Comment by westoncb
3 years ago
I have a good friend I speak with many hours a week who makes an especially interesting case for our discussion here. He is the person I know who most strongly alternates between both of these styles: when he's in a good mood, relaxed, and so on we have these great fast-paced conversations with pure information flow, frequent interrupts (and counter-interrupts and interrupt-denies). But, there are other times where we'll hang out and he's in an insistent no-interrupt mode; when this happens I spend significant lengths of time listening to him tell me about things that I know thoroughly, or waiting several minutes for him to finish speaking about something I can't follow because I needed to clarify something that was said earlier.
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 think what the commenter is referring to is this:
" 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".
I don't think it's arrogant to introspect your own thoughts about how a common social situation makes you feel, especially in a conversation about social dynamics.
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!
I would be mortified to be delivering a monologue that my interlocutor is having trouble following or not interested in. And it would be the height of arrogance on my part to think I have a right to continue the monologue or be indignant that they’re prodding towards a more successful exchange.
If someone is explaining a process and uses a term that I'm not sure I understand (eg. 'upsetting' in blacksmithing or 'sparging' in brewing) they are quite literally wasting their breath and our time. That information is not going to get integrated in my mind unless I am able to guess a close approximation.
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.
Even if it were true that instant/counter were the most efficient way to communicate, being unable to listen to the interrupt averse would still make you a poor listener.
> being unable to listen to the interrupt averse would still make you a poor listener.
> ... 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.