your writing from first-person to second-person and speak from the outside? How does this sound to you: "It can take a while to learn that this can come across as self-absorbed and obnoxious in the US when speaking that way, so I've learned to consciously remember to ask questions about the person or the topic they presented, and void introducing related topics. This does make it more challenging to know when it's OK or how to actually switch topics (since, like the article mentions, conversations do flow from one topic to another) and this uncertainty can be anxiety-inducing" I'm not saying it's essential, but as an exercise if you imaging talking about the situation that way, it can influence the tone. I will repeat that I think your fear about sounding self-absorbed does not come out, to me, in your paragraph. I have worked with colleagues whose conversations do wander off on their own tangents if they're not asked to focus, and that may be similar to what you're talking about? But I can't be sure. If so, that is the difference between conversation for its own sake where sharing and opinion and life experiences are related, and workplace conversations which often have an objective, etc.
drusepth 5y ago
Yeah, I grew up in the Midwest and even there it's super common to respond to X with a personal anecdote about X. I think it makes the conversation more personal. Anyone can say, "Oh cool! What songs have you learned?" Only _you_ (you know, the friend they chose to talk to) can say, "Oh, that's cool! My grandpa gave me a cool guitar that I've been meaning to learn to play." I find the best approach is to sandwich a personal anecdote between two "you" statements for the people who need a prompt to carry the conversation. For example, "That's really interesting. I've also been thinking about learning guitar. How are you liking your lessons?"

robertlagrant 5y ago

> People who behave like that irl come off as Perhaps it would be better to specify that that's how you interpret this. Your own proclivities do not represent the world.

moralestapia 5y ago
IMO means In My Opinion
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  And that related to the "Not really". Not the bit I was talking about: > Not really IMO, I think they just pushed it to just say "whatever's related to the topic". People who behave like that irl come off as self-absorbed and obnoxious most of the time, hope future AIs are not like that!

Stratoscope 5y ago

I read that reply rather differently. It didn't sound self-absorbed, as if they were saying "let's talk about me, not you." It was more like "how cool, we have a common interest, lots to talk about!" I could imagine better responses, but I didn't see much wrong with that one.

toxik 5y ago

I think it depends on context. Idle chat at the coffee machine? Fair game to inject trivia like that. Somebody who maybe is looking for support in their new hobby? Different altogether.

skybrian 5y ago

Technically, that example is supposed to be something a person might say. They didn't claim that LaMBA said it. If the computer says it then it's confabulating. It doesn't have a mother. Unless they're working on role-playing, maybe it would be better to somehow remove responses that a computer shouldn't say from the training set?