You may have thought of it, you may not. (Verbal ability is one of the commonest sub-tests, after all.) But would you have thought of it in time? Conversations are like FPS or other action games; if you’re off by even a little, you’re off by a mile.
Suppose it had taken you 30 seconds to come up with that joke—by then the context is gone, the conversation has moved on. People would just squint confusedly at you, even if the topic is still putatively bad translations. (I have done this many times, and am always shocked at how narrow the window between ‘wit’ and ‘non sequitur’ is; the very belated version is called _l’esprit d’escalier_.)
It did take me more than 30 seconds to come up with that, and I think the people there will remember the conversation well enough that (if I’d had pancakes this morning) I could make it in class this afternoon to reasonably good effect.
It’d be a worthwhile experiment, although selecting the most memorable part of the conversation (as it seems to be) isn’t really what I was thinking of with regard to latency being very important to conversational prowess.
You may have thought of it, you may not. (Verbal ability is one of the commonest sub-tests, after all.) But would you have thought of it in time? Conversations are like FPS or other action games; if you’re off by even a little, you’re off by a mile.
Suppose it had taken you 30 seconds to come up with that joke—by then the context is gone, the conversation has moved on. People would just squint confusedly at you, even if the topic is still putatively bad translations. (I have done this many times, and am always shocked at how narrow the window between ‘wit’ and ‘non sequitur’ is; the very belated version is called _l’esprit d’escalier_.)
It did take me more than 30 seconds to come up with that, and I think the people there will remember the conversation well enough that (if I’d had pancakes this morning) I could make it in class this afternoon to reasonably good effect.
It’d be a worthwhile experiment, although selecting the most memorable part of the conversation (as it seems to be) isn’t really what I was thinking of with regard to latency being very important to conversational prowess.