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"Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

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Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#31

Post by jamesbritt »

johnfn wrote: post #17

I realized a few months ago that I was talking too much in conversations, and not listening nearly enough. So for the last few months, I've decided to talk a lot less, and spend a lot more time just listening to people. In one on one conversation, I mostly just ask the other guy about the things he's talking about, to lead him into deeper (perhaps more interesting) areas. This is a great way to talk about interesting…

If I'm lucky I catch myself when I fall into some monologue pattern.

My trick is to pretend I'm doing an interview, where the words "me", "I", "my", etc. aren't appropriate. And where questions work better than assertions or corrections.

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#32

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rix0r wrote: post #20
ja27 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my bosses made a difficult coworker take a Dale Carnegie class. Afterward he said that it "changed his life." I thought it made him even creepier with the constant fake smile, eye contact and repetition of people's first name in conversation.

I agree. To me it sounds rather aggressive if people keep repeating my name while they already have my attention.

I meet up to about 20 children a day (sometimes a lot more, often a lot of adults too, but more often more children) that I don't know and need to communicate with. The kids are generally 4-10 years old but, as I said, it can be all ages.

I find that the children respond far better if I use their names when talking with them - but this is short snippets of talk (maybe 30s) with longer (20+min) gaps between. I always introduce my self by given-name and am surprised by how many of them remember me months later.

Partly I use their names as an attempt to remember them, partly to ease any discomfort or reluctance they have communicating with me and partly because I find it awkward starting a conversation or getting someone's attention without using their name.

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#33

Post by xenophanes »

alsomike wrote: post #22
xenophanes wrote: post #6

> Would the alien ever learn to distinguish good dancers from poor dancers? He could hack the problem like this: instead of figuring out which type of dancing is impressive directly, just watch reactions. People react to what they think is good dancing, so by watching people he can learn what's considered good dancing.

That's much trickier than you think, because people's reactions are highly contextual. Imagine if someone went on the dance floor who you wouldn't expect to have any dance moves at all, but they are pretty good. They would get extremely positive reactions, so an alien posing as a human watching this would imitate this, but suddenly get a negative reaction because it would be seen as mocking. It's also possible to dan…

> That's much trickier than you think

I think it's much tricker than you said. Those are just a variety of small details, and there are many more in the same general category. But that doesn't stop it from working. It's very noisy data whatever you do. The difficulty may approach that of learning English while you're there. That could take a decade, who knows. Children learn English faster than that, but we do lots of things to help them, but OTOH the alien is super smart and has computers to analyze patterns in the language.

(Of course if the alien does pick up English, these context problems become pretty small.)

I took the original question to be about the fact that what constitutes a good dance move is arbitrary. That's a fundamental problem. How do you figure out something that's just an arbitrary convention? Well, the solution is to look at the people who decide it.

How people react to stuff, like what they say, is not arbitrary. There's a method to it that you can figure out, unlike dancing which arguably doesn't have a method (I'm not taking sides on that, I just interpreted the problem to be to assume dancing hasn't got a logical method to it).

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#34

Post by username3 »

ja27 wrote: post #19
hunterjrj wrote: post #8

If you haven't already read How to Win Friends and Influence People, you definitely should.

One of my bosses made a difficult coworker take a Dale Carnegie class. Afterward he said that it "changed his life." I thought it made him even creepier with the constant fake smile, eye contact and repetition of people's first name in conversation.

He's doing it on purpose or calibrating.

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#35

Post by Amnon »

ambulatorybird wrote: post #3

Other kinds of conversational rules, perhaps of more interest to linguists, programmers, philosophers, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gricean_maxim

I wanted to write about how linguistics should be handled by linguists not philosophers, so I checked the citations. I noticed that Wikipedia says implicature was coined by Patrick McBride which, according to Wikipedia is "a retired American soccer midfielder". Turns out the article was edited some time ago by an anonymous user. I guess not enough people visited it to notice.

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#36

Post by ora600 »

maukdaddy wrote: post #7

I wish that both CS and MBA programs taught students to listen more. One of the few similarities I find between programmers/engineers and MBAs is the need to completely dominate a conversation. A few seminars on active listening would help everyone :)

You may have sampling bias - you tend to hear more the ones that completely dominate conversations. This doesn't immediately mean they are really the majority.

Personally, I wish my CS program taught me to speak more at a conversation setting (as opposed to "raise your hand to speak" classroom). I spent the first 3 years of my career unable to get a word in at meetings.

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#37

Post by username3 »

zck wrote: post #12
xenophanes wrote: post #6

> Would the alien ever learn to distinguish good dancers from poor dancers? He could hack the problem like this: instead of figuring out which type of dancing is impressive directly, just watch reactions. People react to what they think is good dancing, so by watching people he can learn what's considered good dancing.

But people also react to what is bad dancing; you'd have to know what reactions are favorable, and what reactions indicate displeasure. This would be hard for aliens, who wouldn't know what facial expressions mean.

Perhaps a reality TV show about dancing with stars that think they can dance would be better.

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#38

Post by zupatol »

jpr wrote: post #14

Uh-oh, if 3/4 of people can't conversate, couldn't it just be that people aren't meant to do that?

There are countries where people are not used to having conversations. I've heard of a wedding of a cameroonian to an american, where the cameroonian guests thought the american guests were crazy because they spoke so much.

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#39

Post by GFischer »

ambulatorybird wrote: post #3

Other kinds of conversational rules, perhaps of more interest to linguists, programmers, philosophers, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gricean_maxim

Are programmers and similar more likely to "break" the second Gricean maxim?

From the link: Quantity of Information

    * Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
    * Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
I recall a discussion here about the quantity of information we tend to give relative to the "average" person

Re: "Uh-oh. I didn't know conversation had rules."

#40

Post by Medulla »

ambulatorybird wrote: post #3

Other kinds of conversational rules, perhaps of more interest to linguists, programmers, philosophers, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gricean_maxim

Here's a more programmatic theory, more pragmatic based, but IMO it's more valid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_analysis

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