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Of course, in real-world discourse delaying the high-order bits often just means they're never reached.

> A: There's a thing I don't like. It's coarse, rough, and it gets...

> B: Many coarse and rough things are vitally important though, why for example there's...

My story telling preference is little-endian and the type of exchange you’ve just described drives me bonkers

I've noticed in my experience that the Big Endian approach has been less successful for me in work environments. Another wrench in the system is that when you want to get things done, especially at a leadership level, you will come to realize that the whole system in this article goes out the window if people aren't honest when they don't understand something.

I'm often thinking ahead in conversations and in a company hierarchy where people some don't want to admit not knowing or not understanding, I noticed people would nod or agree, but no actions would be taken. I though about this for a while and came to the conclusion that people simply need an explanation, but don't want to admit not understanding. SO what looked like agreement was facade to hide the confusion. It took me a bit, but I learned to move away from making a statement and waiting for questions, to leading into a conclusion so that everyone has more context with which to ask questions, or feel more comfortable asking a question because "hey, I understood most of that, but he/she lost me at that point"

Well said. In a business context it often feels like a risk to admit that you don't know something. Because it's a competitive situation and the Prod M Lead isn't about to display ignorance to the Dev Lead who is nodding sagely like they understood all the malarkey that the Chief Architect just spewed out.

And since those two doofuses are pretending they already have a clue, the QA Lead feels even more like THEY should already have one and so on and so forth.

Switch that to a context where you're the Prod M Lead, and you're talking about the roadmap to the Sales team who are all nodding their heads like they totally get it even when they're not and you have a high potential for an unproductive or counterproductive situation.

To me, being willing to admit you don't understand, or even to ask questions as if you don't understand when you do, is a sign of leadership-- it signals that you really care about having everyone on the team clued in and able to apply themselves to the situation at hand.

Heck, it might even be useful to have a "designated doofus" in your meetings who is there specifically to watch for this behavior and ask "stupid" questions to ensure understanding by as many people as possible in that room.

That's an interesting approach.

For me, the issue with that, is that I'm more of a "stream of consciousness" conversationalist, where I say things as they come to mind and rarely have time to parse them in the way you suggest.

Maybe it's a matter of practice.

I find this most irritating. It is much more polite to the listener if you do your homework first and then start talking. It vastly increases the chances of being able to capture and hold and audience's attention.

I find stream of consciousness rambling to be extremely irritating. Normally, I'm very much against interrupting, but I have been known to butt in to stream of consciousness speech, saying, "Okay, and what's your point?"

In my experience, that doesn't help. They don't know what their point is yet; they're just gratuitously holding conversational priority, so they can say what it is the instant they figure it out.

Once I detect stream-of-consciousness, I do a warning signal, like a frown or a yawn, then I make a visual cue that I'm exiting the conversation.

The Church of Interruption and Barker conversational style just doesn't work for me. I expect to be able to speak complete thoughts and listen to complete thoughts--thoughts that have a timely conclusion.

It is; I think a lot of people go for stream of consciousness speaking because they're afraid if they pause someone else will take over the conversation. But the reality is that people's attention span just drops down after a sentence or two, especially if it's stream of consciousness - they have to spend more and more energy to follow your thoughts. Which is absolutely fine in some situations, but it's not the most efficient.

Your message comes across a lot more clearly if you get your thoughts in order before starting to speak. This is difficult at first, because if you're not practiced the conversation will have moved on before you've got your thoughts in line, but it is a skill you can practice. Take one of your stream of consciousness statements, maybe write it down, and repeat it a dozen times, each time making it shorter and more to the point - assertive, definitive, without feeling like you have to expand on your every point. Assume that if something is unclear, the other party will ask. But also try and limit the amount of concepts in one sentence so you don't overwhelm the other party with new stuff. (assuming you're talking technology or something of course).

If someone is irrational or malevolent, the only legitimate strategy is to not engage. Attempting to produce an irrefutable argument or use a strategy to bypass their dishonesty is futile and damages your own standing. Stated much more articulately by an author I admire:

"The first issue that I want to discuss is the topic of when to argue and when not--in other words, when to get into a full-fledged back-and-forth discussion, and when to refrain from it. There are many cases...in which it is not appropriate. In such cases, if it is a moral or otherwise significant issue, you could make clear that you disapprove of the person's view, so that you do not leave yourself in the position that your silence or refusal to argue implies agreement. Nevertheless, there are many cases in which, given that disclaimer by you, it simply makes no sense to engage in argument. I would summarize it like this: Assuming you want to argue--and remembering that there is no moral duty to argue--you have to decide: Is it worth it? Is it worth the strain, or do you think you will do anything for your inner clarity, or toward conversion or suggestion of a viewpoint to other people?

"Assuming that you are interested and do want to develop along these lines, I would say, in essence, argue when you believe that your opponent, however confused, is honest. He may disagree violently with you. But the question is, is he open to rational argument or not? If he is dishonest--which means that facts, arguments, and reasoning make no difference to him--then, of course, it is a waste of time. It is a waste of your breath, because you are giving arguments to someone who you believe holds that arguments are irrelevant. Moreover, if you argue with such a person, you are actually sanctioning his pretense. If he wants to engage in argument with you, that means he wants to pretend that he is a man of reason, that he has arguments for his view. If he does that while simultaneously denying reason, he is engaged in real fraud, and your refusal to comply is much more dreadful to him than any amount of refutation by you."

So jokes are Little-endian I guess.

So I guess that means one thing that is little-endian is a joke.

FTFY :)

It makes sense. They say humour is based on creating expectations and solving them suddenly.

> They say humour is based on creating expectations and solving them suddenly.

I don't know what it means to solve expectations; I'd guess it means to meet them, but I've always understood part of the recipe for humour to be violating expectations.

Good jokes are.

I notice some jokes, especially on Facebook etc., where the punchline is far too early and it feels like they're obnoxiously drilling the joke home. It's also the same when you have someone make a reference in a comment thread, then the next person continues the reference with less subtlety.

Only the shaggy dog jokes.

I would say that shaggy dog jokes are buffer overflows.

> In theory, the best way to conduct a church-of-interruption exchange of ideas is big-endian: you begin by summarising your idea and only then flesh out the details. That way if your conclusion is understood you find out as quickly as possible.

There are probably some linguistic phenomena at work here: subordinate clauses in German, for example, have trailing verbs (present perfect/pluperfect conjugations also have a final verb).

I used to really annoy my Japanese ex by interrupting. It seems in Japanese conversation the main point is arrived at, with a satisfying and meaningful ending. I'd just blurt out my next thought.