Clarity comments on Open Thread, Jul. 6 - Jul. 12, 2015 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: MrMind 06 July 2015 07:31AM

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Comment author: Clarity 07 July 2015 04:26:22PM 0 points [-]

The other night I went to an event and found the people I was talking to really boring. A friend suggested that when he has felt the same in the past, it was because he was boring himself, ha ha. Am I boring?

Comment author: drethelin 08 July 2015 04:07:02AM 10 points [-]

Conversation is a team sport, with a minimum of two players. A "boring" person can be characterized as someone who does not contribute interesting anecdotes or facts to a conversation, or asks no interesting questions. Like most team sports, a bad player can be "carried" to victory by sufficiently good team. So while it's certainly possible that you were talking to boring people, a more actionable and probably more rewarding point of view to take is that you were being boring, and strive to learn techniques for making a conversation more engaging for you and your team.

Comment author: gjm 09 July 2015 10:38:32PM 1 point [-]

Could you clarify whether you're asking (1) "Is my experience at that event good evidence that I was boring?" or (2) "Am I being boring here on LW?" or (3) something else?

Comment author: Elo 08 July 2015 04:57:38AM 1 point [-]

agree with drethelin. even if this were true temporarily there is a solution. if it were true permanently, the solution is to be less boring.

(either actually do more interesting things that you can talk about, or generate a list of interesting topics to talk about that you know interest you - then when you get in the situation; look up the list and ask about one of them. I.e. what do you think of effective altrusim? how far off is the singularity? etc.)