The value of not getting to the point (2015)

I think a more helpful frame is seeing this less as a practice of rhetoric and to instead see it as a practice of emotional maturity.

When you speak with someone, you likely are not aware of everything that is going on with their current emotional state. If they're having a good day or bad, if they even have had the time to build insight on it, what's nagging at them, etc. You may also not know where their ideologies, ethics, morality, etc are since these are only really shared with the ones close to them. And even then these shift and ebb especially if someone is at a formative time of their life (eg a college student).

So every initial conversation is a little back-and-forth of mapping this out, warming up, and saving the deeper stuff for later. It's a trust-building exercise where you suss out if someone will be receptive, if they'll validate your experience of the world or if they're more likely to be closed off and dismissive. Because the latter hurts and that hurt can last longer than you expect.

I personally don't find small talk rejuvenating and used to get bored of it quickly. I think the thing that irked me was that I always saw myself as open-minded and receptive and it felt like a waste of time, just get to the point, etc. But these days I'm keenly aware that we're not all at the same place internally and someone may have had some less-than-ideal experiences they're still holding onto. I can be sympathetic to that even if it means I'm bored for a few minutes of my day - it's really the least that I can do.

(Getting to the point:) I once heard a perfect explanation of the small talk phenomenon. It's like two modems establishing a link: they send to each other signals that are intended to asses how the line behaves, how well the other side hears you, and what it supports. Thus small talk may never be a pithy conversation: its purpose is to be a formal, predictable, zero-surprise exchange. Skipping it and going straight to the point may result in a badly botched communication attempt.

I don't think it's that people online need to have more unstructured discussion, or "not get to the point" -- it's that there's no real sense of community in a lot of online spaces. Why would I spend a bunch of time idly having Seinfeldian conversations with strangers with whom I have no rapport or continuity? The vast majority of people who will read my social media comments will be completely invisible to me. All the years of commenting and interacting online have predictably resulted in precisely zero lasting relationships.

If the point of not getting to the point is to build trust, then there has to be a relationship in which that trust is invested. Otherwise, not getting to the point is just more invitation for someone to take issue or dismiss what you're saying, to divert the discussion, or to completely miss the actual points you want to discuss.

Read it while you can, third-level .name TLDs are being discontinued next year by Verisign. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.name#Discontinuation_of_third...

Thanks to whoever posted this 11yo gem. I've never read it. Its humbling and encouraging to see someone willing to post his fumblings even in his 50's. I feel like he'd been lambasted or mocked had he posted this today on substack or twitter.

As a younger man I was more of the "Just say what you mean, get straight to the point" kind of guy. I think what changed for me is that I learned that people are often much more interesting than their opinions. Going to someone wanting one-word answers to everything (outside of a work context) can become very impersonal and extractive. Its reductionist. It's assuming you're the only one with deep thoughts, conflicted feelings on certain topics, and interesting opinions.

> And this, too, was a bit of a revelation to me, that someone would not want to get straight to the point, that someone would need a nice long conversational warmup before they’d feel comfortable enough to be ready to talk about something more uncomfortable. I’m very much a get-to-the-point kind of person. I tend to say what I mean, or nothing at all.

I've worked for a boss like this once - he was the worst boss I ever worked for. There was absolutely no room for nuance in the conversations, no attempt to build rapport or a sense of shared understanding. It was his way or the highway.

Human beings are emotional, not rational actors. The "idle chit-chat" gets the foundations of emotional solidarity in place that make anything else possible. When you try to avoid it, you get an organization slinging daggers at each other because someone had the nerve - the audacity - to tell people what to do over an email without any room for them to respond and feel heard, never mind that, rationally, that's exactly what they were hired to do.

There is, of course, value in getting to the point - but only after you consistently build and assure and rebuild and reassure confidence that everyone is in the same boat together.

I can understand, but I was taught, from an early age, about the importance of "small talk," and ritual, in communication, and interpersonal relationships.

I grew up in a number of cultures, where "breaking bread," was a common place for all kinds of negotiations, personal relationships, and diplomacy.

It's more than just "not having to talk about stuff." There's a shared ritual that's expressed by sitting down at a meal.

I still do that, to this day.

I worked for a Japanese company, and all sorts of stuff that goes on in meals (usually after work, and alcohol-soaked). Some cultures have fairly elaborate rituals around meals. They can become a required part of negotiations and diplomacy.

I'm not a very talkative person. I have a relative where conversations can go like this.

Me: "so are we getting lunch today?" Them: "well, I called your aunt and she didn't pick up. Then she called me back. Then she said X. Then I said Y. Then we did Z. {15 minutes of conversation later}. We agreed to meet at X for lunch."

I find if fascinating and quite frustrating but if I ask them to get to the point, they get frustrated and say "this is how I speak, just be patient".

The problem is exacerbated by the rhetorical approach of saying "i don't understand" when people really mean " i disagree" , or "i prefer".

Contemporary rhetoric nearly always prefers passive-aggressive positions. People don't want to be pinned down to a position. They refuse to disagree, even over uncontroversial positions.

"I don't understand why you want to paint the shed blue" . Look, I explained it with 3 paragraphs. It's totally acceptable for you to want red, but it's frustrating to hear you say you don't understand why I'm proposing blue.

Looks like someone just learned of "ice breaking" for the first time.

All those "ice breaking" exercises you do at work? It's started by like people like the author. They don't have a clue exactly how it should come about. (at least the author understands the concept but still dangerous to implement it at offices as they don't really dig it yet. but it's been 11 years for him so should be better by now)

The author comes as one of those awkward people who gets to the points without any "softening". You seens those people. The author is exactly that kinda person. Annoying but at least don't waste your time. But not great as a close friend but OK as an acquitence.

> There are many, many more people who are clueless about how to behave in online conversations than there are people who are clueless about how to behave in offline ones. How I came to be the flipside of that, I don’t know.

I tried to use "logical" sense here for comments as but acts like the author because I am semi-anonymous here. IRL, I am as cordial and courteous as possible. and try not to shove "logic" into someon's face.

Anyways, glad to see someone understanding the point of ice-breaking late in life (better late than never, thus kudos).

Its how journalism is supposed to be written where each following paragraph is less important than the one preceding it.

In the military we call this Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). You start with the goal and step back into the details only as requested or if in conflict with the goal of the response.

As the author of this article, which I had almost completely forgotten about, I find it quite amusing and apropos that 11 years later, we're finally getting around to talking about the point of this article.

> Someone would need a nice long conversational warmup before they’d feel comfortable enough to be ready to talk about something more uncomfortable.

We kinda-in-the-spectrum fathers of young girls are something else. Finding out at your 40s-ish that sometimes people wants to talk to "just talk" is kind of embarrassing.

The problem is the assumption that I'm obliged to endure such long pointless conversation. I'll need a very strong reason (e.g. you're literally my daughter), or I'd just leave.

>She recently texted me and said she wanted to talk

This is an asking to ask situation. You can just talk via text messages.

>Eventually, the conversation turned, and we finally got to talking about the thing she wanted to talk about. But that probably at least half an hour into the conversation.

This sounds like a waste of time. Why waste over half an hour on a conversation that can be finished probably within a single minute.

A very depressing read.

What is wrong with our society that this man remained oblivious—while growing up, forming romantic relationships, starting a family, raising a child to adulthood—of the necessity to cultivate trust and comfort in others before, and throughout, difficult conversations?

People are not vending machines!

This is famously not a thing for Dutch people :-) There are definitely cultural differences.

This scene: John Adams meets the Dutch...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj1cgBI5rdI

Post was good but I was more interested in his blog posts from 2002 since he was posting every month at the time when Billy Beane took the A’s to victory. I’ve read Moneyball so figured there might’ve been more of a reaction.

The article is from 2015 and focuses on how internet discourse on modern platforms is jarring compared to how humans engage in real life.

I wonder how the author would feel about our internet today?

I thought I clicked on “Man discovers his parents’ coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days” but I was pleasantly surprised by the read.

This is my go-to method to deal with my daily anxiety of social rejection (to be specific ADHD induced RSD).

> the purpose of people getting together for a conversation over a beer or coffee or lunch or dinner is that it the food and drink spare us from the burden of needing to have something to say throughout the whole conversation.

This is why I much preferred drinks vs dinner on a first date.

At a dinner it's lose/lose. e.g. if it's going great you have to keep pausing to actually chew and eat your food. If it's going terrible there are lots of awkward moments where you are both chewing silently. I guess if you take turns talking/chewing that works well but seems tough to pull off in practice.

Over drinks there can be more back and forth banter, you can sit next to each other vs across the table so more opportunity for casual physical contact, you can talk to other people, joke around with the bar tender etc.

Plus, a bad drinks can just kind of end after one drink. A bad dinner is harder to get out of.

That being said, I did have one male friend who was dating in his 50s who realized that the woman he was on a date with wanted kids and he already kids. He communicated he didn't want to have more kids. She paused, thought for a moment and then said: "All right. Then we'll just end the dinner here. I've already paid. Good bye." and she got up and left.

What was the serious thing she wanted to talk about?

> food and drink spare us from the burden of needing to have something to say throughout the whole conversation

It's usually the source of new topics when I'm at lunch. People inevitably order something different that looks good, or have a funny story they're reminded of when they see something.

> This was a revelation to me. All this time, I assumed that the primary purpose of lunch was lunch.

and

> being an introvert made conversation awkward and laborious for me.

and

> And this, too, was a bit of a revelation to me, that someone would not want to get straight to the point, that someone would need a nice long conversational warmup before they’d feel comfortable enough to be ready to talk about something more uncomfortable.

and

> I never fully understood this before. I feel like everyone else understands it, though, because they act as if they do. But if they do, it must be an intuitive understanding, a grokking, not an explicit fact that people state out loud.

...are all common experiences of people with forms of Autism.

On the other hand, another value of not getting to the point immediately is in order to build suspense. Like the author, it took me a while to realise how important suspense and build-up is in order to communicate memorably and persuasively.

I spent a large portion of my early twenties learning (through doing) about how important it is to "get to the point" by "keeping it simple", but it took me a great deal longer to understand how much more valuable it is to actually make a point by taking the listener on a bit of a mental journey first.

"[...] She asked if we could just talk about something stupid. So I called her, and we talked about Donald Trump [...]" ;)

There is also sightly different and essential skill that is required for business leaders, politicians, spokes persons etc. You should only say what you to need to say, but never get to the point or answer the specific question asked.