Catch-up service:
Why I Won’t Reply To Your AI-Generated Email
Why Introverts Make the Best Extroverts
Politics Is Making Academia Stupid
Einstein, Churchill, and AI
The Great and Unfortunate Story of Jason Arday
The Last Lunch
‘Conversation’ covers all kinds of encounters, from the workplace to the bed; here I’m focused on informal occasions with strangers and/or friends, perhaps involving dinner, or canapés - that scourge of modern social life - or just drinks in a pub. I claim no conversational expertise (though I’ve included links to papers by those who study it) or talent. This isn’t intended to be a definitive set of rules. It’s more that after going to a few parties over the summer I need to get a few things off my chest…
Also, further down: a juicy Rattle Bag, including a new theory of cuteness; the story behind that Netflix sound; a great English policy success; the Lonesome Dove phenomenon; thoughts on ‘De Gaulle’; the fruits of pretentiousness; a good guide to classical music listening…and more.
OK, to the rules:
Don’t speak for longer than five (three?) minutes without inviting the other person to contribute. I’m amazed at how many people break this rule. It should not be hard, even when you’re in full flow, to keep a little bit of your brain reserved for monitoring the length of time you’re been talking, and for asking yourself whether it’s time to pause. But it’s broken very frequently. I have so often been in conversations where someone gets on a roll and then just won’t stop. They’re not necessarily ‘bores’. Quite often they are interesting people with interesting things to say - which might be how they’ve acquired the habit of talking at length, having received a lot of positive feedback over the years. But very few people are interesting enough to justify conversational dominance. Are you sure you’re one of them? If not, then learn when to zip it. I like this rule because it is (in theory) easy to adhere to. We can’t all be sparkling, but we can least be unselfish about how much airtime we take up.
But do, you know, speak. Of course, you should not be too humble either. Your job is to propose topics, to opine and stimulate, rather than just to give minimally appropriate responses to someone else’s questions or remarks. It’s not good enough to just turn up. People who only offer short, straight bat answers are essentially inviting the other(s) to do all the work of making conversation. There is a darker side to the problem of short replies, explored in a recent paper. In three different studies, respondents found short replies frustrating, even when the replies were delivered in a warm tone or came from a friend. Why? Because it made them feel devalued - unworthy of a longer or more open response. In fact the researchers say that short answers can be experienced as “subtle yet robustly hurtful form of ostracism” because the person on the other end of the replies feels they’re being pushed away but can’t point to an explicit breach of protocol. See, this is how King Lear felt.
