I just find as a woman with a fairly low voice (not one of those raucous ear-splitting types) the best way to succeed at these sorts of conversations is not to get involved in them in the first place.
I appreciate your preference and wish I knew more people like you. On the other hand, I wish I could appreciate conversations the same way I appreciate playing sports, as an enjoyable activity that allows me to exercise some of my natural human capabilities.
Unfortunately, I can't do it. I get bored if important things aren't discussed, and if important things are discussed, I get stressed out about the quality of the discussion. For some reason I feel like raucus, uninhibited arguments are incompatible with intelligence and a critical approach to life, even though I know that's wrong; I know that plenty of intelligent writers and thinkers have been known for their wit and their ability to hold their own in rowdy discussions. I think I've been programmed to believe in a false dichotomy between intelligent discussion and noisy manipulation.
Really? The sort of parties I go to generally involve fairly sedate conversation and I have no trouble getting heard ;-)
I'm more visualising a scene such as the start of The Apprentice where you have eight wannabes all shouting over each other because Their Idea Is The Best.
Sometimes the conversation is loud because the music is. This is a cultural thing and in California I find music much more quiet than in Europe. Depending where you are you won't be able to avoid a loud conversation.
I'm sorry but I don't understand the rationale behind that statement and I wouldn't voice my oppinion if it wasn't you've been upmodded so much. So I'm curious, if you do not partake how can you possibly succeed?
While I do understand why you'd be reluctant to partake in them, it's not like they hold no value whatsoever or there being an inherent loss in partaking.
You're implying that a noisy conversation is the only option and that I might be missing out? That there is no loss to sitting in a room full of people shouting at cross purposes and not being able to make myself heard without major effort? Of course there's an inherent loss: frustration, vocal strain, not having the situation go the way I want, you name it.
But what I more meant was that I construct situations where these cross-purposes conversations aren't present. If I've got six people to discuss a project with, I don't sit in a room and get them all to shout over me. There are other ways to have that discussion.
I probably should have mentioned in my original reply that I'm from the UK, which helps.
I wasn't at all implying it's the only option but rather that it's an option. I don't think you can entirely avoid discussions in that format especially if you are discussing non-professional topics like politics, how you should raise children or other highly opinionated things.
You always get to choose the people you are having a discussion with and some people have a hard time taking someone disagreeing with them. Even if the discussion might feel unpleasant in the heat of the moment I find that days or weeks after the fact, I can still have the conversation in my head and feel I've gained some insight into other peoples minds and maybe even agree with them.
So all I was implying was that they aren't entirely pointless, however frustrating they may be. I can see your point of wanting to avoid the frustration, even if I personally have quite a thick skin and don't mind it all that much.
I could mention that I'm from Sweden, but I doubt that helps at all. :) I do like to stress that I don't try start those types of discussions and I do think people who start shouting are silly, but I do argue against someone however loud their voices are. :)
EDIT: I could probably also say that I tend to stay in heated group arguments mainly because of the audience rather than whoever might be disagreeing with me. As people who tend too shout don't tend to change their mind but letting them have the only word might make the audience think that they are right.
if you're not good at these conversations, they can just be really fucking exhausting. so staying out of them, and therefore not being exhausted by them, is a success.
Not that I'm saying it's bad or anything. Just a textbook case of like encouraging like.
And goes to show that on a rapid-fire site like this, speed of moderation is vital - a mere 6 hours between the first article's submission and then the submission of this one, explicitly because the poster was encouraged by the cultural green light of seeing that the first one had survived. That's astoundingly fast, when you think about it.
I like this topic because it's a stretch for geeks. Most of the challenges a computer geek thinks about every day can be solved by application of existing, understood principles. Mistakes are almost always logical errors in application.
Socializing is where geeks get into the other kinds of hard thought. Having to work hard to get data. Having a bunch of apparently valid ideas that yield contradictory results. Arriving at valid, logically sufficient ideas, but discovering that they aren't suitable for application in practice. Living, over extended time intervals, with observations and techniques that you empirically know to be valid, but which you can't find satisfying explanations for.
Plus it's universal. We could have similar discussions about painting, music, or gardening, but only a small minority of HN readers could contribute to each of those topics.
(P.S. Difficult engineering problems are discussed here often, but I think people mostly tackle them vicariously. In the real world, solving a hard engineering problem is rarely the most efficient way to deal with it. It's kind of a last resort.)
An alternative form for the last section ("The other side: Scoring points by controlling the madness") is "Derek, what were you going to say?" This would be appropriate when Derek indicated a desire to speak but was interrupted by someone with a bigger ego.
When I find myself in this kind of conversation, though, I'll almost always go for "Start a side conversation if you can". See if the person next to you seems sympathetic to the idea and then start the conversation wherever you want.
Divide and conquer is a very powerful group dynamic technique. For example, group of 5. Get one person talking to you (that's 2). Draw another one in (that's 3 - you control the group).
Divide and conquer can be used in darker ways. The Delphi Technique. I have recollections of this being used without my knowledge at the time. It is amazingly effective.
"Using the "divide and conquer" technique, he/she manipulates one group opinion against the other."
I was going to create a poll on Myers-Briggs personality types but found that there already is a poll started by epi0Bauqu. Please consider voting to increase the HN sample size (if you didn't already).
If you don't like these kinds of conversation, know that it is within your power to subvert the tone of the conversation, and to bring it to a place where you are comfortable. If you can quickly interject with an objection as to the terms of the debate, you'll be surprised how quickly people will adjust their attitudes and become more 'civil'. Requesting that people focus on a particular point of interest (for the group, not merely yourself) is one way of directing people's attention and serialising the flow of conversation.
You need to be strong about it, though. If you have trouble asserting yourself then you need to work on that part first.
Sing the first few words of your opening sentence. It really grabs attention, and usually shuts everyone up in confusion. While it is not overtly offensive, you will piss-off the usual alphas by grabbing focus from them, so expect some backlash.
The trick to success in those conversations is to realize that, as long as you're not offensive, no one gives a fuck about the verbal content, most of which is excruciatingly boring. Intellectually, it's like a 6-year-old's soccer game where no one will remember the score tomorrow. Those are the conversations in which 90%+ of how you're perceived is based on body language, tone of voice, etc. If you think for too long about what you're going to say, or get really into what you're talking about and ignore others' lack of interest, or get into debate mode, you'll lose.
As in a six-year-old's soccer game, there is some structure to the conversation. There are two sides, and both teams try to kick the ball as hard as they can in the right general direction. Trying to introduce a third opinion to the fray is like a confused child dribbling the ball out of bounds; the ball will be taken away from him and put back into play. The only way for a third possibility to achieve consideration is for the original game to end in defeat for one side, at which point a third opinion may be able to call "next" before the crowd's attention wanders.
If you... get into debate mode, you'll lose
Not to sound like a dick, because I'm not any good at this myself, but a skillful debater always takes the audience into account, whether the audience is the Supreme Court or a crowd of rowdy partygoers.
I respectfully disagree with your comments re: third opinions.
Often the best way to 'win' an argument in a group context is to derail the current thread of conversation (in which both sides have their arguments clearly in mind) and change the term of the debate in a way that suit you. This will have the effect of throwing off would-be adversaries (by the time they have their shit together to counter your new argument, the conversation is long gone) and gaining followers of your new idea.
