I don't know about instant/turn play semantics so can't follow the tradeoffs there.

> 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.

Forming a hierarchy of leadership and follower is also fairly common among children. Probably fairly common among people, period. In that, you quickly start to form boundaries on who can interrupt what and why. And, in all cases, you almost always need someone that cannot be interrupted.

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.

This is an interesting additional aspect to the situation. I wouldn't deny at all that what you're describing happens, but whether it's a problem or a solution is debatable imo ;) Is it always better to have an enforced equality of priority among speakers, or do these emergent hierarchies serve as effective regulators of group communication?

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.)

> I don't know about instant/turn play semantics so can't follow the tradeoffs there.

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.

We're getting a little off-topic here, but this is actually the first I'm learning that MtG can't explicitly mention the stack (I follow set releases and read cards casually sometimes, cube once in a blue moon, played standard one summer ever). That's a bit of a shame - one of the other card games I've played (Yu-Gi-Oh) works its equivalent (a "Chain") into card effects and it doesn't have to be complicated. One very good card ("Chain Strike") does damage multiplied by its stack position (chain link) so the later in the stack (chain) it appears, the more damage it does. That's not too crazy. Would've loved that either to attempt the inevitable degenerate combos or just splash it into RDW. There is also a balancing mechanism where certain effects can only be activated once per stack (chain) which is not as draconian as "per turn" but could otherwise when omitted potentially make cards ingredients in degenerate combos (e.g. "Accumulated Fortune").

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.

> no card of MtG is allowed to mention the stack in their printed text

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...

Is this a recent standards change? I remember some legendary artifact that caused spells on the stack to be copied and explicitly described it that way.

Doing a search, I count 40 results with "stack" in their text; it appears that 18 of them have "split second", a few of them have "stack" in their name, several are from "Un" expansions or this weird "Mystery Booster" thing, several mention the stack in explanatory text about what it means to end the turn or end the combat phase... but there are several cards such as Grip of Chaos ("Whenever a spell or ability is put onto the stack, if it has a single target, reselect its target at random") that are from regular expansions.

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

Welp, that's true, my bad! It seems this rule was relaxed somewhat - mentioning the stack in the rules text is still frowned upon, but there's still some cards that mention it in the rules text (and a lot more that contains the split second reminder)

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

Tangentially, this is why I've often found it a bit easier to teach MTG to friends who also are programmers than in general; being able to tell a fellow programmer "instants are put on a stack when cast, and then are popped off the stack when they resolve" ("instant" is the term that MTG ended up standardizing on now that "interrupts" are no longer a card type) is a quick shortcut that they always end up understanding. When teaching someone who doesn't already have a mental concept of a stack data structure, I can explain how the analogy of a "stack" works, but it often takes a bit of playing and seeing it in action for them to fully internalize how it works.

Funny, as with the cards, this should be a bit easier to literally act out. Intent to play a card is to lay it down. If someone has an instant, they can put theirs on top.

That only works with cards you play from the hand, but effects that you activate on a permanent (e.g. by tapping it) also go on the stack.

Great explanation, thanks. I actually played MtG a bit when I was a kid and have a vague recollection of interrupts but don't think I understood the stack dynamics too clearly. Insightful design decision to disallow stack referencing lol.

You just blew my mind a little bit, realizing MTG gameplay was based on CS concepts, and made me fee old since interrupts is what we called them (way before I knew about processor interrupts).

To be fair, this is more that a formal system described precisely can be mapped to many computer science structures.

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.)

> 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.

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.

The post you're responding to this qualified it with "as long as both participants are willing to yield to interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts when interrupting" - that addresses your point. This doesn't necessarily work well in a context where people are unfamiliar, but with close friends/colleagues/family who are all on board with this conversation paradigm and familiar with each other's interruptive style, it works very well.

That's a good addition: if the participants do not trust one another, the interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts are not going to work.

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.

Role play a policemen and a minority in this form of communication to see an easy way it can fall flat. Disastrously.

It's already been said plenty of times that mutual trust is a requirement, this will be my last reply to your comments if you keep straw-manning.

It isn't a straw man, though. It literally happens all the time. Role play a woman in an office. And, I should have stated flat out I can see this style can exist. My discourse is why not to lead in with it. Pretty much anywhere.

I think I see what you're saying, and it makes sense. But in a scenario with abusive power dynamics injustice is going to play out the same regardless of preferred conversation style, an outlet will trivially be found.

Ok, I grant that going full on abusive is not helpful. Such that I apologize on jumping there immediately. :(

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.)

> Now, how do you know this?

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.

Yeah, to pile on with anecdata here (TFA opens by characterizing their early experience as "Growing up with friends who were disproportionately male and disproportionately nerdy"), my experience is that majority male spaces are interrupt culture, minority male spaces are wait culture, and non-males effectively get "shouted down" in interrupt cultures.

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.

Oral arguments before the Supreme Court are a fairly formalized interrupt culture in which the justices literally interrupt the attorneys to ask questions, and funny enough, the women justices tend to speak more than the men justices. Clarence Thomas famously speaks the least; he actually would prefer to hear out the attorneys making their case to the court.

> Clarence Thomas famously speaks the least; he actually would prefer to hear out the attorneys making their case to the court.

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.

I'm basing this off of what Justice Thomas has said when he has been asked about this in the past. But if you want to form your impressions based on your personal biases and prejudices, there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.

No bias or prejudice here, just reading his opinions. But think about it for just a minute: there's never a mystery about how he's gonna vote--oral arguments never change his mind. Does that sound like a guy who's listening?

It is also definitively a hierarchical culture where the justices are the absolute top of the chain.

That's definitely a big part of it.

It really doesn't, though. For one, it is recursive. Can I interrupt a counter? What if it is already in a counter? Does it depend on why I'm interrupting?

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.

The rules (although I'll argue none are needed, see below) really are quite simple: yes, what I described above works recursively: there is no difference between a counter-interrupt and a counter-counter-interrupt.

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.

My assertion is that it is very very easy to miss "easy rules that were emergent and are working well" with "I didn't realize there is a social hierarchy here that I'm massively benefiting from." Or, worse, "there could be consequences for my interrupting this person, I should keep quiet and let it go."

But again, this isn't going to be the case among people who know each other well. My family and I are interrupters, and we've been at it for decades now - none of the issues you're raising would apply.

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).

For certain. I'm less arguing that it isn't a conversation style, than I am that it is a dangerous one. Even in families, it is easy to see this form lead to resentment between folks. Or a contest to be last person talking. In a large sense, mansplaining is similar. Echoing back and explaining things even to people that know them isn't, itself, bad. But it is very easy to portray in a negative light and should not be the assumed default.

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.

> My assertion is that it is very very easy to miss "easy rules that were emergent and are working well"

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.