Comment by awillen
3 years ago
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.
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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."
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