The Church of Interruption

I often feel the urge to interrupt, just to get thing moving faster, but I don't want to be the smart-ass who is always interrupting with "I know, I know". So often times I pretend that the presented information is new to me and give the other person a chance to shine. It's not always easy and here and there I blurt out "I know", because I feel that they must be thinking that I'm dumb, or because I don't want to give them the pleasure of being the first person who enlightened me about this thing. But there is some upside to playing dumb: after he has finished talking, you can comment about the subject with some unexpected wisdom, as if you just came up with it.

I don't mind if people interrupt me, as long as they stick to the subject at hand. But I hate when someone just cut's me off mid sentence and starts talking about some totally unconnected stuff. I usually see the interruption coming. They nod impatiently and I see that their mouth is already preparing the sentence, waiting for a brief pause in my flow, not hearing a single word I'm saying.

If someone is irrational or malevolent, the only legitimate strategy is to not engage. Attempting to produce an irrefutable argument or use a strategy to bypass their dishonesty is futile and damages your own standing. Stated much more articulately by an author I admire:

"The first issue that I want to discuss is the topic of when to argue and when not--in other words, when to get into a full-fledged back-and-forth discussion, and when to refrain from it. There are many cases...in which it is not appropriate. In such cases, if it is a moral or otherwise significant issue, you could make clear that you disapprove of the person's view, so that you do not leave yourself in the position that your silence or refusal to argue implies agreement. Nevertheless, there are many cases in which, given that disclaimer by you, it simply makes no sense to engage in argument. I would summarize it like this: Assuming you want to argue--and remembering that there is no moral duty to argue--you have to decide: Is it worth it? Is it worth the strain, or do you think you will do anything for your inner clarity, or toward conversion or suggestion of a viewpoint to other people?

"Assuming that you are interested and do want to develop along these lines, I would say, in essence, argue when you believe that your opponent, however confused, is honest. He may disagree violently with you. But the question is, is he open to rational argument or not? If he is dishonest--which means that facts, arguments, and reasoning make no difference to him--then, of course, it is a waste of time. It is a waste of your breath, because you are giving arguments to someone who you believe holds that arguments are irrelevant. Moreover, if you argue with such a person, you are actually sanctioning his pretense. If he wants to engage in argument with you, that means he wants to pretend that he is a man of reason, that he has arguments for his view. If he does that while simultaneously denying reason, he is engaged in real fraud, and your refusal to comply is much more dreadful to him than any amount of refutation by you."

There is no guarantee that a short meeting will resolve something that has already been the subject of a long discussion, though I will grant that long discussions are often the result of at least one party not paying attention to what the other is saying, and only the intervention of a third party can break that deadlock.

Having one party who only reads the subject line before replying will sabotage any attempt at resolving an issue through email.

“...if I don’t signal my understanding in the same way you do – you’ll just keep talking, imagining I don’t get it.”

I like to hear someone's thought and then digest on it. If my partner in conversation just keeps on re-explaining his or her thoughts, thinking is halted. I have to keep on filtering what is said, even if it's basically the same thing repeated, to make sure I didn't miss something. The end result is that my partner speaks three or four times as much as he or she needs to, and I am left understanding less than if the thought was said to me once with a little time to think afterward.

Quite often when people accuse each other of not listening, it's that they aren't actually saying what they think they are saying, and then getting pissy because the other party didn't telepathically pick up on what they actually meant.