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This is almost comical :p The brain is not a turing machine. You can't make these kind of analysis because the brain isn't just a huge von neumann computer.
The brain is most certainly a turing machine.
After almost a year volunteering in 7cups.com as a listener, I can't agree more with the article. When you show genuine interest for what other people are telling you, they will talk openly for hours and will leave the conversation feeling way better than they started it.
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This is almost comical :p The brain is not a turing machine. You can't make these kind of analysis because the brain isn't just a huge von neumann computer.
Who says it's not? There's no compelling reason that I've ever heard to believe so.
After almost a year volunteering in 7cups.com as a listener, I can't agree more with the article. When you show genuine interest for what other people are telling you, they will talk openly for hours and will leave the conversation feeling way better than they started it.
How have you found it? I've thought about doing that myself from time to time, and I would value anything you'd like to share about your experience there.
One of the easiest metrics I've found to determine whether or not oneself is a good/great listener is to honestly assess: Am I busy thinking about what I'm going to say when I get a chance? The more the answer is "yes" the less listening a person is performing.
That is, "your thoughts, when told to me, made me have my own thoughts about the subject which, hopefully when I tell you, will make you think as well."
There are moments where I stop myself from interjecting during a quick pause, and rather politely wait for a long pause to add my viewpoint only for the conversation to have altered course to the point that I'd have to backtrack on a topic no one is talking about anymore. Something that is especially difficult to do when it's a group conversation.
To disengage the impulse to attempt to further/enrich the conversation has got to be a learned behavior, in my view.
This type of debate raises the question of what kind of conversation is best. Is just being listened to better than having a thoroughly-engaging convo? Depends on the person and the moment.
Most people prefer talking to listening, so just asking a few question can get most conversations going. It's not unusual to hear someone say "we had such a great chat" when really that person did most of the talking. A trick that is used by many introverts, with great success.
"With great success" for the introvert. The person doing the talking didn't really gain anything. And also when this happens to me I actually don't enjoy it. Propping up one sided conversations sucks, and I doubt that nearly as many people enjoy it as you're assuming.
That's not necessarily so. If you just sit there like a lemon while somebody makes words at you, then, sure, they're not likely to get a lot out of it, except perhaps slightly improved buccal muscle tone. You have it within your power to produce a more valuable result.
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It is hard to prove a negative (it is easier to prove the brain is something else). As much as Turing completeness seems to emerge relatively easy, given how the analog complexity of our nervous system contrasts with the deterministic simplicity of digital computers, it is a bit naive to make parallels about how they work unless you are making some kind of metaphor.
It is necessarily constrained by asymptotic computational complexity. With or without the memory bottleneck implied by the Von Neumann architecture. That it is a turing machine is not merely a pedantic fact. It has both implications and relevance here. At best a different architecture would exploit more concurrency. I don't think it does though; Language processing is extremely recursive. Noam Chomsky suspects our br…
This is why I come to HN..to find articles like this. This defies what you learn at school, because I have been taught numerous times, to nod and stfu when you're holding a convo. Always interrupt if you have something constructive to say in a casual/business conversation (unless you're in a debate), that's how you gain trust and credibility.