Chatbots For Social Change/Theory of Conversation/Talking to Strangers

Gladwell, M. (2021). Talking to strangers: What we should know about the people we don’t know (First Back Bay trade paperback edition). Back Bay Books.

Introduction

The idea would be to build to a full and convincing explanation of the extent to which miscommunication negatively impacts our collective lives. In ideal form, it would include:

• Tons of examples, good fodder for motivating the book as a whole.
• A clear description of communication, understanding, mediation, translation.
• The potential power of an intermediary, drawing from original older writings.

This may serve as a good very first chapter to the section Conversation.

Defining "Clear Conversation"

We can break conversation down into a few fundamental pieces. For instance, the signs and symbols exchanged, the manner in which they are expressed, the speaker, and the listener.

We also want to be able to talk about "communication" being successful. Because this word in English has several related definitions we need to be specific about what we mean. I am interested in the context of Chatbots for Social Change in clear communication in particular, admittedly dropping out all the vagaries of much of conversation. This chapter will deal with one person A intentionally and successfully updating person B's knowledge using language. If time were paused after the statement and we could ask A and B a dozen questions about the last statement made, they would be capable of reflecting consistently with each other. Indeed, when a statement B's mind they might be doing this themselves, asking questions to themselves and to A. There are some examples in which we might test the listener's understanding through simply watching their behavior. For instance, if they arrive to an appointment they made on time, you can be pretty sure the statements surrounding it were understood to some extent. Yet one of the best ways to know if the listener understood is to ask questions. People often ask questions in normal conversation when they believe they don't understand what their conversation partner is trying to say. It is through this practice that we become better at communicating to each other, and produce clear commonly held understandings.

For anything to be effectively communicated, the speaker and listener must have some shared language. That is, some overlap between the strategies for (re-)presentation of the speaker, and for interpretation by the listener. We may consider communication successful when the listener grasps the meaning intended by the speaker.

Commonly held? One way to define a group of people holding the same understandings is their ability to pass "understanding tests." This definition may seem strange, but it is directly parallel to how the people themselves define it -- through common answers to certain kinds of questions about what was said, or what they believe.

Of course, sometimes people will forego being understood in communication. When someone asks for my name at Starbucks, I say "Alec," and they respond, "Alex?," I will 99% of the time nod my head yes. I've not had my coffee, I like both names equally. It's not worth the effort for me to clarify because I haven't had my coffee yet, and it would result in a slight inconvenience at no benefit.

Other times people will forego understanding.

But most of the time, people forego communication at all. Communication not always easy, especially with strangers. It takes time and patience to craft sentences of a textbook, and interacting meaningfully with a stranger requires attention, creativity, and interest.

Humans have a fallback in lightweight interaction with some formulaic style, i.e. "small-talk". This makes communication with strangers easier.

Conversations with a limited or pre-described context, or which have already happened many times before, are spaces where our muscle-memory can kick in and enable near-effortless communication.

Successfully communicating is also much easier for people you talk to all the time. At the extreme, the smallest behavior can communicate complex concepts, enabling communication of information without any intent by either party.

Speaking across social distance is always an attempt at translation. The more local the person, and so the more familiar to you, the more shorthand can be employed, and the more can be effectively said in a short time. What makes talking to strangers, as Gladwell beautifully illustrates, so difficult? This will be the topic of the present chapter.