This is why we have verbal cues for conversation that indicate that the listener-now-speaker has understood what was said and is formulating a reply: "hmmm, I see. But have you considered, perhaps, that..."

Conversation, as opposed to written text, has a lot of "filler" designed to give the conversant time to formulate their words.

Your implication is that people who respond "on time" have thought less about their response than those who do not. More likely, they have just a better intuition for conversation that allows it appear that way.

That's a fair point but it's hard to take seriously the suggestion that someone who puts more thought into a response isn't likely to have a more insightful answer.

I cut out most filler words out of my vocabulary years ago as I find them annoying but occasionally do use the "mhm" hum. That said, I will fully admit I'm a traditional nerd at heart and do lack intuition for nonsensical, "how's the weather" conversation.

But if you want to speak about something meaningful? A conversation that would flip the roles and leave the majority of the public at a loss for words, you would probably prefer to speak with me.

Most of my social interaction is at places where naturally curious people gather (like user groups / meetups).

This is why in most situations I let most people do the talking, and I focus on questioning them. I can judge what level they're on intellectually and as a bonus, people like to talk about themselves.

I think about all my responses before broadcasting, and I end up making excessively long pauses.

I had a colleague who used to have very long pauses, but only after saying a few words very quickly first in a way that ensured he held the conversational baton. So he would say something like "I don't agree because..." followed by a 15 second pause before continuing the sentence.

Pretty sure it was not intentional, it was just what he had converged on as his optimal conversational strategy, but it was incredibly frustrating for others. Partly just the endless pause, but also I think (after reading this article) that everyone is busily optimizing a response in real time while he talks, but when he stops talking mid sentence, suddenly the algorithm has no more input to process yet still knows there will be more coming at some point soon, so cannot complete and also cannot swap out, so instead goes into an uncomfortable spin wait state that gets quite exhausting after a while.

His issue isn't non-blocking IO. Processing is preventing his single threaded event loop from doing anything else.