Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Church of Interruption (2018)

sambleckley.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 100 posts

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#31

Post by canadev »

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…

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#32

Post by Espressosaurus »

awillen wrote: post #3

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…

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.

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#33

Post by robmoore121 »

ggm wrote: post #24

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…

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.

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#34

Post by ggm »

robmoore121 wrote: post #33
ggm wrote: post #24

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…

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,…

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.

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#35

Post by saghm »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #22

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.

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.

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#36

Post by Nomentatus »

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."

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#37

Post by rgoulter »

jackblemming wrote: post #4
awillen wrote: post #3

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…

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.

Different cultural styles sometimes conflict.

I liked Deborah Tannen's "You Just Don't Understand".

She describes this pro-interruption style as "competitive", whereas pro-taking-turns is "collaborative".

Of course, if you have some people whose ruleset is "compete/joust", and some whose ruleset is "collaborate/defer", there'll be tension.

Overall, Tannen reckoned that those who get the short end of the stick would benefit from different cultural styles being acknowledged, and why it might lead to conflict.

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#38

Post by QuarterReptile »

canadev wrote: post #31

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 so…

>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?

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#39

Post by osculum »

robmoore121 wrote: post #33
ggm wrote: post #24

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…

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,…

Non-native speaker here. Don't "correct" and "right" have the same meaning? Do most American/European native speakers feel so strongly about using "correct" in a conversation to show agreement?

Re: The Church of Interruption (2018)

#40

Post by smogcutter »

He’s describing a form of “cooperative overlapping”: 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.

Post reply on HN