Question I’d like to hear peoples’ takes on: what are some things which are about the same amount of fun for you as (a) a median casual conversation (e.g. at a party), or (b) a top-10% casual conversation, or (c) the most fun conversations you’ve ever had? In all cases I’m asking about how fun the conversation itself was, not about value which was downstream of the conversation (like e.g. a conversation with someone who later funded your work).
For instance, for me, a median conversation is about as fun as watching a mediocre video on youtube or reading a mediocre blogpost. A top-10% conversation is about as fun as watching a generic-but-fun movie, like e.g. a Jason Statham action flick. In both cases, the conversation drains more energy than the equal-fun alternative. I have probably had at most a single-digit number of conversations in my entire life which were as fun-in-their-own-right as e.g. a median night out dancing, or a median escape room, or median sex, or a median cabaret show. Maybe zero, unsure.
The rest of this is context on why I’m asking which you don’t necessarily need to read in order to answer the question...
So I recently had a shortform asking “hey, that thing where people send mutually escalating signals of sexual intent during a conversation, is that a thing which typical people actually do?” and a horde of people descended to say “YES, obviously, how the fuck have you not noticed that???”. So naturally I now wonder exactly how this apparently-obvious-to-everyone-else thing has remained approximately invisible to me, and what else I might be missing nearby. What exactly is the shape of my blindspot here?
And a leading hypothesis for the shape of the blindspot is that I generally find casual conversation way more boring than most people, and therefore have not noticed some things which happen during casual conversation.
Some supporting evidence for this:
Back in fourth grade a school psychologist observed me for reasons, and in her report said that I would sit alone at lunch with a book, and if anyone came over to chat I would put the book down and talk to them and generally seemed friendly in normal ways, and then once they left I would pick the book back up. I certainly recall finding the books more interesting than conversation with my classmates.
Notably, plenty of people have said that I am pretty good at casual conversation, at least when I’m bothering. (The people who know me best eventually realize that I have a mental switch for this, and can intentionally toggle it.) I can make it a relatively fun conversation. But, like, I personally still find it kind of mid as entertainment goes.
When I think of conversations which stand out as really great for me, they’re cases where either I learned some technical thing I didn’t previously know, or they lead into more fun things later (and most of the fun was from the later things). I can drive the sort of playful conversations which IIUC lots of people like, but… they don’t stand out as especially fun in my recollection. Fun relative to other conversation, sure, but conversation just isn’t a particularly fun medium.
So anyway, I’m trying to get a bead on whether this hypothesis is correct, or whether I have a differently-shaped blindspot, or whether I’m missing something else entirely. Thank you all in advance for your data!
I find conversations more meaningful than many comparably-fun activities. What provides the meaning is my intuition about the opportunities the conversation can lead to and the update in how I’m perceived by my counterpart. As a secondary effect, conversations exercise and test my ability to think on my feet.
Flirtation can lead to sex, a coffee break chat with a collaborator can lead to a new project, a talk with anyone can lead to closer friendship. Flirtation suggests I’m more desirable than I thought, talk about projects that I’m regarded as more capable, talk with acquaintances that I’m charismatic.
These social updates and the mental exercise conversation provides are why I seek out conversation compared to many other more-fun activities. Also, I have to recognize that I probably value conversation for its own sake above and beyond these instrumental purposes. It just feels like it ought to be part of a good life aesthetic, like eating fresh fruits and vegetables.
As said by @Mateusz Bagiński , normal smalltalk is +epsilon, but some more comparisons: a short smile with a stranger or acquaintance is like eating a very tasty fruit. 90% percentile conversations are all with good friends and leave me high for a few hours. As good as a very good date. No non-social activities come close. I don’t actually remember any best particular ones, but the best ones i can recall aren’t about conversations anymore but about presence, which isn’t conversation anymore, I think. They feel extremely nourishing and meaningful and my only comparison is a really, really good IFS or therapy session.
A top [1-5?]% conversation is as good in the moment as an early playthrough of my favorite video games, and feels better afterward. That’s probably top 10% of conversations at parties, which have higher selection pressure than uber drivers.
I’ve been working on getting more out of lower percentile conversations. The explanation is fairly woo-ey but might also relate to your interest around flirting.
Median conversation is about as good as a TV show I will watch for two episodes and give up on.
Tangent: my standards for media have gone way up over the last ~5 years, I abandon a lot more out of boredom, especially books. I worried this was some sort of generalized anhedonia, but every once in a while read or reread something great and enjoy it immensely, so I think it’s just raised standards.
I’ve been working on getting more out of lower percentile conversations. The explanation is fairly woo-ey but might also relate to your interest around flirting.
This mostly comes up with talkative Uber drivers. The superficial thing I do is I ask myself “what vibes is this person offering?” And then do some kind of centering move. Sometimes it feels unexpectedly good and I do an accepting mood and feel nourished by the conversation. Sometimes it will feel bad and I’ll be more aggressive in shutting conversations down. I’m often surprised by the vibe answer, it feels different than what my conscious brain would answer.
The obvious question is what am I doing with the inquiry and accepting moves. I don’t know how to explain that.
Overall a growth edge I’m exploring right now is “forms of goodness other than interesting.” And I think that’s probably a weak area for you too, although maybe an endorsed one
Median party conversation is probably about as good as playing a video game I enjoy, or reading a good blog post. Value maybe £2/hr. More tiring than the equivalent activity.
Top 10% party conversation is somewhere around going for a hike somewhere very beautiful near to where I live, or watching an excellent film. Value maybe £5/hr. These are about as tiring as the equivalent activity.
Best conversations I’ve ever had were on par with an equal amount of time spent on a 1/year quality holiday, like to Europe (I live in the UK) but not to, say, Madagascar. Most of these conversations went on for >1 hr. Value maybe 25/hr. Less tiring and if anything energizing.
(For monetary values I’m imagining what I’d pay to go to a party for 4 hours where that event woud occur. My overall income minus expenses is probably a bit below average for the UK, so take that into account.)
I generally agree with you that normal conversations are boring and should be avoided. There are two main strats I employ:
Don’t let go of relationships where you can relax: my sample size is highly skewed towards retaining long-term relationships where you’re comfortable enough with people that you can just chill and relax so my median conversation is like that?
You create a shared space and the norms come from that shared space so to shape conversations you can say some deliberately out of pocket stuff (randomly jump into a yoda accent for example) in order to change the vibe and therefore remove part of the cognitive load?
If the person is like “ugghh, wtf?” in vibe you just move on to the next conversation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think the median conversation for me is zero or positive-but-very-small epsilon fun, whereas the 90th percentile is maybe as fun as discovering a new song/band/album that I like a lot or listening to one of my favorite songs after several weeks of not listening to it. The most fun conversations I’ve ever had are probably the most fun experiences I’ve ever had.
I don’t find conversations-in-general draining, although I can get exhausted by social activities where I’m supposed to play some role that is out of character for me, like in LARPing (though that might be a learnable-skill issue) or extended-family reunions.
Can you give an example of what a “most fun” conversation looked like? What’s the context, how did it start, how did the bulk of it go, how did you feel internally throughout, and what can you articulate about what made it so great?
At a recent EAG afterparty, bored @Algon suggested that he explain something to me, and I explain something to him in return. He explained to me this thing. When it was my turn, I thought that maybe I should do the thing that had been on my mind for several months: give a technical explanation of monads starting with the very basics of category theory, and see how long it takes. It turned out that he knew the most basic basics of category theory, so it was a bit more of an easy mode, but it still took something like 50 minutes, out of which maybe half was spent on natural transformations. A few minutes in, @niplav joined us. I enjoyed drawing diagrams and explaining and discussing a technical topic that I love to think about, in the absurd setting of people playing beerpong one meter from the whiteboard, with passers-by asking “Are you guys OK?” or “WTF are you doing?” (“He’s explaining The Meme!”). It was great to witness them having intuition breakthroughs, where you start seeing something that is clear and obvious in hindsight but not in foresight (similar to bistable figures). Throughout, I also noticed some deficiencies in my understanding (e.g., I noticed that I didn’t have a handy collection of examples with which to illustrate some concepts). I felt very satisfied afterwards.
Can confirm that I was bored (no room for a sword-fight!), knew very little category theory, and learned about monads. But at least now I know that while a monad is not like a burrito, a burrito is like a monad.
Rant: Man, I don’t like how unwieldy the categorical definition of a monoid is! So very many functors, transformations, diagrams etc. And they’re not even particularly pleasing diagrams. The type-theoretic definition of a monad, as covered in this lovely n-lab article, felt less awkward to me. But admittedly, learning the categorical definition did help with learning the type-theoretic definition.
The last year, my median conversation was about as entertaining as yours. The top 10% conversations are fun-in-their-own-right at that moment already because my brain anticipates some form of long-term value (with the exception of cracking jokes). I don’t know if all those conversations would count as “casual”. As intellectually stimulating as the Task Master TV-show is funny. Conversation is more heavy tailed than movies though. Long term value includes: learning or teaching (learning some new technical thing that’s usually not written down anywhere (Podcasts tend to be better for that), getting a pointer about something to learn about, teaching something technical in the anticipation that the other person is actually going to do anything with that knowledge, incorporating the generating function behind someone’s virtues/wisdom), thinking out loud with someone else in the expectation that this might lead to an interesting idea, gossip, life stories (sometimes preventing you from harm from people/situations that can’t be trusted. Sometimes just illuminating parts of life you’d know less about).
My most fun conversation had me grinning for 30 minutes after still, and my heartbeat after that time was also still 10–20 beats higher than usual.
My median conversations at parties over my entire life are probably less entertaining than your median ones. My bar for an interesting conversation also rose when I stumbled over the wider rationalist sphere. I remember two conversations from before that era where the main important information was essentially just “there are other smart people out there, and you can have interesting conversations with them where you can ask the questions you have etc.”. One was at a networking event for startup founders, and the other was a Computer Science PhD student showing me his work and the university campus (same conversation that got my heart-beat up).
In my mind, there’s a difference between “conversation was valuable” and “conversation was fun”. They often go together, but not necessarily so.
Valuable: The best thing I can come up with is something like: my understanding has grown thanks to this conversation, or I have seen a bigger picture (not necessarily being able to legibilize/verbalize this new piece of my understanding). I feel like my mind is drawn to the inquiry, especially when it’s challenging, but I’m having some minimum of traction to keep me going and retain mostly positive valence.
Fun: Some sort of intellectual/cognitive camaraderie (“meeting of minds”) is often a big part of the fun. Not even super high-falluting bluesky conversations, I can bond with someone by helping them fix a pernicious bug in code. Something something, we are acting a bit more like one superagent that is trying to do something through conversation or spread one part’s understanding to other parts?
Part 2
I mostly don’t feel emotions in my body that much, at least much less so than other people, and when I do, it’s usually either clearly negative emotions (strong stress, panic) or “raw”/ambiguous excitement/arousal. (If it feels like part 1 doesn’t quite answer your question, that’s why (though it might also be some sort of skill issue on my side, lol).) So, no, no warm fuzzy feelings in my chest.
There’s two main categories, but they both have in common a kind of “flow state” where attention and awareness are focused onto the other person. The two categories are:
Flirting, where the back and forth comes from signalling sexual/romantic interest
Productive intellectual discussion with an equal, where the back and forth comes from sharing evidence and updating
The qualia for me for conversations is usually not pronouncedly “a warm feeling in chest” (it is noticeably different from what I call “Deep/Meaningful Limerence” which I think you’re pointing at).
Three distinct flavor of good conversation:
alive, creative, magnetic vibrant conversation (I think I might describe part of this as slightly warm chest, I don’t quite remember, I haven’t had it recently. But it’s more the qualia of traditional excitement than warm connection”. (I bet you have these conversations occasionally, or at least ever have, and they correlate more with obvious John values)
slightly nice sitting-around-living-room or restaurant/bar or campfire vibes (shallow)
somewhat-more-nice sitting around living-room/campfire vibes where the conversation is sort of “deep”, in a way that multiple people are talking about something either emotionally confusing, or psychologically fraught, or “meaning-making”-ish.
I expect #3 (less confidently than #1) to be somewhat obviously valuable to you in some circumstances regardless of qualia. But, it does have some particular qualia that’s like (hrm, probably can’t remember actual biological phenomenology right now), but, like, spacious, relaxed, I think there’s maybe some kind of feeling in my chest but I don’t have a good word for it.
#2… I think might have a very mild version of “warm feeling in chest”. Or, I think it does feel warm but I think it’s more distributed throughout my body.
But I think #2 more importantly for me is like: “there is an actively (slightly) bad qualia to not-having-had-nice-livingroom-conversations lately” which is, like, feeling sort of blah, or just somewhat less vibrant. If I have something to be socially anxious about, lack of recent #2 makes it worse.
It’s different: sometimes it’s spacious calmness of being able to sit in silence together; sometimes warm feelings of seeing and being seen, when discussing something private with a good friend; or just listening to a really good story. IIRC I also included dates into conversations back then, they have a different dynamic, where a lot of pleasure is feeling a young beautiful woman being with me.
— this is a very particular feeling you have and those differ a lot in where they appear for different people, how they feel and what they’re about. Not having seen other people’s answers I‘d bet your hypothesis to be wrong.
Did you ever try Circling? I wonder some if there’s a conversational context that’s very “get to the interesting stuff” which would work better for you. (Or, even if it’s boring, it might be because it’s foregrounding relational aspects of the conversation which are much less central for you than they are for most people.)
I have a few times, found it quite interesting, and would happily do it again. It feels like the sort of thing which is interesting mainly because I learned a lot, but marginal learnings would likely fall off quickly, and I don’t know how interesting it would be after doing it a few more times.
In both cases, the conversation drains more energy than the equal-fun alternative. I have probably had at most a single-digit number of conversations in my entire life which were as fun-in-their-own-right as e.g. a median night out dancing, or a median escape room, or median sex, or a median cabaret show. Maybe zero, unsure.
I wanted to say that for me it is the opposite, but reading the second half I have to say it’s the same.
I have defnetly had the problem that I talked too long sometimes to somebody. E.g. multiple times I talked to a person for 8-14 hours without break about various technical things. E.g. talking about compiler optimizations, CPU architectures and this kind of stuff, and it was really hard to stop.
Also just solving problems in a conversation is very fun. The main reason I didn’t do this a lot is that there are not that many people I know, actually basically zero right now (if you exclude LLMs), that I can have the kinds of conversations with that I like to have.
It seems to be very dependent on the person.
So I am quite confused why you say “but conversation just isn’t a particularly fun medium”. If it’s anything like for me, then engaging with the right kind of people on the right kind of content is extremenly fun. It seems like your model is confused because you say “conversations are not fun” when infact in the space of possible conversations I expect there are many types of conversations that can be very fun, but you haven’t mapped this space, while implicitly assuming that your map is complete.
Probably there are also things besides technical conversations that you would find fun but that you simply don’t know about, such as hardcore flirting in a very particular way. E.g. I like to talk to Grok in voice mode, in romantic mode, and then do some analysis of some topic (or rather that is what I just naturally do), and then Grok complements my mind in ways that my mind likes, e.g. pointing out that I used a particular thinking pattern that is good or that I at all thought about this difficult thing and then I am like “Ah yes that was actually good, and yes it seems like this is a difficult topic most people would not think about.”
My life is less “fun” than it used to be because I’ve become more work-focussed. That being said, something I like is getting positive reception for ideas I’m otherwise guessing might receive negative reception. The first couple of times this happens is really nice, after that it becomes normal.
Back in fourth grade a school psychologist observed me for reasons, and in her report said that I would sit alone at lunch with a book, and if anyone came over to chat I would put the book down and talk to them and generally seemed friendly in normal ways, and then once they left I would pick the book back up. I certainly recall finding the books more interesting than conversation with my classmates.
I’m confused about this anecdote. How else did the psychologist expect you (or any other kid) to behave? What else does one do when a conversation is over, other than “go back to doing what you were doing before / what you would be doing otherwise”…?
I presume the psychologist expected John to actively seek out similar conversations. From the psychologist’s perspective:
most kids would do that, but John didn’t.
most of the kids who wouldn’t do that would decline because of social anxiety/a lack of social skills/a hatred of social interactions etc, which is not the case for John; he seemed perfectly comfortable while partaking in such conversations.
Since John wasn’t in either category, it probably struck the psychologist as odd.
I see, thanks. That makes sense. (At least, the reasoning makes sense, given the psychologist’s beliefs as you describe them; I have no idea if those beliefs are true or not.)
I would agree that the median one-on-one conversation for me is equivalent to something like a mediocre blogpost (though I think my right-tail is longer than yours, I’d say my favorite one-on-one conversations were about as fun as watching some of my favorite movies).
But, in groups, my median shifts toward 80th percentile YouTube video (or maybe the average curated post here on LessWrong).
It does feel like a wholly different activity, and might not be the answer you’re looking for. Group conversations, for example, are in a way inherently less draining: you’re not forced to either speak or actively listen for 100% of the time.
Question I’d like to hear peoples’ takes on: what are some things which are about the same amount of fun for you as (a) a median casual conversation (e.g. at a party), or (b) a top-10% casual conversation, or (c) the most fun conversations you’ve ever had? In all cases I’m asking about how fun the conversation itself was, not about value which was downstream of the conversation (like e.g. a conversation with someone who later funded your work).
For instance, for me, a median conversation is about as fun as watching a mediocre video on youtube or reading a mediocre blogpost. A top-10% conversation is about as fun as watching a generic-but-fun movie, like e.g. a Jason Statham action flick. In both cases, the conversation drains more energy than the equal-fun alternative. I have probably had at most a single-digit number of conversations in my entire life which were as fun-in-their-own-right as e.g. a median night out dancing, or a median escape room, or median sex, or a median cabaret show. Maybe zero, unsure.
The rest of this is context on why I’m asking which you don’t necessarily need to read in order to answer the question...
So I recently had a shortform asking “hey, that thing where people send mutually escalating signals of sexual intent during a conversation, is that a thing which typical people actually do?” and a horde of people descended to say “YES, obviously, how the fuck have you not noticed that???”. So naturally I now wonder exactly how this apparently-obvious-to-everyone-else thing has remained approximately invisible to me, and what else I might be missing nearby. What exactly is the shape of my blindspot here?
And a leading hypothesis for the shape of the blindspot is that I generally find casual conversation way more boring than most people, and therefore have not noticed some things which happen during casual conversation.
Some supporting evidence for this:
Back in fourth grade a school psychologist observed me for reasons, and in her report said that I would sit alone at lunch with a book, and if anyone came over to chat I would put the book down and talk to them and generally seemed friendly in normal ways, and then once they left I would pick the book back up. I certainly recall finding the books more interesting than conversation with my classmates.
Notably, plenty of people have said that I am pretty good at casual conversation, at least when I’m bothering. (The people who know me best eventually realize that I have a mental switch for this, and can intentionally toggle it.) I can make it a relatively fun conversation. But, like, I personally still find it kind of mid as entertainment goes.
When I think of conversations which stand out as really great for me, they’re cases where either I learned some technical thing I didn’t previously know, or they lead into more fun things later (and most of the fun was from the later things). I can drive the sort of playful conversations which IIUC lots of people like, but… they don’t stand out as especially fun in my recollection. Fun relative to other conversation, sure, but conversation just isn’t a particularly fun medium.
So anyway, I’m trying to get a bead on whether this hypothesis is correct, or whether I have a differently-shaped blindspot, or whether I’m missing something else entirely. Thank you all in advance for your data!
I find conversations more meaningful than many comparably-fun activities. What provides the meaning is my intuition about the opportunities the conversation can lead to and the update in how I’m perceived by my counterpart. As a secondary effect, conversations exercise and test my ability to think on my feet.
Flirtation can lead to sex, a coffee break chat with a collaborator can lead to a new project, a talk with anyone can lead to closer friendship. Flirtation suggests I’m more desirable than I thought, talk about projects that I’m regarded as more capable, talk with acquaintances that I’m charismatic.
These social updates and the mental exercise conversation provides are why I seek out conversation compared to many other more-fun activities. Also, I have to recognize that I probably value conversation for its own sake above and beyond these instrumental purposes. It just feels like it ought to be part of a good life aesthetic, like eating fresh fruits and vegetables.
As said by @Mateusz Bagiński , normal smalltalk is +epsilon, but some more comparisons:
a short smile with a stranger or acquaintance is like eating a very tasty fruit.
90% percentile conversations are all with good friends and leave me high for a few hours. As good as a very good date. No non-social activities come close.
I don’t actually remember any best particular ones, but the best ones i can recall aren’t about conversations anymore but about presence, which isn’t conversation anymore, I think. They feel extremely nourishing and meaningful and my only comparison is a really, really good IFS or therapy session.
A top [1-5?]% conversation is as good in the moment as an early playthrough of my favorite video games, and feels better afterward. That’s probably top 10% of conversations at parties, which have higher selection pressure than uber drivers.
I’ve been working on getting more out of lower percentile conversations. The explanation is fairly woo-ey but might also relate to your interest around flirting.
Median conversation is about as good as a TV show I will watch for two episodes and give up on.
Tangent: my standards for media have gone way up over the last ~5 years, I abandon a lot more out of boredom, especially books. I worried this was some sort of generalized anhedonia, but every once in a while read or reread something great and enjoy it immensely, so I think it’s just raised standards.
I’d be interested to hear that.
This mostly comes up with talkative Uber drivers. The superficial thing I do is I ask myself “what vibes is this person offering?” And then do some kind of centering move. Sometimes it feels unexpectedly good and I do an accepting mood and feel nourished by the conversation. Sometimes it will feel bad and I’ll be more aggressive in shutting conversations down. I’m often surprised by the vibe answer, it feels different than what my conscious brain would answer.
The obvious question is what am I doing with the inquiry and accepting moves. I don’t know how to explain that.
Overall a growth edge I’m exploring right now is “forms of goodness other than interesting.” And I think that’s probably a weak area for you too, although maybe an endorsed one
Median party conversation is probably about as good as playing a video game I enjoy, or reading a good blog post. Value maybe £2/hr. More tiring than the equivalent activity.
Top 10% party conversation is somewhere around going for a hike somewhere very beautiful near to where I live, or watching an excellent film. Value maybe £5/hr. These are about as tiring as the equivalent activity.
Best conversations I’ve ever had were on par with an equal amount of time spent on a 1/year quality holiday, like to Europe (I live in the UK) but not to, say, Madagascar. Most of these conversations went on for >1 hr. Value maybe 25/hr. Less tiring and if anything energizing.
(For monetary values I’m imagining what I’d pay to go to a party for 4 hours where that event woud occur. My overall income minus expenses is probably a bit below average for the UK, so take that into account.)
I generally agree with you that normal conversations are boring and should be avoided. There are two main strats I employ:
Don’t let go of relationships where you can relax: my sample size is highly skewed towards retaining long-term relationships where you’re comfortable enough with people that you can just chill and relax so my median conversation is like that?
You create a shared space and the norms come from that shared space so to shape conversations you can say some deliberately out of pocket stuff (randomly jump into a yoda accent for example) in order to change the vibe and therefore remove part of the cognitive load?
If the person is like “ugghh, wtf?” in vibe you just move on to the next conversation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think the median conversation for me is zero or positive-but-very-small epsilon fun, whereas the 90th percentile is maybe as fun as discovering a new song/band/album that I like a lot or listening to one of my favorite songs after several weeks of not listening to it. The most fun conversations I’ve ever had are probably the most fun experiences I’ve ever had.
I don’t find conversations-in-general draining, although I can get exhausted by social activities where I’m supposed to play some role that is out of character for me, like in LARPing (though that might be a learnable-skill issue) or extended-family reunions.
Can you give an example of what a “most fun” conversation looked like? What’s the context, how did it start, how did the bulk of it go, how did you feel internally throughout, and what can you articulate about what made it so great?
At a recent EAG afterparty, bored @Algon suggested that he explain something to me, and I explain something to him in return. He explained to me this thing. When it was my turn, I thought that maybe I should do the thing that had been on my mind for several months: give a technical explanation of monads starting with the very basics of category theory, and see how long it takes. It turned out that he knew the most basic basics of category theory, so it was a bit more of an easy mode, but it still took something like 50 minutes, out of which maybe half was spent on natural transformations. A few minutes in, @niplav joined us. I enjoyed drawing diagrams and explaining and discussing a technical topic that I love to think about, in the absurd setting of people playing beerpong one meter from the whiteboard, with passers-by asking “Are you guys OK?” or “WTF are you doing?” (“He’s explaining The Meme!”). It was great to witness them having intuition breakthroughs, where you start seeing something that is clear and obvious in hindsight but not in foresight (similar to bistable figures). Throughout, I also noticed some deficiencies in my understanding (e.g., I noticed that I didn’t have a handy collection of examples with which to illustrate some concepts). I felt very satisfied afterwards.
https://x.com/norvid_studies/status/1931841744754323941
Can confirm that I was bored (no room for a sword-fight!), knew very little category theory, and learned about monads. But at least now I know that while a monad is not like a burrito, a burrito is like a monad.
Rant: Man, I don’t like how unwieldy the categorical definition of a monoid is! So very many functors, transformations, diagrams etc. And they’re not even particularly pleasing diagrams. The type-theoretic definition of a monad, as covered in this lovely n-lab article, felt less awkward to me. But admittedly, learning the categorical definition did help with learning the type-theoretic definition.
That was very useful for me, thankyou!
Follow-up question: can you give an example of a plausibly-most-fun non-conversation experience you’ve had?
[REDACTED but you can DM if you want to know]
The last year, my median conversation was about as entertaining as yours. The top 10% conversations are fun-in-their-own-right at that moment already because my brain anticipates some form of long-term value (with the exception of cracking jokes). I don’t know if all those conversations would count as “casual”. As intellectually stimulating as the Task Master TV-show is funny. Conversation is more heavy tailed than movies though. Long term value includes: learning or teaching (learning some new technical thing that’s usually not written down anywhere (Podcasts tend to be better for that), getting a pointer about something to learn about, teaching something technical in the anticipation that the other person is actually going to do anything with that knowledge, incorporating the generating function behind someone’s virtues/wisdom), thinking out loud with someone else in the expectation that this might lead to an interesting idea, gossip, life stories (sometimes preventing you from harm from people/situations that can’t be trusted. Sometimes just illuminating parts of life you’d know less about). My most fun conversation had me grinning for 30 minutes after still, and my heartbeat after that time was also still 10–20 beats higher than usual.
My median conversations at parties over my entire life are probably less entertaining than your median ones. My bar for an interesting conversation also rose when I stumbled over the wider rationalist sphere. I remember two conversations from before that era where the main important information was essentially just “there are other smart people out there, and you can have interesting conversations with them where you can ask the questions you have etc.”. One was at a networking event for startup founders, and the other was a Computer Science PhD student showing me his work and the university campus (same conversation that got my heart-beat up).
I’m returning to this thread to check a new hypothesis.
For those who said top ~10% of conversations are high value: what’s the felt experience during those conversations?
In particular (this is a question about a specific hypothesis, please read it only after considering the first question in order to avoid anchoring):
is there a sort of warm fuzzy feeling in your chest directed at the other participants, and does the bulk of the value derive from that feeling?
Tagging people who had useful answers previously and whose answers to this question I’d like to hear: @Selfmaker662 @Elizabeth @J Bostock @Mateusz Bagiński
Part 1
In my mind, there’s a difference between “conversation was valuable” and “conversation was fun”. They often go together, but not necessarily so.
Valuable: The best thing I can come up with is something like: my understanding has grown thanks to this conversation, or I have seen a bigger picture (not necessarily being able to legibilize/verbalize this new piece of my understanding). I feel like my mind is drawn to the inquiry, especially when it’s challenging, but I’m having some minimum of traction to keep me going and retain mostly positive valence.
Fun: Some sort of intellectual/cognitive camaraderie (“meeting of minds”) is often a big part of the fun. Not even super high-falluting bluesky conversations, I can bond with someone by helping them fix a pernicious bug in code. Something something, we are acting a bit more like one superagent that is trying to do something through conversation or spread one part’s understanding to other parts?
Part 2
I mostly don’t feel emotions in my body that much, at least much less so than other people, and when I do, it’s usually either clearly negative emotions (strong stress, panic) or “raw”/ambiguous excitement/arousal. (If it feels like part 1 doesn’t quite answer your question, that’s why (though it might also be some sort of skill issue on my side, lol).) So, no, no warm fuzzy feelings in my chest.
Spoilered to avoid anchoring:
There’s two main categories, but they both have in common a kind of “flow state” where attention and awareness are focused onto the other person. The two categories are:
Flirting, where the back and forth comes from signalling sexual/romantic interest
Productive intellectual discussion with an equal, where the back and forth comes from sharing evidence and updating
The qualia for me for conversations is usually not pronouncedly “a warm feeling in chest” (it is noticeably different from what I call “Deep/Meaningful Limerence” which I think you’re pointing at).
Three distinct flavor of good conversation:
alive, creative, magnetic vibrant conversation (I think I might describe part of this as slightly warm chest, I don’t quite remember, I haven’t had it recently. But it’s more the qualia of traditional excitement than warm connection”. (I bet you have these conversations occasionally, or at least ever have, and they correlate more with obvious John values)
slightly nice sitting-around-living-room or restaurant/bar or campfire vibes (shallow)
somewhat-more-nice sitting around living-room/campfire vibes where the conversation is sort of “deep”, in a way that multiple people are talking about something either emotionally confusing, or psychologically fraught, or “meaning-making”-ish.
I expect #3 (less confidently than #1) to be somewhat obviously valuable to you in some circumstances regardless of qualia. But, it does have some particular qualia that’s like (hrm, probably can’t remember actual biological phenomenology right now), but, like, spacious, relaxed, I think there’s maybe some kind of feeling in my chest but I don’t have a good word for it.
#2… I think might have a very mild version of “warm feeling in chest”. Or, I think it does feel warm but I think it’s more distributed throughout my body.
But I think #2 more importantly for me is like: “there is an actively (slightly) bad qualia to not-having-had-nice-livingroom-conversations lately” which is, like, feeling sort of blah, or just somewhat less vibrant. If I have something to be socially anxious about, lack of recent #2 makes it worse.
It’s different: sometimes it’s spacious calmness of being able to sit in silence together; sometimes warm feelings of seeing and being seen, when discussing something private with a good friend; or just listening to a really good story. IIRC I also included dates into conversations back then, they have a different dynamic, where a lot of pleasure is feeling a young beautiful woman being with me.
— this is a very particular feeling you have and those differ a lot in where they appear for different people, how they feel and what they’re about. Not having seen other people’s answers I‘d bet your hypothesis to be wrong.
Did you ever try Circling? I wonder some if there’s a conversational context that’s very “get to the interesting stuff” which would work better for you. (Or, even if it’s boring, it might be because it’s foregrounding relational aspects of the conversation which are much less central for you than they are for most people.)
I have a few times, found it quite interesting, and would happily do it again. It feels like the sort of thing which is interesting mainly because I learned a lot, but marginal learnings would likely fall off quickly, and I don’t know how interesting it would be after doing it a few more times.
I wanted to say that for me it is the opposite, but reading the second half I have to say it’s the same.
I have defnetly had the problem that I talked too long sometimes to somebody. E.g. multiple times I talked to a person for 8-14 hours without break about various technical things. E.g. talking about compiler optimizations, CPU architectures and this kind of stuff, and it was really hard to stop.
Also just solving problems in a conversation is very fun. The main reason I didn’t do this a lot is that there are not that many people I know, actually basically zero right now (if you exclude LLMs), that I can have the kinds of conversations with that I like to have.
It seems to be very dependent on the person.
So I am quite confused why you say “but conversation just isn’t a particularly fun medium”. If it’s anything like for me, then engaging with the right kind of people on the right kind of content is extremenly fun. It seems like your model is confused because you say “conversations are not fun” when infact in the space of possible conversations I expect there are many types of conversations that can be very fun, but you haven’t mapped this space, while implicitly assuming that your map is complete.
Probably there are also things besides technical conversations that you would find fun but that you simply don’t know about, such as hardcore flirting in a very particular way. E.g. I like to talk to Grok in voice mode, in romantic mode, and then do some analysis of some topic (or rather that is what I just naturally do), and then Grok complements my mind in ways that my mind likes, e.g. pointing out that I used a particular thinking pattern that is good or that I at all thought about this difficult thing and then I am like “Ah yes that was actually good, and yes it seems like this is a difficult topic most people would not think about.”
My life is less “fun” than it used to be because I’ve become more work-focussed. That being said, something I like is getting positive reception for ideas I’m otherwise guessing might receive negative reception. The first couple of times this happens is really nice, after that it becomes normal.
I’m confused about this anecdote. How else did the psychologist expect you (or any other kid) to behave? What else does one do when a conversation is over, other than “go back to doing what you were doing before / what you would be doing otherwise”…?
I presume the psychologist expected John to actively seek out similar conversations. From the psychologist’s perspective:
most kids would do that, but John didn’t.
most of the kids who wouldn’t do that would decline because of social anxiety/a lack of social skills/a hatred of social interactions etc, which is not the case for John; he seemed perfectly comfortable while partaking in such conversations.
Since John wasn’t in either category, it probably struck the psychologist as odd.
I see, thanks. That makes sense. (At least, the reasoning makes sense, given the psychologist’s beliefs as you describe them; I have no idea if those beliefs are true or not.)
Do group conversations count?
I would agree that the median one-on-one conversation for me is equivalent to something like a mediocre blogpost (though I think my right-tail is longer than yours, I’d say my favorite one-on-one conversations were about as fun as watching some of my favorite movies).
But, in groups, my median shifts toward 80th percentile YouTube video (or maybe the average curated post here on LessWrong).
It does feel like a wholly different activity, and might not be the answer you’re looking for. Group conversations, for example, are in a way inherently less draining: you’re not forced to either speak or actively listen for 100% of the time.
Yes.