Hacker News Reader

Comment by taneq | Hacker News Reader

I'm with you that repeating back word-for-word (or close to it) is not helpful. I think it's better to paraphrase back to the person talking; the closer the meaning of your paraphrase, the better it shows you've understood their point. Likewise with asking questions, if you can ask a relevant question that they haven't covered yet, it proves you're actually analyzing what they say.

All of these things come under the general heading of 'active listening' and overall it just boils down to "actually be involved in the conversation and interested in the topic."

View on HN

> I think it's better to paraphrase back to the person talking; the closer the meaning of your paraphrase, the better it shows you've understood their point.

I have found in the past that paraphrased repetition can be all the other person is looking for out of the conversation. A stylized sketch:

A: Hey, I have this problem XXXX, I'm not sure what I should do about it.

B: Ok, the problem is YYYY [paraphrased]?

A: Thanks, that was really helpful.

When my second daughter was born, she had a huge head. We're talking 99th percentile. This is cause for concern, so we took her to a doctor. The conversation went like:

Me: What's up with my daughter's really big head?

Doctor: It's a condition called "macrocephaly".

Somehow, that was reassuring to me, despite realizing that all he did was literally just transliterate my words to Latin—"macro" -> big, "ceph-" -> head—as if that added any novel information.

I would imagine the tone of voice and confidence would have made a difference. If he said it an a hesitant way I would imagine that it might have got you worried. (I hope it wasn't cause for concern).

Well, the non-jokey answer is that simply transliterating it to Latin does carry novel information. It says, "your child has something the medical establishment is familiar with". That alone carries some reassurance with it.

I can't resist the jokey version. A man goes to a psychiatrist and says "I have this nameless fear." The psychiatrist says, "Oh, that's no problem, we have names for everything."

Funny, I had a very similar experience with my son's head, but it was that his fontanella closed earlier than expected. My conversation went more like this:

Doc: "well, when we see this thing, we're concerned it might be <1 min worth of big scary thing description>... but he doesn't have that."

Me: "Phew... so..."

Doc: "So then we're worried about <2 min worth of big scary #2>... but he doesn't have that."

Me: "Phew. hrmmm, so..."

Doc "So then we're worried about <big scary thing #3>..."

At which point I interrupted:

Me: "Doc, I realize there's a lot of big scary things. Does he have any of them?"

Doc: "No, I think he's fine, he just has a big head."

I think your version of that conversation was probably a lot more reassuring than mine.

Communication is hard.

I can imagine the doc was trying to reassure you or head off questions s/he gets often by going through the litany of scary stuff ruled out. But maybe should not have buried the lede.

Urrgh, that reminds me of one time I was getting some routine blood test results. Lady with a thick Indian accent saying "And you are... HIV...

pause

endless aeons wheel and pass

negative."

Not that I'd ever had any contact with it, but wow, way to leave me hanging.

Many (most?) medical terms are just a common description of the thing in Latin. "Anterior Cruciate Ligament" sounds fancy until you realise it just means "the string that goes across at the back." I dunno why but this vaguely annoys me.

I agree paraphrasing is usually better. But with complicated matters you are having trouble understanding, word-for-word repetition can help a lot.

Also, for teaching, a lot of people need to do word-for-word first in order to learn how to really concentrate, then they can switch to paraphrasing.

In fact, I have found that a large portion of the population has a problem listening where their attention wanders away and they miss much of what is said, but they don't realize it and think they have heard it all. When you have them do word-for-word reflecting, they miss a lot of the content, and are shocked to realize their attention has wandered away, and indeed they have probably been doing this all their life, and they suddenly become very focused in their listening. It is quite something when you see this happen.

To follow on from your excellent second point - "actually be involved in the conversation"

People understandably don't appreciate if you're parroting back to them what they said (even paraphrased) so that you can appear to be an "active listener".

The reason to repeat what someone said exactly (useful in case you legitimately just missed an important phrase) or paraphrase is because you didn't fully understand what they said and you genuinely want to understand the point. Asking follow-up questions to drive discovery and enjoyment is next.

Being a good listener is about being humble, respectful and present. Turns out that's easier said than done.

Parroting shouldn't be your go-to tactic. It's useful to get you out of a potentially awkward spot to save the momentum of a conversation, but if you're actually involved in the conversation you should have other things to say/ask.

Yes, with technical conversations / difficult concepts I think this is a useful way to do it. If I can reword it and keep the same meaning we can assume I have understood correctly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com