10 ms·

The Church of Interruption (2018)

250 points by wallflower 4y ago

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
Oh my god. Mirror moment for me.
awillen 4y ago
One thing that always bothers me about this is that interrupters are often seen as bad, while non-interrupters are seen as good. You hear this a lot in the context of engineering meetings - there's Tommy the interrupter who always shouts his thoughts, while Grace the quiet one has lots of intelligent things to say but never gets a chance because people are talking over her. It's always portrayed as the interrupter's problem - they should stop and let other people speak. And hey, I don't disagree with that. You've probably guessed that I'm an interrupter, but I make an extremely concerted effort to shut my damn gob. But if it's reasonable for me to change my behavior, why can't we expect the non-interrupters to do their part a bit and... interrupt? I'm sure it's uncomfortable for them to do that, but it's uncomfortable for me to keep my mouth shut when you're explaining something that I already grasp, and if I just cut in right now I can save us both a few minutes of conversation that's totally unnecessary. People then complain that non-interrupters don't get the same praise/promotions/other good things because they're not heard, but at some point isn't that on them? Part of what you're getting paid for is to contribute your thoughts during meetings. If you're not doing that solely because it's uncomfortable, isn't that a weakness for you as an employee? I'll just reiterate here that I'm not anti-non-interrupter, and I go out of my way to make sure smart people who tend to be quieter get involved in the conversation. That said, I do think this is one of those things where neither side is inherently more right or wrong than the other, but one side gets treated as the bad guy.
- jackblemming 4y ago
  Because you’re the aggressor. It’s as simple as that. If you’re hanging out with buddies who like to playfully shove, that’s fine, but it’s on you if you don’t respect someone who doesn’t want to be shoved. You’re welcome to not hangout with people who don’t like being shoved, but that’s on you.
  - robocat 4y ago
    Your completely ignored their point and then responded violently towards awillen. There is more to polite conversation than just interruptions.
    - jackblemming 4y ago
      Perhaps I’ve seen too many quiet engineers rudely interrupted to be objective. Many of them happen to be women as well. The self proclaimed interrupters become surprisingly polite when speaking to the CEO. What an interesting phenomenon ;)
      - samvher 4y ago
        If anything I expect people higher up in the hierarchy to be less sensitive about being interrupted, and more on board with optimizing information flow. On the other hand, with people who are more junior/less confident you are more at risk of discouraging them from sharing useful information if you interrupt too often, so it can be counterproductive. One thing that I find tends to help is interrupting with questions rather than statements as that sort of keeps the ball in the other person’s court.
      - darkerside 4y ago
        I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to treat senior leaders differently from peers. More on topic, if we're talking about a business context here, and I think we are, it's important to consider the actual implications. If the team that is willing to shove and be shoved is more effective than the other team, it seems reasonable to expect those who join the team to get their shoving gloves on, fast, if they want to contribute at a high level. Lots of assumptions baked in there, and I'm not saying it's the only valid way to run a good business, by any stretch.
      - robocat 4y ago
        What is your point of repeating the obvious? You basically accused awillen of being that type of engineer, even though awillen wrote against being that type of interruptive arsehole. awillen is asking “how do we convert people to church of interruption”, they are not saying to interrupt. Your reply to my comment is tangential, without connecting to the point I made (perhaps because my own comment was rude: I do reread the https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html regularly and I try to follow them . . .).
- virtual_void 4y ago
  I think that there’s a third way in a meeting, and that’s to have a skilful chair of the meeting ensuring that there’s not one unnecessary dominating voice. I say this as an interrupter who has been kindly made aware that other people have yet to speak.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  What makes you sure that your reserved counterpart isn’t asked to change their behavior as well? In a healthy work environment, suggestions made to both types of people are usually done privately.
  - Drew_ 4y ago
    100% guaranteed that quiet employees will be told to "speak up" at every performance review.
- jan_Inkepa 4y ago
  Interesting PoV! Thanks for sharing :) There are different kinds of interrupters 1 - people who want to let you know they know what you're about to say - might save everyone time. 2 - people who aren't interested in what's being said and want to say what they want to say. 3 - people who know better than the person who's talking. 4 - a tangent/aside (when I tangent interrupt I always try when I'm done to ask the person I interrupted to continue). 5 - rephrasing things ("do you mean this?"), asking for confirmation that stuff was understood. If I feel someone's monologuing excessively and losing me because of it (and being bad enough at reading body language to not realise it), I tend to do this (which can turn into a kind of interrogation scenario where I lead by questions, which isn't great, but it's better than having my eyes glaze). 5b - Asking for information about things I don't understand. On the other side I know some people can speak very slowly, with lots of filler words - it's like they're monopolising the air with...'hmmmm' 'uuuh'...basically nothing, and that can be as annoying as being interrupted. And then you have giant wind-bags. Conversational dynamics can be tricky things. I don't want anyone getting bummed out if I'm talking to them, and I don't want to lose them. Sometimes my conversation partner isn't so finely attuned to these things so I have to try steer things, and I'm sure people do that with me sometimes as well.
  - rollinDyno 4y ago
    4 and 5 don't really seem interruption in the sense the article refers to. Yes, they're not letting you say right away what you had in mind to say, but they have every intention to eventually let you make your point.
- korlja 4y ago
  There are easy, non-offensive, non-interrupting methods of communicating while another person is talking. Signal yes/no, dissent, agreement? Thumbs up or down, Nod or shake head. Applause? Deaf people's clap (raise both hands, oscillate quickly around z-axis). Want to say something? Raise one hand. Want the speaker to get on with it? Circular motion with the tip of the index finger around the y-axis. Strongly disagree with speaker and intend to insult? Show middle finger (ok, that one is offensive, intentionally). There is a rich repertoire of non-verbal communication available to us that most people will understand. And if you use them, the problem instantly vanishes. That people don't use them is imho not a problem of not knowing or not understanding. It is a problem of lacking civility. Of the desire to assert dominance by interrupting. Of asserting dominance by talking for a long time. And of the myopic concentration on verbal communication. Now if you are on the phone, there isn't much else you can do, of course...
  - mananaysiempre 4y ago
    The problem vanishes—assuming the speaker has plenty of free mental capacity to keep track of the audience (which is also small enough to keep track of, ≤ 15 people or so if meeting in person). If I am lecturing on a familliar subject with 1:1 or greater preparation time : lecture time ratio, maybe I do. If, on the other hand, I’m retelling a paper I’ve banged my head against for the last couple of days and probably still don’t get a good part of, then sorry—I’m barely holding on here, I have to sort dependencies and not miss anything and remember to bring attention onto subtle points or the whole thing will apart and I have to backtrack and lose everyone because nobody can apply a verbal diff that goes half an hour back. Again, I’m so sorry, but I don’t have the brain time to process your visual cues. Wait for the nearest syntactic boundary and shout over me. Please. I can suspend my flow—I can’t work out of it. (From the other end, the problem vanishes assuming I’m either taking prodigious notes or already know half of what you’re saying, because people only poll for nonverbal interrupt requests once per logical point, so 2—7 minutes, and at best I’ll forget half of what I wanted to ask, at worst you lost me at the very beginning and you’ll have to spend the 5 minutes all over again, in addition to the two or so minutes it’s going to take us to negotiate an understanding of the question. And how do I deal with a presenter who mistook my simple question for a similarly-sounding advanced question? Interrupt their long advanced explanation?.. Right.)
- deleted 4y ago
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- cstrahan 4y ago
  Speaking from my experience: The problem isn’t interruption, it’s how someone interrupts. I have been in many meetings over my career where the loudest person speaks very authoritatively about something they don’t understand, resulting in the meeting becoming completely derailed: invariants and laws are needlessly questioned, and important design parameters are overlooked. An example taken from real world experience: loud interrupter asks for input on how we can ensure messages arrive in-order over a TCP connection. I speak up and, after verifying that I interpreted the question correctly, state that we don’t have to worry about that — in-order delivery is guaranteed by TCP itself. Interrupter cuts me off to say “that’s an interesting theory, but it’s really important that we know messages will be delivered in order. Jason, or Susan, what do you know of, oh, what’s that called… Raft? Paxos? I think there things called state machines?” This general pattern continues: I try to assert that we’re getting caught up trying to solve <insert non-issue here>, I get cut off mid sentence, and interrupter spouts off buzzwords that they don’t understand hoping that something will stick. At some point I then have to raise my voice: “hey, hey, HEY! You’re not hearing me. This is a non-issue. It is simply a fact that TCP guarantees in order delivery. That’s not a theory of mine, it’s not something I’m feeling. It’s fact. Do you understand that, or do you believe that the TCP specification is broken in some way, and that every book on TCP is somehow wrong? Also, please, please stop cutting me off.” It’s not people speaking up regularly or occasionally interrupting that’s an issue — the issue is when I have to raise my voice and become confrontational to have an interrupter let me speak and raise concerns of my own, when I have to consistently push back against attempts at silencing me. Or when I raise a point, and interrupter (seemingly to keep an air of authority) cuts me off after I raise a concern for which I would like to offer guidance, turns to someone else, and says “so what do you think of that?” These individuals usually ascend the org chart rapidly, as they seem incredibly engaged, and their domination of meetings is usually conflated with good leadership skills (after all, it looks like everyone is following their lead). If they’re working with junior level developers, their ignorance goes unnoticed, and by the time these interrupters are several tiers up the org chart, their peers are too far removed from the technical side to realize that the interrupter doesn’t know which end is up — but the interrupter has strong opinions, “so surely they know what they are talking about.” Fortunately, such people are pretty rare (at least in my experience).
  - 4y ago
- Drew_ 4y ago
  The reality is that Grace is smart but that doesn't mean everyone else in the room is wrong. To interject and argue a "better" perspective requires a certain level of arrogance that not everyone has. People like Grace, who don't have this arrogance, will instead just let the louder more arrogant people run the show because at the end of the day it probably doesn't matter. Moreover, this arrogance can easily mark you as "problematic" and "argumentative" by other arrogant people. I'm sure having quiet people speak up sounds great to you until you realize this means getting into more arguments over everything. We need people like Grace that are competent but let louder, more arrogant people run the show because at the end of the day, we'll be more productive that way.
  - margalabargala 4y ago
    > To interject and argue a "better" perspective requires a certain level of arrogance that not everyone has. That's one way of looking at it. Another perspective would be "we're all here trying to solve this problem that we're talking about, so obviously if someone has a solution they think would work, they'd say it. No one is, so I'll offer my thoughts since it's better than nothing"
- Espressosaurus 4y ago
  The issue that I don't know how to deal with is the folks that will expound at length--for minutes at a time--without yielding the floor unless they're interrupted. And sometimes not even then. I'm already on board, let's move on to the part where we solve the problem! I've attempted to make it more conditional. People I know who are meek I'll damned well hold my tongue. People I know who are Barkers I'll damned well interrupt. Everyone else...ends up being a bit of column A and a bit of column B and I'm sure I'm not navigating it correctly.
  - 1ark 4y ago
    I think you could ask for permission to interrupt. From what I can grasp of the example: Get attention from the speaker, raising hand or whatever - "Can I interrupt you for a second?" - "Yes." - "I think we all understand most of this... Does everyone understand?" Look for confirmation from others - "Could we skip to the next item/solving the problem?" In the happy path your peers (some of them meeks) are glad someone interrupted the monologue. Of course outcomes will be different all the time. Same with tangents. "I think we have drifted a bit from the topic, or is there a point?" It's easy to get carried away. But being polite there should rarely be an issue.
- t-3 4y ago
  > But if it's reasonable for me to change my behavior, why can't we expect the non-interrupters to do their part a bit and... interrupt? I'm not an interrupter. When I feel the need to interrupt (like when I'm being monologued at and need to bring up a point or ask for clarification), it doesn't work, because interrupters ignore interruptions and don't even listen to what other people say. The other half of the conversation is just their time to think up the next monologue. I'd rather leave than have to scream to get my point heard.
  - darkerside 4y ago
    First, not everybody is the same. If you extrapolate behavior like that, you'll incorrectly label some people. I'm not sure you fully grasped the article. Some people are Barkers like you describe, but others are waiting and wanting to be interrupted. It shows that you are interested and care.
rollinDyno 4y ago
I have a friend who is a Barker, who I am always annoyed at because I am a Meek type and I more often than not cannot finish making my points to her. I do not feel that she listens to me. Why do I still like her? This article, to me, pairs very well with the other top post on HN right now [1]. Thanks to that article I learned that we feel more connected towards someone the quicker they reply to us [2]. There's no conclusive evidence for my theory here that being an interrupter can also trigger the "connectability" heuristic, but it's certainly worth considering. [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/good-conversations-have-lots-of-doorknobs https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/good-conversation... [2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116915119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116915119
- deleted 4y ago
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- avg_dev 4y ago
  Thanks very much for that PNAS article. If I may attempt a brief summary: listening (paying attention) matters.
  - wanderingstan 4y ago
    That article makes me wonder if this is another reason video calls remain inferior for connecting with coworkers: It’s impossible to (appear to) respond quickly with even the slightest network lag.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  It's an issue with a lot of people who therefore feel unwelcome - mainly thinking of the software development industry here, and of gender differences. It's like if you're not blustery and assertive, you won't get a foot in the door in these discussions and your views on a matter will be unheard. I think group conversations at work should have a moderator. Use a talking stick if needs be.
  - rollinDyno 4y ago
kordlessagain 4y ago
`In short, my friend told me that I am a member of the "Church of Interruption" because I often interrupt him when we are talking. He said that this is efficient because it allows us to both know that we understand each other. However, I asked what the problem is, and he did not answer.`
sva_ 4y ago
I admired the left alignments of the quotation marks, but was really put off by them breaking after the diagram.
tdeck 4y ago
In other literature these conversation styles are called "high considerateness" (the non-interrupter style) and "high involvement" (the interrupter style). The high involvement style is more common among people from northeastern cities - they tend to leave much shorter pauses in conversation and to finish others' sentences as a way to show that they're fully engaged in the interaction.
dang 4y ago
Related: The Church of Interruption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21044009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21044009 - Sept 2019 (141 comments)
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Oh hey I replied in there as well. I already had this article in my bookmarks, but I had forgotten I had it.
crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
The wizard has mastered all 4 quadrants and skillfully choses protocols based on the current programming contexts at play. Also, communication is programming and the wizard is very clear about this.
amin 4y ago
I know the COI members will downvote this, but I do not associate with people who constantly interrupt others. Because they’re often impolite in many other ways as well. I love my life not communicating with them. And I think there’s a correlation between people who have a constant desire to assert dominance over others, and people who often interrupt. It’s like the earliest red flag for me. I know because I used to be a COI member a long time ago.
- BarryMilo 4y ago
  It's a very cultural thing I think. I see it I guess in movies but here in Canada (Montreal) it's kind of unthinkable to me, doubly so in French. Interestingly, words are much longer in French so interrupting should make more sense but it is not done, period.
- 1ark 4y ago
  Reminds me of Bill Watterson: "I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you’re doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you’re lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you’re really lucky."
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
This article seems so gentle to me. I’m surprised American culture is so tolerant of people interrupting. I am from a country where the culture is a lot more formal and here interrupting is seen as extremely impolite and by the second time you do it everyone will probably think you act like a child and treat you like one.
- saghm 4y ago
  I think part of the reason that's it common here is that it's also pretty common for people to just talk forever if they're not interrupted, which can also be impolite in certain situations. As chaotic as "anyone can talk as long as they want but anyone can also interrupt whenever they want" can be, it can also balance out sometimes in a way that ends up in a sort of equilibrium.
- samvher 4y ago
  I’m very curious which culture that is, if you wouldn’t mind sharing. I tend to take some liberties when it comes to interrupting but am aware that it’s not always appreciated. Still I often find it crucial in order to keep information flowing at high rates. I try not to over or under do it but find it a delicate balance and am not sure I always get it right.
- coldtea 4y ago
  For perspective, my country/culture is intolerant of people not interrupting - and not taking well to being interrupted themselves. They're are seen as precocious uptight snowflakes - and their protest at interruption (not as in "let me finish", but as in protesting the notion of interruption itself as if below them) is considered impolite and in bad form. At best it's seen like, let's say, eating a slice of pizza with fork and knife in New York. They are seen to want to monopolize the conversation, or make it not a real conversation (with interruptions, back and forth, and genuine exchange) but a series of monologues from each party. If we're discussing, we're not there to hear a diatribe in silence. We're there to engage in conversation.
ggm 4y ago
Serial Offender, fallen off the wagon many times over the decades. I've seen some amazing pushback. A researcher who bellowed "I HAVE NOT FINISHED" so loud, it was like the MTV man-in-a-chair reaction from everyone else. I wasn't the guilty party that time but I could have been. It's often said people believe women do most interrupting when the stats are very good 75% or more in mixed dialogue, is men's speaking time. (or used to be. maybe there's been a shift but I doubt it) I do think its a combination of things. Well meaning engagement/reflection signals, "me-too" and also the tangents being struck, fleeting moments in the interupters stack of ideas. But also dominance asserting. As an offendor, I don't mean to minimise the impact it has. I know it's not good. But I want to interrupt and intrude another one I can't handle: "correct" If you say this to me as I speak, you're dead to me. You aren't the arbiter of right and wrong, you aren't the teacher, you aren't the prover. If you want to assert agreement, find another way.
- robmoore121 4y ago
  RE: "correct" In some Asian vernacular Englishes (e.g. Indian, Singaporean), this is means "yes, right" / "I agree". I used to experience your reaction to people saying "correct" to me while I talk (i.e. "fuck you") but since then, my understanding has increased, and I interpret it to mean "yes, right" / "I agree". Additionally, it may be that people who say this aren't native speakers of an Asian vernacular English, but are accommodated (i.e. Linguistic Accommodation) to it and so reproduce it in other contexts (e.g. in conversations with you). I hope you found this illuminating.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    To me (also non-native speaker) it seems synonymous with "right", "yes" or "mm hmm" so I don't see the issue either. Mind you, in Dutch we'd also say "Klopt", which is a colloquialism that also translates to "that is correct".
  - ggm 4y ago
    I did. That was very insightful and interesting. It's a fellow anglo who is the serial offendor. I never push back on ESL, My wife taught TEFL and I have been acculturated to a high tolerance for any minor nit in an ESL speaker. But fellow Anglo.. I have low to zero tolerance for this particular verbal tic. I hadn't considered the english diaspora/vernacular. I'll have to be mindful of that.
deleted 4y ago
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pessimizer 4y ago
What's being marked here as a "barker" is frequently someone who is actually trying to blow past what they think is a weak or deceptive point into another that they see as stronger. They're refusing to be interrupted when they feel vulnerable, and moving to where they don't. If you wait for them to finish, and begin your response by commenting on their earlier point, they'll immediately interrupt you and accuse you of avoiding their final point. edit: you end up forced to argue with conclusions rather than premises or steps. Instead of arguing e.g. "maybe Mrs. X didn't notice Y was missing, we both missed it the first time," instead you're forced to argue whether Mrs. X is a good person or not, and being accused of going out of your way to defend Mrs. X.
patientplatypus 4y ago
canadev 4y ago
An interesting article. Something interesting maybe none or few you will likely experience: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous meetings, presumably any 12-step meeting. Say what you will about the 12 steps, and the belief of god that is associated with them. Feel free to disagree with the dogma. As a member I openly do that from time to time. The real beauty of these meetings is that when someone speaks, they are left to speak completely uninterrupted. (Some groups use a timer and people generally wrap it up when the timer goes off.) Speaking about your experience during a meeting is called “sharing” and it is fucking magical. It’s helped me learn to listen, it’s helped me to speak extemporaneously on things that matter to me deeply, it’s taught me patience as an object lesson. You may not agree with what the other person is saying - there is no rule that you have to, and as might be expected it is not at all an infrequent thing that you hear absolute nonsense or worse. But there are also messages of beauty, there is often identification, there is definitely learning, and there is freedom, and there is genuine respect. I believe there is some significant power in the 12 steps: confession of harms caused, attempts at restitution where at all appropriate, and learning to take responsibility for one’s actions. I do not believe in an all powerful and loving god because there is simply too much needless suffering in the world for me to agree with it. Occasionally I share about this but I try not to harp on it. But the real beauty of a 12 step meeting is in the sharing, in my opinion…
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  >I do not believe in an all powerful and loving god because there is simply too much needless suffering in the world I'm suspect that's not the only reason, but I'll ask just in case: how much can suffering be reduced without the abrogation of free will?
  - scarier 4y ago
    Why are you so sure that free will exists?
    - nine_k 4y ago
      It's postulated by the same system of faith which postulates the existence of God which is omnipotent, omniscient, and merciful.
Nomentatus 4y ago
As someone who's been an interlocutor for six decades, my concern is the reverse. Yes there are people who love to dominate no matter what - and interrupt anytime. But there are far more people who think that conversation is either a monologue or an exchange of monologues - and it absolutely is not. An interjection is not an interruption, and conversation IS a contract; meaning that the subject must be of interest to both parties, and signed on to by both parties or be abandoned quickly. A short introduction of a new topic of interest to you is all you get, if the other party doesn't pick that topic up, then it's on to the next possible or proposed topic, period. Conversation is back and forth, a distinction made clear in ancient Greek plays because only slaves at that time had to endure monologues; so to subject another free citizen to behavior only a slave had to endure was calculated to offend mortally. To modify Ibsen's advice: "If you don't want to be interrupted, buy a dog."
- aporetics 4y ago
  I didn’t know that, about Greek plays. Thank you.
smogcutter 4y ago
He’s describing a form of “cooperative overlapping”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-cooperative-overlapping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-coop... Things like this are cultural and learned. I think for many people it isn’t until they first hit a radical change of frame (say, going away to college or moving to a new city) that they realize there even are different conversational styles. One thing I hadn’t considered until TFA is the effect of not being interrupted. I can definitely tend to drone on, especially if I’m explaining something. Unconsciously, I’m waiting for you to signal that we’re on the same page by taking the conversational ball and running with it. Failing that, I don’t really know when to stop.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  You stop when you have said as little as possible, but no less; make your point, don't start repeating it because then you assume the other party didn't get it. Here's a good video on the subject: https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_better_conversation https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_...
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
There are different types of conversations. If it's "I am willing to dedicate my time to your needs", interrupting contradicts this promise, as you know best what your needs are, maybe it's just to be heard. But if it's "I can't get back to work till we are finished", it's your responsibility to not detain me longer than necessary and that includes being Ok with me interrupting to hurry things along. We need situational awareness, not making a church of either style of talking.
renewiltord 4y ago
Haha good stuff. There are a couple of my friends who'll get a kick out of this (I'm a huge adherent of the CoI).
myrryr 4y ago
I think people are sometimes forced into one position or another by brain chemistry. If you have ADHD, and can't hold a thought long enough that when it is your turn to talk comes around, then you are forced into a position of interrupting, or, that thought is lost. Depending on how important or useful it is, you can be put in a lose/lose position. So, how I interact with people, depends a lot on what they have going on mentally wise. That took a long time to learn.
- iamevn 4y ago
  I have a strong memory from before I realized I was ADHD of hanging out with very good friends. I simply could not get a word in when I had something to say (I'm quieter than most so even my attempts to interrupt would fail) and when the time did come that there was room for me to speak I'd completely lose whatever it was I had to say. It was an incredibly frustrating experience that, thankfully I don't experience often and I've learned some strategies for these situations at work. (Writing things down for later as they come to mind, specific sorts of body language to indicate levels of importance of what I'd like to say, posting in a side channel like a comment on a shared doc or in a shared chatroom, etc)
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I have ADHD and it is quite frustrating to have these limitations. I struggle with real-time processing and I can’t offload audio to some other part of my brain. If I try to write a note or hold a thought in my head for more than 10 seconds, the audio starts dropping out. So I tend to interrupt when possible. I try not to be rude about it but some people just won’t shut up long enough for me to say something while it’s still relevant. I got in a lot of trouble for “talking back” and “not paying attention” as a kid.
jmiskovic 4y ago
Fascinating how different online discussions are. We are still competing for eyeballs but we can speak our minds uninterrupted and chose to follow the threads of conversation at our own pace and interest. Another outlier is a group chat where recorded voice messages are used heavily. It's more of series of monologues than a dialogue. It is interesting when the channel explodes, people recording far more content than you can keep up with. Normal conversations can also get loud, but people usually break off into smaller groups instead of talking over each other in a common channel. The discussion around this article changed my perspective a bit. I find myself quickly losing interest in conversations when interrupts occur, they strike me as rude and disrespectful. Never before saw it as cultural thing, a mechanism that the interrupted party would expect and even appreciate.
CarnunMP 4y ago
Definite overlap with another essay on the front page right now, 'Good conversations have lots of doorknobs': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542260
tpoacher 4y ago
Couple of thoughts: 1. The friend was an a******. 2. I find that the vast majority of people who complain about being interrupted tend to be run-on-sentence people. Let's call them "The Uninterruptibles". It baffles me that this kind of person doesn't consider it to be rude when dominating the conversation for 20 minutes without a single entry point for dialogue, jumping into 10 different topics in that time, but is offended by the inevitable interruption when they try to jump onto the 6th topic without even a full-stop. 3. Interrupters rarely get interrupted, because they generally think in single topics and talk in full sentences. This is in fact the crux of most interruptions: completing one argument or solidifying understanding before jumping to the next. On the rare occasion that an 'interrupter' runs-on a bit themselves, they will gladly accept a clarifying interruption, and if it's important to finish the point before moving on to the next topic, they will indicate so without feigning offense. 4. This means that in the presence of an Uninterruptible, there's a high chance the other person will necessarily become an interrupter, lest they be reduced to a mere spectator. Whereas the Uninterruptible will have plenty of opportunities to reply, interject, and so forth, without ever having to interrupt, due to normal cadence and punctuated thoughts of their conversational counterpart. This makes one person stand out even more as an 'interrupter', but it's ridiculous to blame them for it. Yet this is what happens.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >1. The friend was an a***. I think you've just missed the point - except if we're meant to judge anybody with an opposing view or practice as an asshole. The (imaginary) friend patiently made his case, gave examples, didn't condemn his friend for being what he is, or the others, nor took it to insults and sentimentality. >I find that the vast majority of people who complain about being interrupted tend to be run-on-sentence people. Let's call them "The Uninterruptibles". The post article covers those people, under the "barkers" moniker, and no, they're a different category from the main one discussed (which both interrupt and enjoy being interrupted).

250 points by wallflower 4y ago

Oh my god. Mirror moment for me.

One thing that always bothers me about this is that interrupters are often seen as bad, while non-interrupters are seen as good. You hear this a lot in the context of engineering meetings - there's Tommy the interrupter who always shouts his thoughts, while Grace the quiet one has lots of intelligent things to say but never gets a chance because people are talking over her. It's always portrayed as the interrupter's problem - they should stop and let other people speak. And hey, I don't disagree with that. You've probably guessed that I'm an interrupter, but I make an extremely concerted effort to shut my damn gob. But if it's reasonable for me to change my behavior, why can't we expect the non-interrupters to do their part a bit and... interrupt? I'm sure it's uncomfortable for them to do that, but it's uncomfortable for me to keep my mouth shut when you're explaining something that I already grasp, and if I just cut in right now I can save us both a few minutes of conversation that's totally unnecessary. People then complain that non-interrupters don't get the same praise/promotions/other good things because they're not heard, but at some point isn't that on them? Part of what you're getting paid for is to contribute your thoughts during meetings. If you're not doing that solely because it's uncomfortable, isn't that a weakness for you as an employee? I'll just reiterate here that I'm not anti-non-interrupter, and I go out of my way to make sure smart people who tend to be quieter get involved in the conversation. That said, I do think this is one of those things where neither side is inherently more right or wrong than the other, but one side gets treated as the bad guy.

jackblemming 4y ago
Because you’re the aggressor. It’s as simple as that. If you’re hanging out with buddies who like to playfully shove, that’s fine, but it’s on you if you don’t respect someone who doesn’t want to be shoved. You’re welcome to not hangout with people who don’t like being shoved, but that’s on you.
- robocat 4y ago
  Your completely ignored their point and then responded violently towards awillen. There is more to polite conversation than just interruptions.
  - jackblemming 4y ago
    Perhaps I’ve seen too many quiet engineers rudely interrupted to be objective. Many of them happen to be women as well. The self proclaimed interrupters become surprisingly polite when speaking to the CEO. What an interesting phenomenon ;)
    - samvher 4y ago
      If anything I expect people higher up in the hierarchy to be less sensitive about being interrupted, and more on board with optimizing information flow. On the other hand, with people who are more junior/less confident you are more at risk of discouraging them from sharing useful information if you interrupt too often, so it can be counterproductive. One thing that I find tends to help is interrupting with questions rather than statements as that sort of keeps the ball in the other person’s court.
    - darkerside 4y ago
      I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to treat senior leaders differently from peers. More on topic, if we're talking about a business context here, and I think we are, it's important to consider the actual implications. If the team that is willing to shove and be shoved is more effective than the other team, it seems reasonable to expect those who join the team to get their shoving gloves on, fast, if they want to contribute at a high level. Lots of assumptions baked in there, and I'm not saying it's the only valid way to run a good business, by any stretch.
    - robocat 4y ago
      What is your point of repeating the obvious? You basically accused awillen of being that type of engineer, even though awillen wrote against being that type of interruptive arsehole. awillen is asking “how do we convert people to church of interruption”, they are not saying to interrupt. Your reply to my comment is tangential, without connecting to the point I made (perhaps because my own comment was rude: I do reread the https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html regularly and I try to follow them . . .).
virtual_void 4y ago
I think that there’s a third way in a meeting, and that’s to have a skilful chair of the meeting ensuring that there’s not one unnecessary dominating voice. I say this as an interrupter who has been kindly made aware that other people have yet to speak.
swatcoder 4y ago
What makes you sure that your reserved counterpart isn’t asked to change their behavior as well? In a healthy work environment, suggestions made to both types of people are usually done privately.
- Drew_ 4y ago
  100% guaranteed that quiet employees will be told to "speak up" at every performance review.
jan_Inkepa 4y ago
Interesting PoV! Thanks for sharing :) There are different kinds of interrupters 1 - people who want to let you know they know what you're about to say - might save everyone time. 2 - people who aren't interested in what's being said and want to say what they want to say. 3 - people who know better than the person who's talking. 4 - a tangent/aside (when I tangent interrupt I always try when I'm done to ask the person I interrupted to continue). 5 - rephrasing things ("do you mean this?"), asking for confirmation that stuff was understood. If I feel someone's monologuing excessively and losing me because of it (and being bad enough at reading body language to not realise it), I tend to do this (which can turn into a kind of interrogation scenario where I lead by questions, which isn't great, but it's better than having my eyes glaze). 5b - Asking for information about things I don't understand. On the other side I know some people can speak very slowly, with lots of filler words - it's like they're monopolising the air with...'hmmmm' 'uuuh'...basically nothing, and that can be as annoying as being interrupted. And then you have giant wind-bags. Conversational dynamics can be tricky things. I don't want anyone getting bummed out if I'm talking to them, and I don't want to lose them. Sometimes my conversation partner isn't so finely attuned to these things so I have to try steer things, and I'm sure people do that with me sometimes as well.
- rollinDyno 4y ago
  4 and 5 don't really seem interruption in the sense the article refers to. Yes, they're not letting you say right away what you had in mind to say, but they have every intention to eventually let you make your point.
korlja 4y ago
There are easy, non-offensive, non-interrupting methods of communicating while another person is talking. Signal yes/no, dissent, agreement? Thumbs up or down, Nod or shake head. Applause? Deaf people's clap (raise both hands, oscillate quickly around z-axis). Want to say something? Raise one hand. Want the speaker to get on with it? Circular motion with the tip of the index finger around the y-axis. Strongly disagree with speaker and intend to insult? Show middle finger (ok, that one is offensive, intentionally). There is a rich repertoire of non-verbal communication available to us that most people will understand. And if you use them, the problem instantly vanishes. That people don't use them is imho not a problem of not knowing or not understanding. It is a problem of lacking civility. Of the desire to assert dominance by interrupting. Of asserting dominance by talking for a long time. And of the myopic concentration on verbal communication. Now if you are on the phone, there isn't much else you can do, of course...
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  The problem vanishes—assuming the speaker has plenty of free mental capacity to keep track of the audience (which is also small enough to keep track of, ≤ 15 people or so if meeting in person). If I am lecturing on a familliar subject with 1:1 or greater preparation time : lecture time ratio, maybe I do. If, on the other hand, I’m retelling a paper I’ve banged my head against for the last couple of days and probably still don’t get a good part of, then sorry—I’m barely holding on here, I have to sort dependencies and not miss anything and remember to bring attention onto subtle points or the whole thing will apart and I have to backtrack and lose everyone because nobody can apply a verbal diff that goes half an hour back. Again, I’m so sorry, but I don’t have the brain time to process your visual cues. Wait for the nearest syntactic boundary and shout over me. Please. I can suspend my flow—I can’t work out of it. (From the other end, the problem vanishes assuming I’m either taking prodigious notes or already know half of what you’re saying, because people only poll for nonverbal interrupt requests once per logical point, so 2—7 minutes, and at best I’ll forget half of what I wanted to ask, at worst you lost me at the very beginning and you’ll have to spend the 5 minutes all over again, in addition to the two or so minutes it’s going to take us to negotiate an understanding of the question. And how do I deal with a presenter who mistook my simple question for a similarly-sounding advanced question? Interrupt their long advanced explanation?.. Right.)
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cstrahan 4y ago
Speaking from my experience: The problem isn’t interruption, it’s how someone interrupts. I have been in many meetings over my career where the loudest person speaks very authoritatively about something they don’t understand, resulting in the meeting becoming completely derailed: invariants and laws are needlessly questioned, and important design parameters are overlooked. An example taken from real world experience: loud interrupter asks for input on how we can ensure messages arrive in-order over a TCP connection. I speak up and, after verifying that I interpreted the question correctly, state that we don’t have to worry about that — in-order delivery is guaranteed by TCP itself. Interrupter cuts me off to say “that’s an interesting theory, but it’s really important that we know messages will be delivered in order. Jason, or Susan, what do you know of, oh, what’s that called… Raft? Paxos? I think there things called state machines?” This general pattern continues: I try to assert that we’re getting caught up trying to solve <insert non-issue here>, I get cut off mid sentence, and interrupter spouts off buzzwords that they don’t understand hoping that something will stick. At some point I then have to raise my voice: “hey, hey, HEY! You’re not hearing me. This is a non-issue. It is simply a fact that TCP guarantees in order delivery. That’s not a theory of mine, it’s not something I’m feeling. It’s fact. Do you understand that, or do you believe that the TCP specification is broken in some way, and that every book on TCP is somehow wrong? Also, please, please stop cutting me off.” It’s not people speaking up regularly or occasionally interrupting that’s an issue — the issue is when I have to raise my voice and become confrontational to have an interrupter let me speak and raise concerns of my own, when I have to consistently push back against attempts at silencing me. Or when I raise a point, and interrupter (seemingly to keep an air of authority) cuts me off after I raise a concern for which I would like to offer guidance, turns to someone else, and says “so what do you think of that?” These individuals usually ascend the org chart rapidly, as they seem incredibly engaged, and their domination of meetings is usually conflated with good leadership skills (after all, it looks like everyone is following their lead). If they’re working with junior level developers, their ignorance goes unnoticed, and by the time these interrupters are several tiers up the org chart, their peers are too far removed from the technical side to realize that the interrupter doesn’t know which end is up — but the interrupter has strong opinions, “so surely they know what they are talking about.” Fortunately, such people are pretty rare (at least in my experience).
- 4y ago
Drew_ 4y ago
The reality is that Grace is smart but that doesn't mean everyone else in the room is wrong. To interject and argue a "better" perspective requires a certain level of arrogance that not everyone has. People like Grace, who don't have this arrogance, will instead just let the louder more arrogant people run the show because at the end of the day it probably doesn't matter. Moreover, this arrogance can easily mark you as "problematic" and "argumentative" by other arrogant people. I'm sure having quiet people speak up sounds great to you until you realize this means getting into more arguments over everything. We need people like Grace that are competent but let louder, more arrogant people run the show because at the end of the day, we'll be more productive that way.
- margalabargala 4y ago
  > To interject and argue a "better" perspective requires a certain level of arrogance that not everyone has. That's one way of looking at it. Another perspective would be "we're all here trying to solve this problem that we're talking about, so obviously if someone has a solution they think would work, they'd say it. No one is, so I'll offer my thoughts since it's better than nothing"
Espressosaurus 4y ago
The issue that I don't know how to deal with is the folks that will expound at length--for minutes at a time--without yielding the floor unless they're interrupted. And sometimes not even then. I'm already on board, let's move on to the part where we solve the problem! I've attempted to make it more conditional. People I know who are meek I'll damned well hold my tongue. People I know who are Barkers I'll damned well interrupt. Everyone else...ends up being a bit of column A and a bit of column B and I'm sure I'm not navigating it correctly.
- 1ark 4y ago
  I think you could ask for permission to interrupt. From what I can grasp of the example: Get attention from the speaker, raising hand or whatever - "Can I interrupt you for a second?" - "Yes." - "I think we all understand most of this... Does everyone understand?" Look for confirmation from others - "Could we skip to the next item/solving the problem?" In the happy path your peers (some of them meeks) are glad someone interrupted the monologue. Of course outcomes will be different all the time. Same with tangents. "I think we have drifted a bit from the topic, or is there a point?" It's easy to get carried away. But being polite there should rarely be an issue.
t-3 4y ago
> But if it's reasonable for me to change my behavior, why can't we expect the non-interrupters to do their part a bit and... interrupt? I'm not an interrupter. When I feel the need to interrupt (like when I'm being monologued at and need to bring up a point or ask for clarification), it doesn't work, because interrupters ignore interruptions and don't even listen to what other people say. The other half of the conversation is just their time to think up the next monologue. I'd rather leave than have to scream to get my point heard.
- darkerside 4y ago
  First, not everybody is the same. If you extrapolate behavior like that, you'll incorrectly label some people. I'm not sure you fully grasped the article. Some people are Barkers like you describe, but others are waiting and wanting to be interrupted. It shows that you are interested and care.

rollinDyno 4y ago

I have a friend who is a Barker, who I am always annoyed at because I am a Meek type and I more often than not cannot finish making my points to her. I do not feel that she listens to me. Why do I still like her? This article, to me, pairs very well with the other top post on HN right now [1]. Thanks to that article I learned that we feel more connected towards someone the quicker they reply to us [2]. There's no conclusive evidence for my theory here that being an interrupter can also trigger the "connectability" heuristic, but it's certainly worth considering. [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/good-conversations-have-lots-of-doorknobs https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/good-conversation... [2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116915119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116915119

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avg_dev 4y ago
Thanks very much for that PNAS article. If I may attempt a brief summary: listening (paying attention) matters.
- wanderingstan 4y ago
  That article makes me wonder if this is another reason video calls remain inferior for connecting with coworkers: It’s impossible to (appear to) respond quickly with even the slightest network lag.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
It's an issue with a lot of people who therefore feel unwelcome - mainly thinking of the software development industry here, and of gender differences. It's like if you're not blustery and assertive, you won't get a foot in the door in these discussions and your views on a matter will be unheard. I think group conversations at work should have a moderator. Use a talking stick if needs be.
- rollinDyno 4y ago

kordlessagain 4y ago

`In short, my friend told me that I am a member of the "Church of Interruption" because I often interrupt him when we are talking. He said that this is efficient because it allows us to both know that we understand each other. However, I asked what the problem is, and he did not answer.`

sva_ 4y ago

I admired the left alignments of the quotation marks, but was really put off by them breaking after the diagram.

tdeck 4y ago

In other literature these conversation styles are called "high considerateness" (the non-interrupter style) and "high involvement" (the interrupter style). The high involvement style is more common among people from northeastern cities - they tend to leave much shorter pauses in conversation and to finish others' sentences as a way to show that they're fully engaged in the interaction.

dang 4y ago

Related: The Church of Interruption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21044009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21044009 - Sept 2019 (141 comments)

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Oh hey I replied in there as well. I already had this article in my bookmarks, but I had forgotten I had it.

crawfordcomeaux 4y ago

The wizard has mastered all 4 quadrants and skillfully choses protocols based on the current programming contexts at play. Also, communication is programming and the wizard is very clear about this.

amin 4y ago

I know the COI members will downvote this, but I do not associate with people who constantly interrupt others. Because they’re often impolite in many other ways as well. I love my life not communicating with them. And I think there’s a correlation between people who have a constant desire to assert dominance over others, and people who often interrupt. It’s like the earliest red flag for me. I know because I used to be a COI member a long time ago.

BarryMilo 4y ago
It's a very cultural thing I think. I see it I guess in movies but here in Canada (Montreal) it's kind of unthinkable to me, doubly so in French. Interestingly, words are much longer in French so interrupting should make more sense but it is not done, period.
1ark 4y ago
Reminds me of Bill Watterson: "I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you’re doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you’re lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you’re really lucky."

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

This article seems so gentle to me. I’m surprised American culture is so tolerant of people interrupting. I am from a country where the culture is a lot more formal and here interrupting is seen as extremely impolite and by the second time you do it everyone will probably think you act like a child and treat you like one.

saghm 4y ago
I think part of the reason that's it common here is that it's also pretty common for people to just talk forever if they're not interrupted, which can also be impolite in certain situations. As chaotic as "anyone can talk as long as they want but anyone can also interrupt whenever they want" can be, it can also balance out sometimes in a way that ends up in a sort of equilibrium.
samvher 4y ago
I’m very curious which culture that is, if you wouldn’t mind sharing. I tend to take some liberties when it comes to interrupting but am aware that it’s not always appreciated. Still I often find it crucial in order to keep information flowing at high rates. I try not to over or under do it but find it a delicate balance and am not sure I always get it right.
coldtea 4y ago
For perspective, my country/culture is intolerant of people not interrupting - and not taking well to being interrupted themselves. They're are seen as precocious uptight snowflakes - and their protest at interruption (not as in "let me finish", but as in protesting the notion of interruption itself as if below them) is considered impolite and in bad form. At best it's seen like, let's say, eating a slice of pizza with fork and knife in New York. They are seen to want to monopolize the conversation, or make it not a real conversation (with interruptions, back and forth, and genuine exchange) but a series of monologues from each party. If we're discussing, we're not there to hear a diatribe in silence. We're there to engage in conversation.

ggm 4y ago

Serial Offender, fallen off the wagon many times over the decades. I've seen some amazing pushback. A researcher who bellowed "I HAVE NOT FINISHED" so loud, it was like the MTV man-in-a-chair reaction from everyone else. I wasn't the guilty party that time but I could have been. It's often said people believe women do most interrupting when the stats are very good 75% or more in mixed dialogue, is men's speaking time. (or used to be. maybe there's been a shift but I doubt it) I do think its a combination of things. Well meaning engagement/reflection signals, "me-too" and also the tangents being struck, fleeting moments in the interupters stack of ideas. But also dominance asserting. As an offendor, I don't mean to minimise the impact it has. I know it's not good. But I want to interrupt and intrude another one I can't handle: "correct" If you say this to me as I speak, you're dead to me. You aren't the arbiter of right and wrong, you aren't the teacher, you aren't the prover. If you want to assert agreement, find another way.

robmoore121 4y ago
RE: "correct" In some Asian vernacular Englishes (e.g. Indian, Singaporean), this is means "yes, right" / "I agree". I used to experience your reaction to people saying "correct" to me while I talk (i.e. "fuck you") but since then, my understanding has increased, and I interpret it to mean "yes, right" / "I agree". Additionally, it may be that people who say this aren't native speakers of an Asian vernacular English, but are accommodated (i.e. Linguistic Accommodation) to it and so reproduce it in other contexts (e.g. in conversations with you). I hope you found this illuminating.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  To me (also non-native speaker) it seems synonymous with "right", "yes" or "mm hmm" so I don't see the issue either. Mind you, in Dutch we'd also say "Klopt", which is a colloquialism that also translates to "that is correct".
- ggm 4y ago
  I did. That was very insightful and interesting. It's a fellow anglo who is the serial offendor. I never push back on ESL, My wife taught TEFL and I have been acculturated to a high tolerance for any minor nit in an ESL speaker. But fellow Anglo.. I have low to zero tolerance for this particular verbal tic. I hadn't considered the english diaspora/vernacular. I'll have to be mindful of that.

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pessimizer 4y ago

What's being marked here as a "barker" is frequently someone who is actually trying to blow past what they think is a weak or deceptive point into another that they see as stronger. They're refusing to be interrupted when they feel vulnerable, and moving to where they don't. If you wait for them to finish, and begin your response by commenting on their earlier point, they'll immediately interrupt you and accuse you of avoiding their final point. edit: you end up forced to argue with conclusions rather than premises or steps. Instead of arguing e.g. "maybe Mrs. X didn't notice Y was missing, we both missed it the first time," instead you're forced to argue whether Mrs. X is a good person or not, and being accused of going out of your way to defend Mrs. X.

patientplatypus 4y ago

canadev 4y ago

An interesting article. Something interesting maybe none or few you will likely experience: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous meetings, presumably any 12-step meeting. Say what you will about the 12 steps, and the belief of god that is associated with them. Feel free to disagree with the dogma. As a member I openly do that from time to time. The real beauty of these meetings is that when someone speaks, they are left to speak completely uninterrupted. (Some groups use a timer and people generally wrap it up when the timer goes off.) Speaking about your experience during a meeting is called “sharing” and it is fucking magical. It’s helped me learn to listen, it’s helped me to speak extemporaneously on things that matter to me deeply, it’s taught me patience as an object lesson. You may not agree with what the other person is saying - there is no rule that you have to, and as might be expected it is not at all an infrequent thing that you hear absolute nonsense or worse. But there are also messages of beauty, there is often identification, there is definitely learning, and there is freedom, and there is genuine respect. I believe there is some significant power in the 12 steps: confession of harms caused, attempts at restitution where at all appropriate, and learning to take responsibility for one’s actions. I do not believe in an all powerful and loving god because there is simply too much needless suffering in the world for me to agree with it. Occasionally I share about this but I try not to harp on it. But the real beauty of a 12 step meeting is in the sharing, in my opinion…

QuarterReptile 4y ago
>I do not believe in an all powerful and loving god because there is simply too much needless suffering in the world I'm suspect that's not the only reason, but I'll ask just in case: how much can suffering be reduced without the abrogation of free will?
- scarier 4y ago
  Why are you so sure that free will exists?
  - nine_k 4y ago
    It's postulated by the same system of faith which postulates the existence of God which is omnipotent, omniscient, and merciful.

Nomentatus 4y ago

As someone who's been an interlocutor for six decades, my concern is the reverse. Yes there are people who love to dominate no matter what - and interrupt anytime. But there are far more people who think that conversation is either a monologue or an exchange of monologues - and it absolutely is not. An interjection is not an interruption, and conversation IS a contract; meaning that the subject must be of interest to both parties, and signed on to by both parties or be abandoned quickly. A short introduction of a new topic of interest to you is all you get, if the other party doesn't pick that topic up, then it's on to the next possible or proposed topic, period. Conversation is back and forth, a distinction made clear in ancient Greek plays because only slaves at that time had to endure monologues; so to subject another free citizen to behavior only a slave had to endure was calculated to offend mortally. To modify Ibsen's advice: "If you don't want to be interrupted, buy a dog."

aporetics 4y ago
I didn’t know that, about Greek plays. Thank you.

smogcutter 4y ago

He’s describing a form of “cooperative overlapping”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-cooperative-overlapping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-coop... Things like this are cultural and learned. I think for many people it isn’t until they first hit a radical change of frame (say, going away to college or moving to a new city) that they realize there even are different conversational styles. One thing I hadn’t considered until TFA is the effect of not being interrupted. I can definitely tend to drone on, especially if I’m explaining something. Unconsciously, I’m waiting for you to signal that we’re on the same page by taking the conversational ball and running with it. Failing that, I don’t really know when to stop.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
You stop when you have said as little as possible, but no less; make your point, don't start repeating it because then you assume the other party didn't get it. Here's a good video on the subject: https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_better_conversation https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_...

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

There are different types of conversations. If it's "I am willing to dedicate my time to your needs", interrupting contradicts this promise, as you know best what your needs are, maybe it's just to be heard. But if it's "I can't get back to work till we are finished", it's your responsibility to not detain me longer than necessary and that includes being Ok with me interrupting to hurry things along. We need situational awareness, not making a church of either style of talking.

renewiltord 4y ago

Haha good stuff. There are a couple of my friends who'll get a kick out of this (I'm a huge adherent of the CoI).

myrryr 4y ago

I think people are sometimes forced into one position or another by brain chemistry. If you have ADHD, and can't hold a thought long enough that when it is your turn to talk comes around, then you are forced into a position of interrupting, or, that thought is lost. Depending on how important or useful it is, you can be put in a lose/lose position. So, how I interact with people, depends a lot on what they have going on mentally wise. That took a long time to learn.

iamevn 4y ago
I have a strong memory from before I realized I was ADHD of hanging out with very good friends. I simply could not get a word in when I had something to say (I'm quieter than most so even my attempts to interrupt would fail) and when the time did come that there was room for me to speak I'd completely lose whatever it was I had to say. It was an incredibly frustrating experience that, thankfully I don't experience often and I've learned some strategies for these situations at work. (Writing things down for later as they come to mind, specific sorts of body language to indicate levels of importance of what I'd like to say, posting in a side channel like a comment on a shared doc or in a shared chatroom, etc)
kayodelycaon 4y ago
I have ADHD and it is quite frustrating to have these limitations. I struggle with real-time processing and I can’t offload audio to some other part of my brain. If I try to write a note or hold a thought in my head for more than 10 seconds, the audio starts dropping out. So I tend to interrupt when possible. I try not to be rude about it but some people just won’t shut up long enough for me to say something while it’s still relevant. I got in a lot of trouble for “talking back” and “not paying attention” as a kid.

jmiskovic 4y ago

Fascinating how different online discussions are. We are still competing for eyeballs but we can speak our minds uninterrupted and chose to follow the threads of conversation at our own pace and interest. Another outlier is a group chat where recorded voice messages are used heavily. It's more of series of monologues than a dialogue. It is interesting when the channel explodes, people recording far more content than you can keep up with. Normal conversations can also get loud, but people usually break off into smaller groups instead of talking over each other in a common channel. The discussion around this article changed my perspective a bit. I find myself quickly losing interest in conversations when interrupts occur, they strike me as rude and disrespectful. Never before saw it as cultural thing, a mechanism that the interrupted party would expect and even appreciate.

CarnunMP 4y ago

Definite overlap with another essay on the front page right now, 'Good conversations have lots of doorknobs': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542260

tpoacher 4y ago

Couple of thoughts: 1. The friend was an a******. 2. I find that the vast majority of people who complain about being interrupted tend to be run-on-sentence people. Let's call them "The Uninterruptibles". It baffles me that this kind of person doesn't consider it to be rude when dominating the conversation for 20 minutes without a single entry point for dialogue, jumping into 10 different topics in that time, but is offended by the inevitable interruption when they try to jump onto the 6th topic without even a full-stop. 3. Interrupters rarely get interrupted, because they generally think in single topics and talk in full sentences. This is in fact the crux of most interruptions: completing one argument or solidifying understanding before jumping to the next. On the rare occasion that an 'interrupter' runs-on a bit themselves, they will gladly accept a clarifying interruption, and if it's important to finish the point before moving on to the next topic, they will indicate so without feigning offense. 4. This means that in the presence of an Uninterruptible, there's a high chance the other person will necessarily become an interrupter, lest they be reduced to a mere spectator. Whereas the Uninterruptible will have plenty of opportunities to reply, interject, and so forth, without ever having to interrupt, due to normal cadence and punctuated thoughts of their conversational counterpart. This makes one person stand out even more as an 'interrupter', but it's ridiculous to blame them for it. Yet this is what happens.

coldtea 4y ago
>1. The friend was an a***. I think you've just missed the point - except if we're meant to judge anybody with an opposing view or practice as an asshole. The (imaginary) friend patiently made his case, gave examples, didn't condemn his friend for being what he is, or the others, nor took it to insults and sentimentality. >I find that the vast majority of people who complain about being interrupted tend to be run-on-sentence people. Let's call them "The Uninterruptibles". The post article covers those people, under the "barkers" moniker, and no, they're a different category from the main one discussed (which both interrupt and enjoy being interrupted).