61–70 of 72 posts
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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.
Uh-oh, if 3/4 of people can't conversate, couldn't it just be that people aren't meant to do that?
I know I’m going against the grain here, but I’ve always been suspicious of people who claim that humans are a “social animal.” Thing is, the concept is a continuum, yet most people who say it mean it in a context like ants, bees and bonobo apes, when I happen to believe that the social behavior of lions and wolves is more apt. (Humans are best off in small family clusters, with significant periods of time in their l…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've tried to use the rules of implicature to understand your comment but I couldn't. You seem to be implying that one of the Wikipedia articles is wrong since it's unlikely that a soccer player would do advanced linguistics research. But you should consider a more likely hypothesis, namely, Wikipedia is correct and Patrick McBride the scholar and Patrick McBride the soccer player are different persons.
Also, in many cases the hypothesis that Wikipedia is correct isn't /very/ likely.
1. People do note if you are interested or not. Speaking all the time mostly equals to being self-centered. Making questions all the time can certainly please a self-centered person, but not those who note subtleties: getting a disinterested or a stock question is the same repelling as domineering.
2. People are adaptive and notice patterns. A good way to be boring is to do the same pattern in conversations. Try to seduct a girl by just making questions to her. (Where do you live; Are you stydiyng or working; etc.) That doesn't work.
3. Those who follow such too simple rule can easily be abused: a lot of people complain to others and search for those who'd just listen. They can never get enough, and what's worse they don't value you.
You have to be able to tell some words of support, but also, to not become a moral drainage to someone, you need to LEAD. This is a complicated thing, so I don't extend it here.
5. Making questions takes skill. Questions may be stupid, irritating, insulting or nerdy and boring. There's no boolean choice, to speak or to make questions, as it is presented in the article.
6. A good story teller is better than a good question maker. This also takes skill and the sense of what's a good place to which story.
For talks as an entertainment, which is my primary concern here, the difficulty is in INVOLVING THE interlocutor's PERSONALITY. Consider 2 questions one might ask:
(a) Do you think Paris Hilton's recent behavior is acceptable? (b) What would you do if you were Paris Hilton? (her father, brother, etc)
The second one lets the inerlocutor imagine oneself in an interesting situation and involves the personality. This thing is rare, I do value it high; too many talks happen in the upper atmosphere without involving you, and too many people don't get it and don't try to involve others, thinking that just smiling or being joyful, or flattery is the key. Though, this also takes skill, and I suppose that if you try too hard, people can get bored even of being _tried_ to involve: we all are good at noticing patterns.
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…
> 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.
The whole thought experiment is a bit weird, because the range of dancing skills on display in the typical nightclub in all the parts of the world I've been to recently is really not that large.
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.
One of my first exposures to real-life Americans was riding a bus in London with a bunch of American tourists who kept saying "Ooooooooohhh, look at all those _peeeeoplee!" as if they were shocked that one of the major streets in one of the world's largest cities should have a lot of people on it.
I would agree that there are few people with even minimal conversational skills. It is fantastic though when you run in to someone who really knows how to have a good conversation! I've only run in to one or two of these conversation super stars in my lifetime though. I'd be really interested in a book that outlines the rules for a relationship... It would be nice to have something authoritative to point to when disa…
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…
I have a similar project of self-improvement going on, but I find the problem much subtler than what you describe. First off, yeah, with the people I most value, I talk too much and don't listen enough. Mea culpa, must improve. On the other hand, perhaps I just need to level up my skill at asking guiding questions, and perhaps I just need to widen my interests, but I frequently have trouble being interested in what p…