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