I'm not a great texter but this resonated with me and I'd never really thought about it. It's annoying when I don't feel like texting and I just get bombarded with questions demanding a response. On the other hand I can sympathize if they want to chat and I just don't.

I feel like I've been on both sides of all the examples in this piece depending on what kind of mood I'm in

I seek and value friends that DO ask about me, and then try to remind myself to not take it for granted, and return the favor to them!

This gives some additional lens, though, to be flexible with "takers" and give them credit for putting themselves out there.

I used to teach a course on Gibson... so I'd like to clarify what he meant by affordances, which is a bit more powerful of an idea than presented in the article

His insight was that how you perceive something is not objective, but subjective. Or as he would say, the subjective turns out to be objective reality. So affordances reflects the fact that how you relate to something is in terms of what it affords you. A good example: An excellent downhill skier sees a near vertical drop as easy-peasy and not dangerous. The same skier learning to snowboard pulls up at this veritable cliff and says, holy shit, that's steep! Same physical world changes depending on how you relate to it on the present circumstances

JJ Gibson used such ideas to overthrow the object reality idea of perception, suggesting that perception is inherently a being-in-the-world phenomenon, not an objective knowing of the world (that exists, but is secondary and stripped of subjective experience).

I don't really understand the thesis outlined in the article. "Givers" and "takers" are defined like this, but it actually sounds like the two types of conversationalists are "actives" and "passives", where actives seek to move the conversation forward and passives let others move it forward. A giver-and-taker conversation where both participants are alternatingly active can work. The giver asks a question and the taker answers it but then adds something of their own that doesn't let the conversation grind to a halt.

Example:

A: Hey, have you heard about X? (giver, active)

B: Oh, I hate X. I think Y. (taker, active)

A: Woah, hang on. I'm not so sure about Y. (taker, active)

B: Oh, yeah? Do you think Z? (giver, active)

In my experience, the absolute worst conversations I've had were those where I felt I was the only one putting in any effort, trying to come up with topic after topic only to have them peter out in under a minute, followed by silence.

I also don't know that people are necessarily fixed in their roles, be as giver, taker, passive, or active. In fact, if I'd have to guess, an engaging conversation has the participants constantly switch roles with the flow, depending on how much they have to say on a given topic.

So I think a corollary from all this is that a conversation breaks down when an active participant switches to passive expecting the other to become active, when in fact the other person just wants to be passive, or when two passive people try to have a conversation, in which case nothing happens at all.

Good conversations have lots of doorknobs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35874183 - May 2023 (20 comments)

Good conversations have lots of doorknobs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542260 - Aug 2022 (149 comments)

The flip side: slides designed by committee oftem tend to remove all the doorknobs. Every bold claim seems to gets softened, every interesting aside gets cut for time, etc., until you're left with something that nobody can disagree with but nobody finds very interesting either.

I very often interrupt people when eagerly fitting into a conversation. That happens almost automatically and sometimes I apologize and say, sorry i was interrupting what you are saying... Often they don't continue where they got interrupted but don't seem annoyed.

Maybe it has to do with those emerging doorknobs i noticed and couldn't resist in grabbing.