One aspect of communication culture to address is interruption. What should the expectations be about interruption? Do you always wait for the other person to finish talking before you can start talking? Are you allowed to interrupt if it seems worthwhile? What determines whether an interruption is worthwhile? Where is the threshold for how worthwhile an interruption needs to be in order for it to be justified?
I feel like there are various conversations I end up in that get derailed by too many interruptions. And I’ve seen it happen in many contexts: at work, with my family, with my friends, at rationalist meetups. This seems important.
I’m not sure what the answers are for how to deal with “interruption culture”, but it seems like something worth discussing. I am seeing this post from 12 years ago, but other than that, I don’t really see much discussion here on LessWrong. I also don’t really recall much discussion of the topic elsewhere, like on other blogs or in academia.
My hunch is that there are probably a handful of archetypes, and different archetypes will work better for different conversations. It seems like it’d be helpful if we kinda outlined what these archetypes are, what the pros and cons are, and when each tends to work best (depends on the people involved, the conversation topic, the emotions, etc). From there, especially if these archetypes were “in the water” and became common knowledge (eg. in our community), then I can envision people saying “hey, do you guys mind if we take archetype A here?” or “hey, I feel like we’re using archetype C right now and it’s not working well, can we switch to B?”.
Another hunch I have is that low levels of interruption is a low risk option. I feel like I see conversations get derailed and ruined when there are high levels of interruption, but with low levels of interruption, I don’t really recall that happening. I guess the exception is if one person rambles chaotically; in that case it seems worth being pragmatic and choosing to interrupt them. So with that said, in the absence of better norms and stuff here, I think it usually makes sense to default to low levels of interruption.
Hm. From my perspective I have seen many conversations be excessively railed (opposite of derailed) by lack of interruption.
Interrupting whenever you want to speak is very bad form. So is continuing to speak for as long as you’d like to. Meeting in the middle is an art. And I agree that making the desired form explicit would be a good idea.
The virtue of interruption is being able to change course faster, and saving time by responding when it sounds like the speaker is no longer making interesting new points. I seem to see people saying too much more often than saying too little before yielding the floor.
Whenever you notice that time has run out and more interesting threads were not followed, you might’ve had too few interruptions.
Time wastage to lack of interruption is much less the case with skilled and considerate conversationalists; but so are the downsides of their interruptions.
Either interruption or excessive speaking can be used to dominate a conversation; having everyone converse cooperatively is the meta-point. But many situations (in fact almost all) won’t have time for everyone to say everything they’d like to have heard, so competition is tempting and prevalent.
I agree that interrupting is an art. I love this statement in particular:
many situations (in fact almost all) won’t have time for everyone to say everything they’d like to have heard, so competition is tempting and prevalent
I feel that I have a handle on when to interrupt in a two-person conversation, but the dynamics of interrupting differ:
as the number of participants increases (there’s a phase shift at three, and then another one at six or seven as people typically don’t like to speak less than one fifth of the time);
as the conversation becomes less meta-cooperative (e.g, the conversation is happening in some public forum or in order for a decision to be made, so there is an incentive to speak more so that your ideas get to be heard more).
(As another note, I find that even with three people, there needs to be either a significant amount of yielding or else substantial agreement on what the topic and frame of the conversation should be/implicitly are, or else the thread of the conversation will repeatedly “miss the point” and meander.)
I would be interested to hear any insights anyone has about how to navigate any of these better, unilaterally or by establishing group norms (formally or by reinforcement).
Communication culture is important. It is a high level action that, if improved, has lots of nice downstream benefits.
One aspect of communication culture to address is interruption. What should the expectations be about interruption? Do you always wait for the other person to finish talking before you can start talking? Are you allowed to interrupt if it seems worthwhile? What determines whether an interruption is worthwhile? Where is the threshold for how worthwhile an interruption needs to be in order for it to be justified?
I feel like there are various conversations I end up in that get derailed by too many interruptions. And I’ve seen it happen in many contexts: at work, with my family, with my friends, at rationalist meetups. This seems important.
I’m not sure what the answers are for how to deal with “interruption culture”, but it seems like something worth discussing. I am seeing this post from 12 years ago, but other than that, I don’t really see much discussion here on LessWrong. I also don’t really recall much discussion of the topic elsewhere, like on other blogs or in academia.
My hunch is that there are probably a handful of archetypes, and different archetypes will work better for different conversations. It seems like it’d be helpful if we kinda outlined what these archetypes are, what the pros and cons are, and when each tends to work best (depends on the people involved, the conversation topic, the emotions, etc). From there, especially if these archetypes were “in the water” and became common knowledge (eg. in our community), then I can envision people saying “hey, do you guys mind if we take archetype A here?” or “hey, I feel like we’re using archetype C right now and it’s not working well, can we switch to B?”.
Another hunch I have is that low levels of interruption is a low risk option. I feel like I see conversations get derailed and ruined when there are high levels of interruption, but with low levels of interruption, I don’t really recall that happening. I guess the exception is if one person rambles chaotically; in that case it seems worth being pragmatic and choosing to interrupt them. So with that said, in the absence of better norms and stuff here, I think it usually makes sense to default to low levels of interruption.
Also consider that it might be more productive to communicate asynchronously via text!
Hm. From my perspective I have seen many conversations be excessively railed (opposite of derailed) by lack of interruption.
Interrupting whenever you want to speak is very bad form. So is continuing to speak for as long as you’d like to. Meeting in the middle is an art. And I agree that making the desired form explicit would be a good idea.
The virtue of interruption is being able to change course faster, and saving time by responding when it sounds like the speaker is no longer making interesting new points. I seem to see people saying too much more often than saying too little before yielding the floor.
Whenever you notice that time has run out and more interesting threads were not followed, you might’ve had too few interruptions.
Time wastage to lack of interruption is much less the case with skilled and considerate conversationalists; but so are the downsides of their interruptions.
Either interruption or excessive speaking can be used to dominate a conversation; having everyone converse cooperatively is the meta-point. But many situations (in fact almost all) won’t have time for everyone to say everything they’d like to have heard, so competition is tempting and prevalent.
I agree that interrupting is an art. I love this statement in particular:
I feel that I have a handle on when to interrupt in a two-person conversation, but the dynamics of interrupting differ:
as the number of participants increases (there’s a phase shift at three, and then another one at six or seven as people typically don’t like to speak less than one fifth of the time);
as the conversation becomes less meta-cooperative (e.g, the conversation is happening in some public forum or in order for a decision to be made, so there is an incentive to speak more so that your ideas get to be heard more).
(As another note, I find that even with three people, there needs to be either a significant amount of yielding or else substantial agreement on what the topic and frame of the conversation should be/implicitly are, or else the thread of the conversation will repeatedly “miss the point” and meander.)
I would be interested to hear any insights anyone has about how to navigate any of these better, unilaterally or by establishing group norms (formally or by reinforcement).