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Comment by westoncb | Hacker News Reader

Here's why interrupt is inherently more efficient: as long as both participants are willing to yield to interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts when interrupting, you have shifted the communication mode from:

A) Anticipate up front what other person needs to hear and say it all

B) Rapid adjustment to ideal info requirements as your model of their knowledge/interest is live-updated.

But the trick people seem to miss is that interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts make the whole thing possible.

When I'm talking with someone for whom this style is natural, there can be many very rapid small gestures to interrupt, which sometimes are accepted and sometimes are rejected by a small "just let me keep going, you'll see why" gesture. Each of those gestures takes a fraction of a second (and generally does not actually break flow of speech, just eye contact + a little head motion), and conversations employing them are far more enjoyable because information flow is near optimal.

On the other hand, when speaking with anti-interrupt people, I often get so bored it's hard to pay attention because either 1) they left something out that I wanted to ask about so I can't follow what they are saying, or 2) I already had a thorough understanding of something they insist on giving a long explanation of.

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> On the other hand, when speaking with anti-interrupt people, I often get so bored it's hard to pay attention

The post didn't ever explicitly say this, but part of the power of wait culture is that fact that it forces you to listen. Even when you think someone is wrong.

Of course, if what the other person is saying is not worth your time, then there's no reason to be a good listener.

As for an objective look at the mechanics of interrupt culture that you described, it works perfectly if everyone can agree on the relative importances. But if someone never lets you interrupt or ALWAYS interrupts, then... it just breaks down. It's almost like you're taking an economist's stance of "all humans are rational actors". If that's the case, then your arguments for interrupt culture are an nice proof detailing how - in any situation, the person that needs to talk more has the ability and permission to immediately gain the floor without listening to the other person waste time explaining an irrelevant detail or counterargument to a misunderstood point.

I like the way you're thinking, and I know that you would act in good faith under this system you see and have explained so well. Together, I would converse with you like that. And just hope that one of us doesn't get frustrated that the other person keeps interrupting with boring stuff.

It being boring to me would be a rude/invalid reason to interrupt, I mean the case specifically where someone is telling/explaining/describing something to you because they think you don’t know about it. The interruption is just to let them know that you do already know about it, not to change the subject. I would find it embarrassing if someone let me going on telling them something they already know just because they thought I didn’t want to be interrupted.

But thank you more generally and I’m sure we’d have a good conversation!

Sometimes I let people explain something I already know because they either explain it better or add more detail. Even a well described reminder is useful and interesting if told well.

Sometimes though it's not useful and it's them explaining poorly or, even worse, pointless simplification. They'll get interrupted fast if either of those is the case.

> Of course, if what the other person is saying is not worth your time, then there's no reason to be a good listener.

Sometimes you listen just as a gesture, though. To show respect and appreciation. Or you could listen so that you can ensure that the OTHER person will listen to you after.

It all depends on the context.

For me I think it depends on what is needed to be accomplished.

Interrupt based communication for me is indeed natural when you’re brainstorming and want to solve a really hard problem where everybody is on board and solving it is the most important thing. Like a startup refinement session.

The thing is most human interaction is not like that.

People generally have their position set, and are looking for allies - the words themselves don’t matter much, its the communication of emotions that people are after. Looking for understanding, support, approval etc.

In those scenarios, when communicating information would involve telling people they are actually wrong (communicating disapproval) interrupting would not be considered “nice” as solving the issue is not actually what’s driving the conversation, its the sending and receiving of emotional signals that’s important.

Kinda like some game’s rendition of conversations with just some emojis. Its silly I know but I think the metaphor is actually quite apt.

It took me a while to realize this, as I imagined most conversations were about finding the truth (interrupting). But when I accepted that most of the time its about seeking understanding or alies (waiting). People around me suddenly started saying I became a _much_ better person to talk to… And the thing is, _after_ people put you in the emotional ally bucket mentally for whatever you were discussing, then you can sometimes actually start interrupting each other and solving the problem together.

This feels like you are trying to explain common card game semantics of instants versus turn plays. With the twist that you are arguing that instants are the correct and more efficient mechanism.

But here is the thing. Not everyone is well versed in how those semantics play out. And even those that are, have well agreed "cards" that can be done in different situations. To argue that all things should be "instant" playable is a tough sell.

The post you're responding to this qualified it with "as long as both participants are willing to yield to interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts when interrupting" - that addresses your point. This doesn't necessarily work well in a context where people are unfamiliar, but with close friends/colleagues/family who are all on board with this conversation paradigm and familiar with each other's interruptive style, it works very well.

It really doesn't, though. For one, it is recursive. Can I interrupt a counter? What if it is already in a counter? Does it depend on why I'm interrupting?

That is, this all only works if you know what "plays" each side can do, and you agree on when each one can be played. Card games with instants captures this remarkably well. In that you have a finite number of "interrupt" cards, and are often limited to how many times you can play each one.

The rules (although I'll argue none are needed, see below) really are quite simple: yes, what I described above works recursively: there is no difference between a counter-interrupt and a counter-counter-interrupt.

All of this hinges on and ends up being managed by each person giving the other a certain amount of benefit of the doubt, that any of these interrupt-related actions are being done out of a genuine desire to communicate effectively (vs someone trying to make some kind of power play). With that trust in place you don't need to know any "rules", this all emerges quite naturally.

My assertion is that it is very very easy to miss "easy rules that were emergent and are working well" with "I didn't realize there is a social hierarchy here that I'm massively benefiting from." Or, worse, "there could be consequences for my interrupting this person, I should keep quiet and let it go."

But again, this isn't going to be the case among people who know each other well. My family and I are interrupters, and we've been at it for decades now - none of the issues you're raising would apply.

In terms of knowing when/whether you can interrupt the interrupter/counter-interrupt/etc., see my other post in this thread about how the time of interrupters talking over each other is a signal to both that's constantly evolving (because the increasing time is an increasingly strong signal).

For certain. I'm less arguing that it isn't a conversation style, than I am that it is a dangerous one. Even in families, it is easy to see this form lead to resentment between folks. Or a contest to be last person talking. In a large sense, mansplaining is similar. Echoing back and explaining things even to people that know them isn't, itself, bad. But it is very easy to portray in a negative light and should not be the assumed default.

Now, I fully grant that the largest poison in all of this is the transactional view of conversation. The interrupt style is still predicated on an open transaction that will eventually commit.

> My assertion is that it is very very easy to miss "easy rules that were emergent and are working well"

You are right, at least for people who have poor social skills, are emotionally unstable or immature in some way, including people with autism, ADHD, dementia, children, etc.

With such people arround, it may be better to have clearly defined rules for who speaks when. The same goes in situations where people come from very different background or there are very low levels of trust to start with.

The better a group of people are at communicating in a cooperative manner, the fewer hard rules are needed.

That's a good addition: if the participants do not trust one another, the interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts are not going to work.

As far the actual signaling goes, AFAICT it's pretty built-in (though I can imagine in other countries for instance there are likely enough differences that you'd have to take time to learn specific signals): I can go into this style of conversation immediately with strangers as long as we're at least giving each other a little benefit of the doubt.

Role play a policemen and a minority in this form of communication to see an easy way it can fall flat. Disastrously.

It's already been said plenty of times that mutual trust is a requirement, this will be my last reply to your comments if you keep straw-manning.

It isn't a straw man, though. It literally happens all the time. Role play a woman in an office. And, I should have stated flat out I can see this style can exist. My discourse is why not to lead in with it. Pretty much anywhere.

I think I see what you're saying, and it makes sense. But in a scenario with abusive power dynamics injustice is going to play out the same regardless of preferred conversation style, an outlet will trivially be found.

Ok, I grant that going full on abusive is not helpful. Such that I apologize on jumping there immediately. :(

My concern is more in the ones that aren't quite as stark. Role play that you are talking to someone that doesn't feel safe enough to tell you that they don't feel perfectly safe. Now, how do you know this? If they felt safe, you could ask. But, we have established that they don't, per the role play.

And this is a large part of why the conversation around "privilege" is so tough. At large, what we call "privilege" can be easily recast to more subtle dynamics of folks that are allowed to give voice without as much interruptions. Note, not none. Just fewer. (Note that there are obviously other aspects to this that don't necessarily make the recasting.)

> Now, how do you know this?

What I'm describing is founded on both participants being well-intentioned. If one person interrupts another to ask for a clarification, or to let them know they are already aware of something, and the original speaker is threatened by it, I would say this is an unusual circumstance: someone with a preoccupation about being interrupted may feel that way and may need special treatment, sure. If they are uncomfortable about it, hopefully the well-intentioned interrupter is able to perceive that. If there is a combo of someone with this preoccupation + someone who is bad at reading body language, that would be unfortunate.

As far as that recasting of privilege, it's an insightful metaphor imo, but at the end of the day still just a metaphor: the dynamics of not having your voice heard in society are in practice just a separate matter from this communication style.

Yeah, to pile on with anecdata here (TFA opens by characterizing their early experience as "Growing up with friends who were disproportionately male and disproportionately nerdy"), my experience is that majority male spaces are interrupt culture, minority male spaces are wait culture, and non-males effectively get "shouted down" in interrupt cultures.

My brain (maybe this is arrogant but here we go) works faster than conversation so I have to work harder in wait cultures, but after years of this I'm 100% on board. I _super hate_ to be interrupted: I don't go on and on and I'm generally saying things I want others to hear. People think they know what I'm going to say, they almost never do. People want to interrogate a minor thing I just said, but it derails us all and wasn't the overarching point I was trying to make. On and on.

I'm not saying "don't ever ever interrupt"; sometimes it's critical to stop--respectfully--and clarify something important, like "aha that's what we're misunderstanding here" or whatever. But it should be like, "I know interrupting is disrespectful, but I feel like we could solve this right now, so bear with me." I think what most people in this thread are talking about isn't the occasional interruption, but the constant interrupt/overtalk style.

Anyway, maybe there are others with experiences in diverse workplaces (genders, races, backgrounds, etc.) where interrupt culture works, but I'm skeptical. I think in those situations you're always building mutual respect and team trust, and as such interrupt culture is out of reach. I disagree that these issues are separate from communication style--the medium is the message here and interrupt culture benefits people who haven't experienced barriers to interrupting/overtalking others--largely not women, but also not introverts or people with anxiety, etc. I think if you're "well-intentioned", you're taking those factors into consideration as well.

Oral arguments before the Supreme Court are a fairly formalized interrupt culture in which the justices literally interrupt the attorneys to ask questions, and funny enough, the women justices tend to speak more than the men justices. Clarence Thomas famously speaks the least; he actually would prefer to hear out the attorneys making their case to the court.

> Clarence Thomas famously speaks the least; he actually would prefer to hear out the attorneys making their case to the court.

Eh, my impression is that he's extremely arrogant and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He's deeply uncurious and consequently relatively ignorant. He rarely engages in good faith with the facts and merits, and frequently misconstrues them to suit his own ideology. These are not the acts of an active listener who wants to learn and be shaped by what they learn. They're the acts of someone who believes they've got it all figured out.

I'm basing this off of what Justice Thomas has said when he has been asked about this in the past. But if you want to form your impressions based on your personal biases and prejudices, there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.

No bias or prejudice here, just reading his opinions. But think about it for just a minute: there's never a mystery about how he's gonna vote--oral arguments never change his mind. Does that sound like a guy who's listening?

It is also definitively a hierarchical culture where the justices are the absolute top of the chain.

That's definitely a big part of it.

I don't know about instant/turn play semantics so can't follow the tradeoffs there.

> Not everyone is well versed in how those semantics play out

I would argue that this is not necessary: just watch younger people who are friendly with each other discuss something: what I'm describing is a natural mode of communication. AFAICT it's just overridden in certain cases when people are taught "never interrupt someone speaking" or something along those lines.

But I would be curious if you could lay out the tradeoffs with instant plays in the card game semantics you mentioned.

Forming a hierarchy of leadership and follower is also fairly common among children. Probably fairly common among people, period. In that, you quickly start to form boundaries on who can interrupt what and why. And, in all cases, you almost always need someone that cannot be interrupted.

The article does cover this. They have moderators that would keep things on track. Most of your interactions on a daily basis don't have moderators.

This is an interesting additional aspect to the situation. I wouldn't deny at all that what you're describing happens, but whether it's a problem or a solution is debatable imo ;) Is it always better to have an enforced equality of priority among speakers, or do these emergent hierarchies serve as effective regulators of group communication?

However, I'd also argue that in most cases these social group hierarchical roles aren't going to end up having a large influence on communication style: typically it's only if there's something pressing going on. (Or, as I've already described elsewhere, if someone is unfairly taking advantage, the negation of which is a condition for cooperative interrupting to work.)

> I don't know about instant/turn play semantics so can't follow the tradeoffs there.

Magic: The Gathering works like a computer (quite literally it's Turing complete). When you play a card or ability, it is put on a stack. After you're done, you need to yield - then the other player may play things on the stack too (but, they can only play "instants" - most other cards can only be played if the stack is empty). Then they must yield, and so on.

(In the 90s, instants meant to interrupt other spells were called "interrupts", but this name was dropped)

After everyone is done, things are popped from the stack in the reverse order they were played (like any stack). So if your opponent played something in response to what you played, their card resolves first, then yours. But if you played something in response to their response, your card resolves first, then theirs, then yours.

This would be very tedious, but in fact most decks have few instants and little interaction with the stack, so most of time you play a card I will just wait it to resolve and generally wait my turn to play. And famously, no card of MtG is allowed to mention the stack in their printed text: while the concept itself is intuitive, talking about the stack is a sure way to make a card overly complicated.

You just blew my mind a little bit, realizing MTG gameplay was based on CS concepts, and made me fee old since interrupts is what we called them (way before I knew about processor interrupts).

To be fair, this is more that a formal system described precisely can be mapped to many computer science structures.

And I'm fairly confident these semantics exist in many card games. Unstable Unicorns has the neigh card. Uno has the rule of declaring uno. (Where you can interrupt the next play by calling uno to force the last player to draw a card. Note that this is a very specific time you can interrupt play.)

Great explanation, thanks. I actually played MtG a bit when I was a kid and have a vague recollection of interrupts but don't think I understood the stack dynamics too clearly. Insightful design decision to disallow stack referencing lol.

> no card of MtG is allowed to mention the stack in their printed text

Nit: The Split Second keyword ability is usually accompanied by reminder text which mentions the stack

> Split second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities.)

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...

Is this a recent standards change? I remember some legendary artifact that caused spells on the stack to be copied and explicitly described it that way.

Doing a search, I count 40 results with "stack" in their text; it appears that 18 of them have "split second", a few of them have "stack" in their name, several are from "Un" expansions or this weird "Mystery Booster" thing, several mention the stack in explanatory text about what it means to end the turn or end the combat phase... but there are several cards such as Grip of Chaos ("Whenever a spell or ability is put onto the stack, if it has a single target, reselect its target at random") that are from regular expansions.

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?actio...

Welp, that's true, my bad! It seems this rule was relaxed somewhat - mentioning the stack in the rules text is still frowned upon, but there's still some cards that mention it in the rules text (and a lot more that contains the split second reminder)

Note how the waterhouse's link - https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?actio... - contains a bunch of cards that were playtested but eventually rejected (they are the black-and-white cards with just a rough sketch in place of art), presumably because of the high bar that stack-fiddling cards should meet

Tangentially, this is why I've often found it a bit easier to teach MTG to friends who also are programmers than in general; being able to tell a fellow programmer "instants are put on a stack when cast, and then are popped off the stack when they resolve" ("instant" is the term that MTG ended up standardizing on now that "interrupts" are no longer a card type) is a quick shortcut that they always end up understanding. When teaching someone who doesn't already have a mental concept of a stack data structure, I can explain how the analogy of a "stack" works, but it often takes a bit of playing and seeing it in action for them to fully internalize how it works.

Funny, as with the cards, this should be a bit easier to literally act out. Intent to play a card is to lay it down. If someone has an instant, they can put theirs on top.

That only works with cards you play from the hand, but effects that you activate on a permanent (e.g. by tapping it) also go on the stack.

We're getting a little off-topic here, but this is actually the first I'm learning that MtG can't explicitly mention the stack (I follow set releases and read cards casually sometimes, cube once in a blue moon, played standard one summer ever). That's a bit of a shame - one of the other card games I've played (Yu-Gi-Oh) works its equivalent (a "Chain") into card effects and it doesn't have to be complicated. One very good card ("Chain Strike") does damage multiplied by its stack position (chain link) so the later in the stack (chain) it appears, the more damage it does. That's not too crazy. Would've loved that either to attempt the inevitable degenerate combos or just splash it into RDW. There is also a balancing mechanism where certain effects can only be activated once per stack (chain) which is not as draconian as "per turn" but could otherwise when omitted potentially make cards ingredients in degenerate combos (e.g. "Accumulated Fortune").

Final aside: I used the phrase twice, so it should be clear that the history of said game (again, Yu-Gi-Oh) is plagued with degenerate combos.

EDIT: Editing in this edit to acknowledge that there is a sibling comment with a valid nit that invalidates the reason I responded. In my defense, my slow phone-based composition took me so long I did not see it until this edit. I'm leaving it for the sake of hopefully any nascent game designer getting any insight, I suppose. Or hey, card game players getting their kicks thinking about card game mechanics.

> Magic: The Gathering works like a computer (quite literally it's Turing complete). When you play a card or ability, it is put on a stack. After you're done, you need to yield - then the other player may play things on the stack too (but, they can only play "instants" - most other cards can only be played if the stack is empty). Then they must yield, and so on.

This is actually my single least favorite part of magic compared to yugioh, and I've played both a ton. Instead of a stack, yugioh has a similar first-in-first-out concept called the chain, with two major differences:

1) Every time you place a card on the stack, you yield to your opponent, who can either play a response or yield back to you, and this goes on forever until both of you have yielded without taking an action

2) cards have "spell speeds" of 1, 2, or 3 , where you can only chain an equivalent or higher speed card - this means unlike magic, you can pile up multiple sorceries/spell speed 1 cards into the same resolution queue

Both of these encourage a ton of interaction on the stack/chain, and often times yugioh games are won or lost as the result of a resolution or 5 or more cards and effects piling up and resolving, which is a relative rarity in magic outside of a few combo decks or infinites. Conversely, yugioh also presents a lot of powerful defensive options for interrupting degenerate combos, usually at a high cost.

I had an experience somewhat opposite to the article. I somehow ended up with a friend group and family that tended to avoid interrupting. I guess the idea was that it was rude. People who were interrupted would complain and call you out for interrupting, and I would feel guilt if I did it.

Once I entered the professional world, I found that people (especially managers) would interrupt me all the time. I was a bit shocked - it felt animalistic, as though people were just not interested in having a "real" conversation.

Instead of becoming bitter about it, I just tried to adapt. I figured "ok, I need to express my thought in about 3 seconds or else I'll get interrupted". This seems to have worked quite well. It's forced me to think hard about what the crux of my argument is and then get it out as fast as possible. I never really thought about it much until seeing this article, but I think being interrupted has made me a better communicator.

Being succinct goes a long way. I found that people rarely interrupts me because I try to convey my thought in a relatively dense manner. If asked one question, I answer that question in the first sentence, then the justifications and explanations. If I'm explaining something, I do the same thing with the abstract idea first, then detailing after that. I don't fear being interrupted, as that usually means I've been talking longer than needed.

Huh, that's pretty interesting. It reminds me that I had a workplace experience related to this recently

I was working with a client based in another country (which made me a little less certain about customs/etiquette), and our relationship was a little similar to manager/subordinate (esp. because I had a peer in meetings which he would somewhat direct).

For the first several months we were actually pretty strictly non-interrupting in conversation, but there was a transition at some point because a lot needed to be communicated and everyone involved was very interested/engaged. I think he was a bit taken aback at my first interrupts (which were e.g. to let him know I'd already heard about something he was trying to tell me), but once he saw that I also very readily yielded if he ever wanted to interject, our style of speaking morphed so that cooperative interrupting became commonplace (and our conversations became more fun :).

I think in a situation like that it's inherently a bit risky because it can signal things about power dynamics, but if you actually play nicely with it, don't use it for your own benefit, just for efficiency, it can also be a way of upping trust level (specifically because it was something risky, they had to trust you some, but it turned out fine, you didn't take advantage).

People love to build arguments on piles of “facts” which nobody would be able to question in a timely manner after the final conclusion is done. Both consciously and not. Cutting this flow of nonsense short is essential for communication and negotiation, especially in gullible/hierarchical groups like family and friends (YMMW). I find that most of the times when I listen to a lenghty monologue, it serves a persuading rather than an informing purpose. 5 minute “ted” voice messages are the extreme example of it.

To put your comment into the 'bigger picture', as I see it at least: if I can assume that by efficiency, you mean the rate of verbal exchange of information, then I would argue that this is often not the sole function of a conversation; for example, building rapport is often an indirect but desirable outcome. There are no doubt other outcomes and that they vary wildly by context. Though to stick with rapport: pursuing near-optimal information exchange through interruptions may (and for anti-interrupt people, probably will) come at the hefty cost of rapport which may effect future conversations.

This is a super interesting topic and also cool because everyone has a slightly different take. I had not really considered that people who interrupt may do so because they actually like it and think it's beneficial. I just (probably prematurely) assumed it was a bit of a personal flaw based on how it made me feel.

Oh I (for instance) 100% do it cause I like it. I get bored talking to people who want to take turns.

Understandable. I don't want to give the impression that my ideal conversation involves a Talking Pillow. We're probably all imagining the far, opposite end of the spectrum when we think about it. I'm picturing my old boss who couldn't go 10 seconds without stammering his way into my sentence, which drove me nuts, but like I said in another comment, interruptions probably happen in every conversation and it's only the routine, out-of-place ones that are frustrating.

Indeed it’s pretty interesting how differently people relate to it. My main personal reason for liking it is actually enjoyment, and part of that relates to efficiency but even more importantly it’s because people interrupt in this way naturally when they are truly interested in what you’re talking about and have thoughts about it too, and those conversations are just gonna be more fun.

I agree with you. Furthermore, I think, the interrupt stance doesn't prevent you from attentively listen to what others say. You can absolutely listen a person talking for a long time. The opposite not being true.

However in an educational context like described in the article, if think that waiting for the other to finish is better as it allow a better analysis and criticism of the whole argument development.

I think you’re omitting one of the most important nuances in the article: Wait (interrupt-averse) culture works well when turns speaking have short time spans. It’s effectively built in interruption.

What’s interesting about your preference—that’s what it is, none of this is objective—is how much it reinforces my own interruption aversion, and how much that reflects your preconditions. I just generally prefer communicating with the yields being the prevailing assumption and that the interruption signals deviate to make them more rare.

It’s not, to me, a question of efficiency but with the question posed, I find communication much more efficient when there aren’t N+1 speakers (the interruption queue being the additional participant), particularly when N queues get saturated.

Granted all of this, either approach or any blend of both, takes patience and active effort when preferences don’t match. And granted my preference is also just that, it’s not objective. But I definitely have better communication with people who generally agree to yield communication space without prompting and who generally agree that not yielding automatically is a good indicator that their thoughts are more complex than fit in a tiny contained space.

In contrast to your last paragraph, I get frustrated until I let myself get bored when I’ve got a stack of interruption-paused thoughts that might have addressed any dozens of things said, but which I’ve lost track of entirely by the time the stack unwinds.

And… that was a lot of words, sorry about that. I yield both implicitly and explicitly.

> I just generally prefer communicating with the yields being the prevailing assumption

I may be misunderstanding but in what I describe in my post above, yields are the prevailing assumption: I describe them as a critical component that makes this kind of interrupting possible.

> ... and that the interruption signals deviate to make them more rare.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. (This is a point where I would've attempted an "interrupt-request" to get clarification, if we were speaking in person.)

> I get frustrated until I let myself get bored when I’ve got a stack of interruption-paused thoughts that might have addressed any dozens of things said, but which I’ve lost track of entirely by the time the stack unwinds.

It sounds like this may be central to why your preference is interrupt-averse: it sounds like your model of What Needs To Be Said is not updating in response to interruptions, which could be because A) you planned out everything you want to say before, so regardless of the content of interruptions you still think it needs to be said, or B) you find in your experience that the content of interruptions is typically independent of what you're saying, so of course your model of What Needs To Be Said doesn't update, and you have to keep queuing things.

In the case of B, you are communicating with someone who is not cooperatively interrupting to expedite communication; you are dealing with someone interrupting for their own benefit.

In the case of A, you may be pre-deciding that interruptions are useless and won't affect your model of What Needs To Be Said, so you queue things up and say what you were originally going to say anyway.

I don't know which case you are dealing with. I can say in my own experience though that a queue beyond 1 or 2 items is rarely necessary because cooperative interrupts tend to modify what I was going to say as my understanding of our shared informational context evolves, so things I previously was going to say are more frequently discarded rather than queued.

> I may be misunderstanding but in what I describe in my post above, yields are the prevailing assumption: I describe them as a critical component that makes this kind of interrupting possible.

The distinction is that I prefer communicating when the yielding itself is the prevailing assumption, that it doesn’t need to be requested or accepted. That’s what the article describes too. Not yielding to interruption, yielding to other participants and their participation.

> I'm not sure what you mean by this. (This is a point where I would've attempted an "interrupt-request" to get clarification, if we were speaking in person.)

I mean that if a conversation already leaves places for people to enter and yield without interruption, interruption itself is a correction but one you don’t need often. And that’s my preference.

> It sounds like this may be central to why your preference is interrupt-averse: it sounds like your model of What Needs To Be Said is not updating in response to interruptions

I can see why you might think so, but it’s actually the opposite. It’s reacting to too many dangling threads which gets hard to track. Each thread produces a new subqueue of things which could have been addressed in turn if the conversation wasn’t a stack of competing What Needs To Be Said. Sometimes I had something to say that wasn’t readily discarded and sometimes the pile of interruption tangents produces more unsaid things which all could be addressed by just not being interrupted in the first place, or by having a fellow conversation partner inviting me to remain uninterrupted. Even the most cooperative interruption conversations I’ve had tend to pace ahead of that and create related tendrils of topic which can’t be connected at the same pace and produce fractals or misunderstanding.

> I mean that if a conversation already leaves places for people to enter and yield without interruption, interruption itself is a correction but one you don’t need often.

Ah I think I might see what you're getting at here. I have seen a certain dynamic in group conversations where a subset of the group kinda gets locked into making exchanges, then other participants can't get a word in, so they'd be forced into interrupting as the only recourse. Maybe? In that case I agree, it's good to keep an eye out and make sure everyone is able to participate through a certain amount of conscious turn-taking.

> It’s reacting to too many dangling threads which gets hard to track.

> sometimes the pile of interruption tangents produces more unsaid things

I think we are talking about two different things. You seem to be referring to topic-switching interruptions; I'm specifically referring to interruptions which engage with what the speaker is saying, requesting info that's needed to make any sense of what's being said (e.g. they are talking about Zoikbugs but you don't know what a Zoikbug is, and they thought you did, so you need to ask for a quick definition and then let them resume), or, to let them know it's unneeded to continue on a particular strand because you already have the info (in this second case it's possible for the would-be interrupter to be incorrect, but that's why "interrupt-denies" are so critical: in less then a second, via eyes, hands, posture etc. you can have one person communicate, "Gotcha, I see where you're going, now lemme respond" and for the other person to reply "I know why you think that, but just hang on", with no actual, or extremely brief, interruption to speech; or there can just be a light confirmation: you, as the original speaker, yield to your interlocutor and allow them to speak and for the conversation to move along its natural course; if it turns out they didn't anticipate you correctly after all, you counter-interrupt and if they're "playing fair", they should desist).

If someone is interrupting to talk about something different, adding tangents or disallowing you from completing an idea, that's another matter entirely.

> Ah I think I might see what you're getting at here.

Yep! And it’s what the article was getting at too. I probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate it as well without that.

> I think we are talking about two different things.

I could go into the details of the rest of what you said here, but I’m going to yield because we’ve both perfectly demonstrated one another’s points without either intending to do so. :)

You point it out as the prerequisite, but having both people on the same page as to how to play the interruption game is I think non trivial.

In particular, people not used to get interrupted don't structure their talk in the same ways, and that makes is difficult to ad-hoc switch from one style to the other.

IMO talking in small bursts and checking on the listener to see how they receive it could be seen as the best of both worlds and work with less coordination than either style.

> But the trick people seem to miss is that interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts make the whole thing possible.

Exactly. Interrupting when you want to talk but being unwilling to yield in return, or unwilling to let them continue if they insist, isn’t an efficient conversational technique, it’s just bulldozing.

I also draw a distinction between interrupting (and then monopolising the floor) and interjecting with a quick addition before handing back to the speaker.

It's a good distinction. Unfortunately the term "interrupt" here is a bit overloaded since you definitely get some real assholes interrupting for nefarious purposes. "Cooperative overlap" often gets used to describe this non-competitive, overlapping communication style (though I think it's not quite explicit enough for an audience who spends a lot of time thinking about communication protocols etc.)

There are two sides to any coin.

Similarly put your self in the position of someone who is more attuned to a 'wait' mode who just had a conversation with you.

Only from your description above, they might walk away from it feeling you did not listen very well, rather one-sidedly just wanted to be listened to, and took the conversation all over the place.

In the end they might also walk away thinking how boring and wasteful of time and energy it had been

I just adapt when I see someone doesn't do cooperative interrupting; I switch to their mode. It's not difficult to tell when people aren't into it (if nothing else, they aren't engaging with you in the same way, so it feels wrong, like you keep hitting tennis balls to them but instead of hitting them back they catch them and then walk them over).

I guess to clarify, it's not that 'wait mode' people are always boring, it's just much more likely to be boring because:

1) You don't feel their engagement if they aren't interrupting you to dig deeper, clarify, respond to points etc.—that's what's fun (for me and many others anyway), when you are interacting live like that, quick back and forth. By contrast waiting and storing everything up and then trying to say it all in your turn, feels very slow and unnatural.

2) If I'm missing information and the other person keeps talking and I can't interrupt them to ask for clarification, then everything they're saying is meaningless to me, information free, boring. Same if they think I don't know about topic X, try explaining it to me, but I do know topic X, but I can't quickly let them know I already know it so we can move on, so I have to listen to an explanation of something that needs no explaining—also devoid of any new information, hence boring.

But granted, sometimes a non-interrupter has very practiced speech and will string together something that's nice to listen to as long as they don't hit the above obstacles.

I agree with you that there isn't always value in what people say, no matter their mode.

Being more of a 'wait' mode my self, I sure have had very long, slow and 'boring' conversations with other 'wait' oriented people before.

In those instances I have usually suggested to change the subject matter by way of 'I'm sorry but would you mind if we shift the conversation over to x?'.

Usually to great success.

This seems to be a recurring confusion in this thread: the boring aspect is a consequence of certain other factors, it is not a reason in itself for interruption. It would be rude in my opinion to interrupt someone and change the subject because they are being boring. However, if you consider the specific examples I gave you'll see it's not about it being generically boring, it's about the speaker having a misunderstanding of the knowledge-state of their listener.

In attempt to say it with absolute clarity: interruptions that shift topic are rude and I would not advocate for them

If it wasn't clear then the redirection of the conversation would only happen after the person has come to a junction in what they are discussing.

Not mid sentance, nor mid explanation that has not reached some settled point.

There is nothing rude about directing a topic of discussion if done with tact and respect.

Hard agree. It is such a fluid conversation, with instant asides, interruptive humour with redirects back to subject, riffs off what you're saying, etc. I love it. Crucially, I want to be interrupted too. As soon as you've caught up to my thoughts and have outraced them, interrupt me and take over.

West Coast America (at least, and possibly elsewhere) is pretty big on the do-not-interrupt culture, though, and I felt a little ashamed whenever I did it. But then I found not all people are like that and realized I have so much more fun with people who interrupt me and permit me to interrupt.

And it feels so natural. A slightly louder tone, a hand gesture, enough to say "hang on, here comes something"; but also enough of a signifier to you to move things along. I'm with you, man.

You get it :)

It is potentially more efficient, but that efficiency is dependent on mutual buy-in and understanding.

It cam also be efficient to non-verbally signal a request for interrupt via hand or face gestures.

The real skill is on the fly protocol identification and adaption.

Interruptions don't scale, just as single backbone networks don't scale (CSMA-CD anyone?) and modern networking has shifted to star topologies.

This implies all communication is scaled which is a false assumption. Most interaction is one on one not N to many and there's no reason you need to use the same for both.

Thus conseding interruptions aren't "inherently more efficient", and rather as the author presents different communication methods are more effective under different circumstances.

> Interruptions don't scale, just as single backbone networks don't scale (CSMA-CD anyone?) and modern networking has shifted to star topologies.

The difference is that packet has max length and therefore can be mixed with other senders, not be infinite monologue that chokes whole traffic in the network

As for interrupts, you just need to queue them instead of them causing collision. Notice the need for question and let the other side finish the sentence, as what they say next might be answer to question

One gets interrupted by two kinds of people:

- Those who ask for help after exhausting other avenues. These people grow more productive over time.

- Those who ask for help at the first sign of trouble every time. These people take you for granted, use you as a door mat, and often make for incompetent teammates or toxic managers.

In other words, the world is black and white and you know exactly what's going on at any time.

I use a piece of paper and scratch one or two words in order to not forget getting back into a point but also not interrupting.

Obviously this doesn’t work on all circumstances, but it works well on work zoom meetings.

This is much worse now that so much business and technical communication is by video, since to make these gestures you have to ensure that your hands are in the frame -- if the camera is even on.

Your post is complete, because I wasn't able to interrupt it. So your argument is as good as the "wait culture".

If you're teaching someone something in a 1 on 1 situation, then yeah, interruptions might be better. And that seems to be what you're focusing on. But in other situations your observations seem not to hold.

I find that interrupters are boring. So many pointless words to describe something that could be handled in a sentence. When I talk to such people I often find myself bored and wondering why they have such a strong desire to go into excruciating detail over the blindingly obvious, why they need to constantly reiterate and belabor some simple fact. Usually I come to the conclusion that they are hiding their inability to think well, let alone deep - they try to cover it by using lots of words to appear as if they have a lot in their head.

It sounds like you might just be a poor listener and are pushing that problem off onto other people.

Ironically it sounds like you didn't actually read my comment at all, but if you wouldn't mind providing a little more detail on how you derived your stance from what I said I'd be happy to take a listen.

I could not agree less

That was my initial read, but you may want to read their comment again. They expressed a way they prefer to listen in a conversation that’s closer to the article’s Wait culture than what you or I might object to in the article’s Interrupt culture.

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