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Viliam_Bur comments on Open Thread, August 16-31, 2012 - Less Wrong
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Also, choose topics where inferential distance for a random person is small. This is what allows talking instead of explaining, and easy jumping between the topics. Avoid controversial topics, such as money, politics, religion.
A good topic is easy to understand, and does not divide people into opposing groups.
What topics aren't controversial and within a short inferential distance from most people? My intuition is that this is close to the definition of "boring".
Listen to actual conversation sometime, most of it is excruciatingly boring if you think about it in terms of information. But as other posters have pointed out, most conversation is about social bonding, not exchanging information.