Good conversations have lots of doorknobs | Hacker News Reader

Good conversations have lots of doorknobs

experimental-history.com

100 pointsyarapavan20 comments

Best article I've read on here in a while. From now on, whenever there's dead air in a conversation, I'm just gonna drop "I get weirded out when couples treat their dogs like babies."

Also, this is great for relationship advice too. Personally, I always struggle with asking too many yes/no or how many questions rather than asking why/how questions. Givers vs Takers aside, if I had to guess, I'd say that "doorknobs" can be created by saying or asking something the gets you to explore each others' opinions and experiences.

I also thought the part about how sharing boring mutual memories is more fun than exciting individual memories is interesting, but maybe not a hard rule to follow. I've been more interested in scuba diving recently because of some of the awesome stories my friends have told me.

> I've been more interested in scuba diving recently because of some of the awesome stories my friends have told me.

By the Thursday of our honeymoon cruise, I was ready to go scuba diving (we were in Grand Cayman) and my wife was ready for a spa day. We each enjoyed our days and telling each other about them, but she's still envious and wishes she'd come along to see the large groupers hanging out with their jaws open getting their teeth cleaned by shrimp (like the cartoon shrimp in 'Finding Nemo.')

Note: the primary purpose of this post is to get you to spend a lot of money on scuba certification and gear, prompted by the belief that it's worth it!

Let me tell you about my first flying lesson...

;-)

A friend of mine was afraid of the sea. Swimming in any water deeper than 1m, basicaly. Probably some thing from childhood... No amount ot prodding or laughing would make him do it. But anyway. One day he was told that scuba diving may help overcome the fear. And he got interested. And he tried in some club.

And it worked.

Now the gear collects dust, but we go swimming together..

"This one time in band camp ..."

If I had a dollar for every scientific insight that was preceded by some pop culture meme, I feel like I would have at least a few dozen more dollars.

Two other concepts that fit with this:

To listen well, get curious: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/hFom77cBBnnbNLzzm/p/4K5pJnKBGkqq... Summary: take care with pop-psy advice to repeat what people say - without deep engagement it is just yuk.

The church of interruption: https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html Summary: some people are polite listeners and some people are polite interrupters - each of those two social ecologies works great but they mix poorly.

The article also implies caring, non-judgmental conversation. Many conversations are competitive status signalling which shuts down friendly communication. When meeting new people the default first few sentences are usually about status: it is insidious and often unavoidable.

> some people are polite listeners and some people are polite interrupters

I see it as, polite listeners expect you to make sure they understand, while polite interrupters take responsibility for understanding themselves.

I much prefer polite interrupters. They act as any sane communication protocol would, with error correction and retransmission in mind. At the end, you're confident that they understand.

With polite listeners, the conversation always goes much slower, and with much less confidence, due to lack of feedback. I have to limit the length of any dialog, constantly ping them for understanding/questions. Otherwise, I get to the end of the conversation, and they tell me they stopped understanding after the first sentence, which was the foundation of the rest. At the end, you're not confident that they understand. It's an uncomfortable chore.

Anyone have tips on talking with polite listeners?

This makes me feel better about my own conversational habit. I do interrupt, but do so to make sure that I'm understanding what the person is telling me. So it's generally with a question, or to mention a different application of what they're talking about, etc.

I've always felt a little bad about this habit, but I've found that if I just shut up and nod along, I stop really listening to what they're saying and my retention/understanding plummets.

But apparently, my habit isn't a bad one!

I found the piece a bit lacking:

>"Givers think that conversations unfold as a series of invitations; takers think conversations unfold as a series of declarations."

The author refers to take-and-take, and then uses "giver" and "taker" pretty euphemistically. I think that quote is the closest thing to a definition of either type that we get. I'm relatively sure they mean giving and taking opportunities to contribute to conversation, but they don't seem to explain it well and that leaves one projecting ones own notions onto the piece.

Meh.

I mean, I know something about improv, so I kinda knew from the headline what they meant about doorknobs; it didn't feel like there was much other substance.

Maybe I skimmed too fast.

It's mid. Some advice is not really meant to be taken, just given publicly to express sympathies, profess gentleness, and get an oof reaction (see the byline).

Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542260

There's a weird bug on the page. Clicking a word in the second half of a paragraph causes that entire paragraph to repeat and get appended at the ended of said paragraph.

> my supposed giving is really just selfishness with a question mark at the end (“Enough of me talking about stuff I like. Time for you to talk about stuff I like!”).

So you can either ask a lot of questions or make a lot of observations/assertions, just be insightful rather than boring. Got it.

> You might think that the best conversationalists wait patiently for their partners to finish talking before they start concocting a response in their head. It turns out that we like people the best when they respond to us the fastest––so fast (mere milliseconds!) that they must be formulating their reply long before we finish our turn. Abundant affordances allow for this rapid-fire rapport, each utterance offering an obvious opportunity to respond.

I agree with the general thrust of the essay. But, I'm not sure how this part — especially the last sentence — works in practice: yes, abundant affordances provide many opportunities to respond, but if you stop listening before the other person finishes, in order to formulate your response, you miss most of what they said. That seems like a transactional way of communicating. You'll have something to say on your 'turn', but you won't actually be discussing much. Careful listening and actual curiosity about the other person are the keys to conversation, in my experience.

I think listening and waiting is best for establishing understanding, but the line here says it's about 'liking' people the best, which is pretty different in practice.

My experience is that people like people who make them feel understood.

Yeah, I'd be curious to dig into the specifics of that research a little more. My gut is telling me that there may be other factors at play that could explain this sort of thing. People who respond quickly are likely also showing signs of eagerness -- nodding your head, smiling, saying "yeah" or "oh wow!", in ways that may communicate enthusiasm for the subject (even if it's really just eagerness to jump in and say what they want to say).

Sitting back and listening carefully may also be accompanied by body language suggesting being withdrawn or uninterested in engaging further -- even if they are, indeed, quite interested.

I'm just speculating at this point, and certainly I'm only talking about broad, generalized patterns. But I would expect body language is an important factor to account for in this sort of research.

something kind of adjacent to this is the japanese practice of _aizuchi_, or the sounds they make while listening to someone talking. it's pretty engrained in the culture there and it can be taken as rude or a sign that you’re not listening if you don't use it.

I think most people are capable of listening and formulating a reply simultaneously, particularly if the reply is along the lines of "oh really" or "me too" which I suspect is the sort of rapid response that research indicates people prefer to pauses.

I'm not convinced a swiftly delivered "but enough of that, let me tell you a very interesting fact about..." has quite the same positive effect :)

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