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.
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.
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
And I'm fairly confident these semantics exist in many cars games. Unstable Unicorns had 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.)
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.
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.
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.
Because I respect this person, I still take the time and listen to what he is saying because I know he's just not in a great mood or might be feeling down about himself and so on, and wants more to be listened to than to really communicate something specific. What I was describing is quite literal: it is difficult to continue paying attention to information that you are already fully aware of, or which can't be made sense of without some pre-req info.
I am confident that I am not a poor listener, but I am also intimately familiar with the inefficiencies of interrupt-averseness.
> ... I still take the time and listen to what he is saying ...
I don't mean to offend you if you are interrupt averse, it's just the case that AFAICT cooperative interrupting is an important efficiency gain. I believe that because of the argument I made above, but you're leaning more into ad hominem rather than addressing it.
" 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. "
This leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, of arrogance.
To me this sounds like a bad listener: short attention span, short memory: ergo, judging the other speaker as using an "inferior" mode of communication. There's a judgement built from a prejudice which is incurred by personal shortcomings. Fix the shortcomings (by practice) and the judgement goes away (potentially, because I'm not a mind reader).
Your other comments have made it very clear that your assertion of a superior mode of communication relies on context, but that assessment doesn't jive with this paragraph. Hence, it is indeed a "doozy".
You're the one coming off as arrogant and judgemental here, by my reading.
Plus, I would argue that being resilient to people with shorter attention spans or worse memory (due to how their brain works, mood, or emotional state) is an important factor in discussing what communication style is most generally effective!
This is number 1 and I completely agree with the grandparent comment. If someone gets irritated about me interrupting just to ask for clarification then I'll have to ask them to explain the term then repeat themselves or just pretend that I understood what they said.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
But thank you more generally and I’m sure we’d have a good conversation!
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.
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.
Obviously this doesn’t work on all circumstances, but it works well on work zoom meetings.
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.
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 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.
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.
In attempt to say it with absolute clarity: interruptions that shift topic are rude and I would not advocate for them
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.
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.