Meeting People Is Easy, but Hard | Hacker News Reader

Meeting People Is Easy, but Hard

yonomitt.com

160 pointswallflower78 comments

I once received advice on smalltalk that's been interestingly useful.

The advice was to ask questions could be answered with a number. Like "How long have you lived in New York?" or "How many siblings do you have?"

On the surface those don't seem great at stimulating conversation, but people seem to automatically expand on the number they give since they feel it deserves explanation.

I've used it several times when I've been set adrift at a cocktail party without a conversational thread to pull on.

I like to go with Larry David's advice with skipping the small talk and going straight to medium or large talk. I like to open with "so how's your marriage?" Just get right into it.

How does that work for you? I figure it's a good filter - 80% of people think you're a whackball and run away, 20% stay and have interesting conversations.

The ones that appreciate and understand the underlying banter are the ones I like to filter for using this tactic.

So, I've had people lay these kinds of questions on me. Or even during a job interview (!). And normally, I'm down for the deep shit at the drop of a hat. But the problem is when complete strangers ask me these questions. It's hard to gauge when a conversation about the last time I did MDMA (and why) is appropriate. Do I really want to talk about the nasty shit I did in Iraq with complete strangers, even though that's the most honest and direct answer to their hail mary of a question? Even something like "So how are you really doing?" can be challenging to answer to a stranger. I guess really I question your desire (or ability) to handle the answers.

It hugely depends on how it's asked. If you ask it in a really awkward dead pan kind of way it's going to fall flat. If you do it in an almost "indulge me" kind of banterish irony, most people get that and will string along for a bit. The funny ones will go along and end it with something like "wow, really took me for a ride there" and switch it back on you.

Do you really have to go for such a personal and emotionally charged topic to start "big talk"? Obviously anything actually important is likely to be somewhat less comfortable, but there are still degrees.

I think most people are going to be much more comfortable talking about art, philosophy or politics than about their personal life, particularly with a stranger.

It's from this bit [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOVWS7r9ADY

And to answer your question, yes.

I'm pretty sure that was a joke. :)

What really helps me stay engaged in conversations with strangers is directing my genuine interest in their "story".

What drew you to get into computer science? How did you end up enjoying accounting? Why did you choose NYC over Tokyo?

When someone asks me what degree I took, the answer is two words: Computer Science. If they ask me why - now there's a real conversation.

Often, also, it may help to tug even further at that story thread - what background brought it around? What did the parents do? What was the formative experience that created the story?

'Why' seems a to be a more useful question than 'what'. I'll try to keep that in mind.

These are both great tactics that I hadn't thought of.

My greatest "tactic" for conferences specifically is right after a speaker is done speaking, go up and ask them followup questions. This might only work at smaller conferences (like MicroConf, etc) but it's super easy. The speaker will probably be swarmed by 4+ other people, but this is even better for you. You're now part of a conversation group that is socially acceptable for you to just hop into. Wait your turn and ask the speaker a burning question you had. This way you've already made conversation with this speaker, whom you can talk to at other social events. You're also opening yourself up to other people in the talking circle, showing you ask smart questions and they can have conversation with you. You can also listen to what other people are asking of the speaker and you can follow up with those people later if it seems that you might connect.

I learned this halfway through the last conference I went to and I'm totally going to do it every time now.

Thanks to your comment, all future dev conferences will have ~85 people vaulting from their chairs the instant after a speaker's Q&A has officially ended so they can swarm the guy and ask them a "Question that establishes them as a smart question asker" as the speaker tries to leave the room. :) Good advice, though.

It is easy for this to become an "interview" and it can make people uncomfortable. I've never found the best balance between exploring their story and sharing relevant parts of my own.

This is very true. How much do you share before boring people?

Easiest way to do this is to roughly time how long they spoke for and contribute back the same amount. If you do it right, you'll wind up spending 50% of the conversation talking and 50% listening, which is a reasonable split :)

I find that this is just naive. A lot of people aren't very comfortable sharing things. I'm relatively open, and don't mind telling people about how some dumbass swung open his car door into the bike lane when I was riding into work this morning. My less open coworkers like the idle conversation, they smile and follow the story -- they just don't have much to add, or any desire to share their own stories. So what can you do? Force a conversation? Every once in a while, sure, but it seems to me it's better to let them speak when they're ready.

You don't have to talk about yourself in a conversation :P this probably feeds back into the 'don't interview someone' mentality, but just talk about something in the news or other recent developments. Have they watched Daredevil (s1 or s2)? Which Zelda game was their favourite? Even though politics have been ruled out as a generally safe conversation topic, it's still fun to ask someone their opinion of Trump (wall/no wall/half-height but with barbed wire).

So I propose the following. Instead of using the simple heuristic of talking half the time which will work with nearly everyone practically always (modulo some edge cases when people have literally no strong opinions about anything), use the wealth of your experience as a human being to establish when and when not to promote complex human social interaction, additionally taking into account contextual and mitigating factors, while simultaneously ensuring that all parties are satisfied with the level and intensity of discourse instead of taking some random Internet person's sound bite advice.

True many people aren't comfortable sharing things immediately, but much psychology on reciprocation tells us that your sharing things about yourself opens them up, moderated by their personality, mood, the context, and a bunch of more variables. Sharing about yourself (not too much, and listening and being genuinely interested in finding out about them without the interviewing barrage), is a great way to develop a rapport.

Be mindful that those questions could be very offensive for some people (or some culture) though.

Where I live it'd be better to smalltalk about what is going on around you at the moment. Then the more personal tidbits could fuel the conversation if needed.

Just curious: Can you clarify which culture/region you are talking about?

My guess is Vulcan?

I remember it has been discussed on HN before. The submission was an article about a faux-pas the wife made when she asked her step-father what he was doing. I seem to remember he was afro-american but don't quote me on that. Might as well have been Kenyan. I can't find the article so I googled and found those pieces:

https://interculturalmeanderings.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/cu...

Good example:

I remember getting in trouble when I met a woman from Holland and asked, “What do you do for a living?” It’s a common question Americans ask.

Her response:

“Why do you care? Would you speak to me differently if I were a janitor than if I were a corporate president?”

My reply:

“Perhaps we have the same job. Or have friends or family in the same profession. When you meet new people, it’s typical (at least for Americans) to try to find what you have in common.”

When I shared this story at a family get together, a cousin mentioned that she had exactly the same experience. It, too, involved someone from Holland. Neither of us intended to offend or be nosy. It was ordinary conversation. But obviously, not ordinary conversation in some places.

This is a good idea but is important to take care and show real interest in the answers. Maybe because I'm also a bit introverted it's hard for me to feel real interest during small talk.

I took me a while to figure out that I would never find your interesting advice on 'smalltalk' in your last 3 sentences.

My wife once flew off in a rage because I had "Smalltalk with Sam" written on my hand. She calmed down when I explained I was lending my colleague a book on OO programming.

"If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on account of the grown-ups and their ways. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him."

from The Little Prince

Your mention about questions that could be answered with numbers just reminded me on this passage from the book. : ) Apparently Saint-Exupéry made the same observation, that people find it easier to answer to number questions.

FORD:

- Family

- Occupation

- Recreation

- Dreams

I'm not a natural talker. Using FORD has opened many, many conversations and, eventually, doors. I believe I found out about FORD on HN about 6 years back.

Beat me to it. I learned about this on Lifehacker. Their Conversations tag has a hefty amount of tips and tricks, so I'll share that instead of their quick overview of FORD. http://lifehacker.com/tag/conversations

And you usually want to avoid RAPE:

- Religion

- Abortion

- Politics

- Economics

Of course, rape itself is also probably not a conversational winner, generally speaking.

Why specifically abortion? I mean with regard to other items you listed, it's a lot more specific topic, and it's part religion and part politics anyway.

I imagine that people can feel that it is wrong, without it beeing linked to religion or politics.

Note: I do not share the idea that abortion is wrong

or they couldn't come up with a better A, and RPE just doesn't have a same ring to it.

It can also be about personal trauma of various kinds. Like abortion come about because of pregnancy brought about by rape. Or abortion gone wrong. Late abortion. Abortion come about after difficult decisions. Forced abortion. Wanted abortion but could not get one. It just goes on.

I'm extremely shy AND introverted. I don't like talking to strangers or meeting new people.

But this one time, I had a job interview in DC and my wife and I were at a bar enjoying drinks/dinner. Out of no where this young woman sat next to me and started talking to me. I was extremely uncomfortable/awkward at first but she asked what I did and I replied that I'm a software engineer. She immediately responded with "I work for the Chamber of Commerce." This naturally triggered a conversation about software copyright laws and SOPA. It was the most enlightening conversation that I've ever had with a stranger. While we had different opinions, it was very civil and pleasant. My wife was jealous since I was talking to this woman for so long but it wasn't about her, it was about the conversation. I generally go out of my way to avoid these interactions but I was so shocked how it turned out, once I got over the anxiety of talking to a stranger.

Meeting people for the first time at a convention is far more easier than in the real world. In a conference you have some common ground to talk about, you’re both there for the same reason. You introduce yourself, ask them what they do and then find some topic to go on. In the real world though it’s a different game altogether. You have to be a master of small talk if you want to meet people out of the blue.

One thought on talking about the weather: this habit arose when everyone's livelihood was directly or indirectly tied to local rainfall--so it was more like discussing the latest macroeconomic news or stock tips or latest web trends (in tech) than some pointlessly superficial conversation.

in England, talking abou the weather is by far the easiest way to get into an animated conversation. Seriously. It's because it has one of the most unpredictable climates, by the hour. (although if you have to, bet on light rain)

At the moment the easiest way to get into an animated conversation - or possibly a fist fight - is to ask about Europe.

Staying clear of politics and relgion is always a good bet.

I don't really understand that, surely it should only be avoided with people who can't have a civil conversation. These are often interesting topics. I guess you need to get the measure of your co-conversant first.

WAR ENDS AS ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND IS FOUND ALIVE - "How fares Europe?" asks presumed dead count.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Dumb_Century

Although this is incidental to teh main topic, for some reason he makes a big scale of Extraversion and Introversion. However, these are not necessarily the most helpful constructs, being outdated Jungian ideas comprising of many more variables that would be much more helpful. In the meanwhile, have a look at the other scales like the Big 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion Please ignore Myers-Briggs because it is demonstrably useless and worse than that, too plausible.

From your link: Virtually all comprehensive models of personality include these concepts [intraversion/extraversion] in various forms. Examples include the Big Five model, [...].

So they very much are helpful constructs, and are part of what you suggest to use as a replacement. Just because they're not the newest and shiniest doesn't make them bad.

You make a good point, yes the ideas are useful. However, the way they are still used as labelled buinary opposites make may people think they are undividable ideas. The replacements use them, but go further, rather than rely on them as originally created. They sometimes sophisticate the originals, which is good. The basic idea is interesting, but it is the simple binary condition of the original that is problematic, not capturing all of the differences. Unfortunately, the hardest thing in psychology is variable construction and testing, so it's taking a while to move beyond these too-broad constructs.

I agree old ideas are not necessarily terrbile at all. Euclid, for example, had some rather good theorems. However, psychology is rather different.

this seems interesting, perhaps you could explain your more sophisticated concept.

I think they never were intended as binary opposites, but as a spectrum with Introversion on one end and Extroversion on the other.

The fact that the public or the mainstream media polarize the two does not render the concepts useless.

Even at the ends of a spectrum, they remain imperfect and problematic constructs. When I said binary, I intended to continue to imply that they are as pointed out, said to be opposites on one semantic axis. This may have misled you as to my position, laid out in my previous parent^2 comment. At no point did I call them useless.

to timwaagh below, if I had done the research to create coherent enough new constructs I'd be publishing a paper on them, rather than writing a chat answer.

Oh sure, these constructs are broad brush strokes, I agree.

As Charles Warner opined - everyone talks about the weather, but no one actually does anything about it.

Well done -- it's often misattributed to Mark Twain.

If it's a conference on terraforming, then you might get into a very interesting conversation on that very topic.

On a similar note, is there a hackers guide to be social / relationships / that stuff?

if $this, then try [1, 2, 3]-ish style?

Not exactly that, but this is by far the best, most thorough resource I've ever found. I don't need it much anymore, but I used to read it a ton: http://www.succeedsocially.com/

Don’t hide in the bathroom, at the bar, or behind a plate of food.

Or behind a glass, for that matter.

To wit: alcohol obviously can help break the ice in many situations -- but it can also cause innate skills to atrophy, and have weirdly isolating effects in a whole bunch other ways.

So use alcohol as a tool (if it works for you) -- but switch it out, now and then. And make a point of doing all that approaching, "leaning in" (or however you like to term it) whilst stone cold sober at least as often as when you've had a glass or two.

The author gives some examples of questions to ask which is great. However I find that stories (real or fake) of a complete experience written in third person (or better as a video) is exponentially more helpful in communicating all the subtleties of activities that need practice, be it social interaction, learning to code or playing a sport.

Bullet points and tips put too much pressure and control around learning something fluidly because the learner is constantly measuring himself/herself against these "constraints".

Link text says "Extroversion and introversion" but links to wiki page for "Extraversion and introversion" (the correct spelling).

Either spelling is correct.

Extroversion is the original 17th c. spelling, used to mean a literal turning inside out. The word drifted through Late Romantic mysticism in the 19th c. and landed in psychology in the early 20th c.

Extraversion is a more recent variant.

(I'm not sure anyone really wanted to know that...)

> (I'm not sure anyone really wanted to know that...)

I did, thanks!

Why is it so important to postpone "what do you do"? I think it is perfectly fine to ask the direct but sincere question, because it is ultimately the information you and your counterpart needs.

As an Extroverted thinker it can also be awkward, I just love to have discussions. But even on a conference I only find 5% of the people are nerdy enough to match me.

When you do find someone who match, it's totally awesome.

Totally unreleated: why is the editor war always Emacs vs. Vi, not Vim? Is anybody using the original Vi these days?

When I invoke vi on a machine, I really have no idea what the implementation is. I imagine it is Vim on most Linux machines. I've been using vi for so long on so many types of systems that I only really use a safe subset anyway. I don't use any Vim extensions, so it makes sense to refer to it as vi as that is how I think of it. I imagine many others think of it the same way.

As far as I know, the original vi sees little use because it was caught up in the legal wrangling and fragmentation associated with the Unix Wars. However, some systems still have a clone that sticks closer to the original feature set. In particular, nvi was written by Keith Bostic specifically so that BSD would have an unencumbered vi implementation.

Probably because the person who invokes said editor war has little to no experience with vim.

my complete shock that anything in this article is unknown to all is inversely proportional to my programming abilities.

I... can't parse that sentence.

Then you may be very shocked that anything in this article is unknown

Alright, I parse it, and I blame the post-finals slump I'm caught in. Propositionally, the relationship's fine and it's clearly stated, despite what sleepy-me might've thought a couple hours ago. But what's the useful assertion? Assume high programming skill, low shock; is it trying to say that programmers are obviously all socially oblivious? Does it say that it's especially common for everyone to know any amount less than all of the information in the link?

Heck, is an inverse-corollary relationship even meaningful if you only have one datum (one double of the two observations he's made) and not a sliding range?

Stanford Parser (http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/index.jsp) actually parses it correctly!

  (ROOT
  (S
    (NP
      (NP (PRP$ my) (JJ complete) (NN shock))
      (SBAR (IN that)
        (S
          (NP
            (NP (NN anything))
            (PP (IN in)
              (NP (DT this) (NN article))))
          (VP (VBZ is)
            (ADJP (JJ unknown)
              (PP (TO to)
                (NP (DT all))))))))
    (VP (VBZ is)
      (ADVP (RB inversely))
      (VP (VBG proportional)
        (PP (TO to)
          (NP (PRP$ my) (NN programming) (NNS abilities)))))
    (. .)))

I agree that it's quite convoluted, but surprisingly it's not incorrect

Funny how they can write a parser that converts natural language strings into a syntax tree, but they can't configure an nginx proxy on port 80 :-p

Interesting, it's perfectly valid and imho clear.

I'm a little confused. Thane2600 has 'complete shock' and that is inversely proportional to his programing abilities therefore he can't program?

It's the semantics rather than the syntax that are tricky.

If something is simply complete, can it still be proportional to something? Let me illustrate the conundrum with some other sentence:

"My complete and undying love for you is proportional to my blood alcohol level."

For values of proportional equal to caused by, I suppose.

> It's the semantics rather than the syntax that are tricky.

Ah, I take your point; just drop the word complete , it makes sense if you're a bit less pedantic here.

Ten Thousand: https://xkcd.com/1053/

Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time.

For that matter, it's probably more fun than talking to someone who already knows about Yellowstone.

"Isn't Yellowstone awesome!" "Yep, it sure is." "..." "..."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com