Have you found that making extra effort to be interested in the other person's ideas / topics / interests, listening carefully, etc. isn't well received?
Or is "nobody wants to hear what you have to say" not true, because you do care what other people have to say, for example? (Obviously that's great if so)
Or something else?
I ask because I started making that kind of effort a couple years ago, slowly but surely, getting better as I went. I didn't tell anybody, but after about a year one friend was like, "you know, you're interested in what we do and you really care. Nobody else does that." And another friend chimed in and agreed. (And I really do care! Sure it's intentional, but it's like eating healthy food, and then you grow to like it)
They were being serious. So if you believe me when I'm telling you this, it has been true for me and those friends.
I also think it's true that most people are oblivious to the extra mental effort that goes into approaching conversations this way, and just leave thinking "finally, someone who gives my ideas the credit and attention they are due. Now if I could just get everyone else to act that way"
The secret to being a good conversationalist is to have the other person do most of the talking, and everyone's favorite thing to talk about is themselves.
Being, and therefore appearing, genuinely interested in what the other person is saying about themselves creates the best feelings in the world for the other person, and you won't run out of things to talk about.
"You just got a new dog? Cool!"
Then you can ask any follow up question you like.
What kind? What's their name? Where'd you get them from? Do you feed them "people food"?.. etc.
One question at a time of course, and avoid queuing them up in your head. When the other person is talking, try very hard not to think of the next thing you're going to say. If you do that, you'll miss what they're actually saying and eventually say something that makes it clear you weren't listening. Similarly, you'll miss out on each new bit of the conversation, and those new bits are the basis of new, honest, follow up questions.
You don't have to be interested in dogs generally, to be interested in them temporarily. "Being interested, intentionally" is a skill you can improve.
Don't try to direct the flow of the conversation too much either. Go into your next conversation with friends, family, coworkers, or strangers with a truly open mind about what you're going to talk about, with no agenda, and be happy knowing it could change at any time.
Your job is to listen and ask more.
A lot of supposed "conversations" are just two people looking at each other, waiting for their turn to talk. If you're going to do that you might as well each write your sentences down beforehand, exchange them, and then throw them away without reading them.
The truth is, nobody wants to hear what you have to say. They don't want to hear what I have to say. They want to tell you about what's going on in their lives and what's important to them.
I have a beard. A surgical mask fits only lightly over it, floating a half inch away from my face. That's better than nothing I suppose, but it really is only filtering big droplets. All the air is going in and out that half inch.
An N95, with it's rigid faceplate and strong rubber bands pressing it against my face, crushes the beard and makes breathing more difficult so I can tell some air is being filtered. I'm not getting anywhere near the protection the n95 is designed to provide, it's still much better than what the surgical mask does, which is almost nothing. And I don't use the valve kind, so any filtering the n95 is doing, it's doing it in both directions.
The surgical mask with a beard is kind of like walking around with my hand held a half inch away from my face.
You have to think several turns ahead, in a chess sort of way. But your "best" move may be a low probability move, so you have to weigh that. Same for thinking about what your opponent may do in return.
The audacity of the plan itself. The dark patterns. The doubling-down-admit-no-wrong-non-apology defense of it all by the person in charge.
It all feels like quite the specimen - something that should be preserved for study by future generations. For what not to do, but also because sometimes its nice to have a prototypical example of unethical, tone deaf, short sighted trickery and how it can destroy a company. All in one self-contained package.
So maybe that's the gift Triplebyte leaves us with.
Thank you. You're correct, I've wondered why this isn't mentioned more often, and maybe that's why.
However even after realizing that, I personally still consider a design patent about rounded corners to be on the same level of B.S. as a software patent, and still stand by my conclusions. But I'd be interested to know why I shouldn't do that, and if you have more information I'm honestly all ears
If it were any other company I'd get depressed and say it's another victim of the tragedy of software patents. But Apple deserves every post-Creative Labs patent victory ruled against them.
For anyone that doesn't know, in 2006 Apple was caught off guard and sued by Creative Labs over the iPod, resulting in a $100 million settlement. It was total nonsense and Jobs was right to be pissed, but what does he do? Does he get fired up to bring about patent reform? No! He doubles down on software patents himself and goes on to sue Samsung in the same shitty way in 2011.
I mean, it's too late now to turn the ship around on software patents. It's never going to change. But 2006 - 2011 were prime growth years for Apple, where they could have made a great case to the public for how software patents were bad and used in a totally bogus way against a well liked American company.
And if he didn't want to do that, he could have built up a library of patents to squirrel away for defensive purposes on a rainy day.
But no. He got burned by Creative Labs, hated the experience, and turned around and did the same exact thing to a totally unrelated company.
When it comes to software patents, fuck Steve Jobs and Apple.
Just like how a lion or a chimpanzee wouldn't make a convincing zoo for another lion or chimp, a human could figure out they're in a zoo made by another human.
But when you make a zoo for an animal that isn't on your level, you can figure out what's needed to satisfy it (even if it's really crappy compared to their normal environment).
So if something smarter than us by an order of magnitude or more made a zoo for us, it would be a much more elaborate and convincing zoo, and I'm not sure we'd figure it out.
I'm not sure where the corresponding boundary would be exactly, since we do seem to be on the verge of exploring other planets, but you could say that we also understand where it is we're allowed to roam - the surface of Earth. And we aren't free of psychological problems.
Does a lion born in a zoo understand it's being held captive by (in comparison) super intelligent humans? When it's tranquilized, does it know this isn't a normal thing for a lion? When the caretaker throws food out or pets it, does the lion have the capacity to think about it in any other way than what it means right now for the lion - food, feels nice, etc?
If there's a correspondingly more intelligent alien species hanging out on our planet with us, would / could we even hope to know?
Between the Nest cam recording light becoming "always on" and this, it's like they've been brainstorming ways to be "pro-privacy" with the caveat that it can't affect the data they collect.
I don't know if the strength of an LED is enough to move the craft significantly, but if it is you'd need to point it at anything _but_ the ship itself, otherwise the two forces would cancel out. Just shine it in the opposite direction of where you want to go.
Sure it'll be nice to make easy money off the interest on deposits. And it'll be nice to make money on the analytics that can be run on all the worlds' transactions. Great.
But the biggest pay off is that once consumers buy into Libra as a thing on its own, the policy can be changed to no longer link it to any basket of currencies, and it can then be issued without that annoying and expensive currency-buying-thing. Just pure profit.
Thanks, that's a perspective I never got. Shows how lucky I've been at the places I've worked. (Or perhaps, how underpaid I was at the time!)
I should also mention that before these conversations, I had also been interviewing with a few different companies and gotten offers, so I knew those numbers were real and I really, truly, was ready to leave if they said no. But I genuinely wanted to keep working there and be making the salary I knew I could get elsewhere, and it worked out.
Except it wouldn't evenly distribute the value and most of it would go to rich people.