I think it’s worth making a distinction between “noise” and “low bandwidth channel”. Your first examples of “a literal noisy room” or “people getting distracted by shiny objects passing by” fit the idea of “noise” well. Your last two examples of “inferential distance” and “land mines” don’t, IMO.
“Noise” is when the useful information is getting crowded out by random information in the channel, but land mines aren’t random. If you tell someone their idea is stupid and then you can’t continue telling them why because they’re flipping out at you, that’s not a random occurrence. Even if such things aren’t trivially predictable in more subtle cases, it’s still a predictable possibility and you can generally feel out when such things are safe to say or when you must tread a bit more carefully.
The “trying to squeeze my ideas through a straw” metaphor seems much more fitting than “struggling to pick the signal out of the noise floor” metaphor, and I would focus instead on deliberately broadening the straw until you can just chuck whatever’s on your mind down that hallway without having to focus any of your attention on the limitations of the channel.
There’s a lot to say on this topic, but I think one of the more important bits is that you can often get the same sense of “low noise conversation” if you pivot from focusing on ideas which are too big for the straw to focusing on the straw itself, and how its limitations might be relaxed. This means giving up on trying to communicate the object level thing for a moment, but it wasn’t going to fit anyway so you just focus on what is impeding communication and work to efficiently communicate about *that*. This is essentially “forging relationships” so that you have the ability to communicate usefully in the future. Sometimes this can be time consuming, but sometimes knowing how to carry oneself with the right aura of respectability and emotional safety does wonders for the “inferential distance” and “conversational landmines” issues right off the bat.
When the problem is inferential distance, the question comes down to what extent it makes sense to trust someone to have something worth listening to over several inferences. If our reasonings differ several layers deep then offering superficial arguments and counterarguments is a waste of time because we both know that we can both do that without even being right. When we can recognize that our conversation partner might actually be right about even some background assumptions that we disagree on, then all of a sudden the idea of listening to them describe their world view and looking for ways that it could be true becomes a lot more compelling. Similarly, when you can credibly convey that you’ve thought things through and are likely to have something worth listening to, they will find themselves much more interested in listening to you intently with an expectation of learning something.
When the problem is “land mines”, the question becomes whether the topic is one where there’s too much sensitivity to allow for nonviolent communication and whether supercritical escalation to “violent” threats (in the NonViolent Communication sense) will necessarily displace invitations to cooperate. Some of the important questions here are “Am I okay enough to stay open and not lash out when they are violent at me?” and the same thing reflected towards the person you’re talking to. When you can realize “No, if they snap at me I’m not going to have an easy time absorbing that” you can know to pivot to something else (perhaps building the strength necessary for dealing with such things), but when you can notice that you can brush it off and respond only to the “invitation to cooperate” bit, then you have a great way of demonstrating for them that these things are actually safe to talk about because you’re not trying to hurt them, and it’s even safe to lash out unnecessarily before they recognize that it’s safe. Similarly, if you can sincerely and without hint of condescension ask the person whether they’re okay or whether they’d like you to back off a bit, often that space can be enough for them to decide “Actually, yeah. I can play this way. Now that I think about it, its clear that you’re not out to get me”.
There’s a lot more to be said about how to do these things exactly and how to balance between pushing on the straw to grow and relaxing so that it can rebuild, but the first point is that it can be done intentionally and systematically, and that doing so can save you from the frustration of inefficient communication and replace it with efficient communication on the topic of how to communicate efficiently over a wider channel that is more useful for everything you might want to communicate.
I think it’s worth making a distinction between “noise” and “low bandwidth channel”. Your first examples of “a literal noisy room” or “people getting distracted by shiny objects passing by” fit the idea of “noise” well. Your last two examples of “inferential distance” and “land mines” don’t, IMO.
“Noise” is when the useful information is getting crowded out by random information in the channel, but land mines aren’t random. If you tell someone their idea is stupid and then you can’t continue telling them why because they’re flipping out at you, that’s not a random occurrence. Even if such things aren’t trivially predictable in more subtle cases, it’s still a predictable possibility and you can generally feel out when such things are safe to say or when you must tread a bit more carefully.
I edited my post to insert this distinction. You’re totally right that I’m really focusing on bandwidth and calling it low-noise. But I disagree about the degree of the distinction you’re making. In the case of the already-standard usage of “signal/noise ratio”, there’s no worry over whether the “noise” is really random. Twitter injects advertisements regularly, not randomly, but they still dilute the quality of the feed in the same way. Similarly, conversational land mines are functionally similar to distractions. First, because they tend to derail lines of thought. But second, and more frequently, in the way they influence conversation when they’re merely a threat looming on the border of the conversation rather than a certainty. We avoid deep topics both because they’re more likely to trigger defensiveness and because they aren’t so valuable (and indeed may even be harmful) if they’re interrupted. Indeed, I’m clustering them together because the two are somewhat exchangeable: a touchy subject can become quite approachable if you have a lot of quality time to feel it out and deal with misunderstandings/defensiveness (or any of the other helpful variables I mentioned).
To the extent that the underlying structure doesn’t matter and can’t be used, I agree that technically non-random “noise” behaves similarly and that this can be a reasonable use of the term. My objection to the term “noise” as a description of conversational landmines isn’t just that they’re “technically not completely random”, but that the information content is actually important and relevant. In other words, it’s not noise, it’s signal.
The “landmines” are part of how their values are actually encoded. It’s part of the belief structure you’re looking to interact with in the first place. They’re just little pockets of care which haven’t yet been integrated in a smooth and stable way with everything else. Or to continue the metaphor, it’s not “scary dangerous explosives to try to avoid”, it’s “inherently interesting stores of unstable potential energy which can be mined for energetic fuel”. If someone is touchy around the subject you want to talk about, that is the interesting thing itself. What is in here that they haven’t even finished explaining to themselves, and why is it so important to them that they can’t even contain themselves if you try to blow past it?
It doesn’t even require slow and cautious approach if you shift your focus appropriately. I’ve had good results starting a conversation with a complete stranger who was clearly insecure about her looks by telling her that she should make sure her makeup doesn’t come off because she’s probably ugly if she’s that concerned about it. Not only did she not explode at me, she decided to throw the fuse away and give me a high bandwidth and low noise channel to share my perspective on her little dilemma, and then took my advice and did the thing her insecurity had been stopping her from doing.
The point is that you only run into problems with landmines as noise if you mistake landmines for noise. If your response to the potential of landmines is “Gah! Why does that unimportant noise have to get in the way of what I want to do!? I wonder if I can get away with ignoring them and marching straight ahead”, then yeah, you’ll probably get blowed up if you don’t hold back. On the other hand, if your response is closer to “Ooh! Interesting landmine you got here! What happens if I poke it? Does it go off, or does the ensuing self reflection cause it to just dissolve away?”, then you get to have engaging and worthwhile high bandwidth low noise conversations immediately, and you will more quickly get what you came for.
I think it’s worth making a distinction between “noise” and “low bandwidth channel”. Your first examples of “a literal noisy room” or “people getting distracted by shiny objects passing by” fit the idea of “noise” well. Your last two examples of “inferential distance” and “land mines” don’t, IMO.
“Noise” is when the useful information is getting crowded out by random information in the channel, but land mines aren’t random. If you tell someone their idea is stupid and then you can’t continue telling them why because they’re flipping out at you, that’s not a random occurrence. Even if such things aren’t trivially predictable in more subtle cases, it’s still a predictable possibility and you can generally feel out when such things are safe to say or when you must tread a bit more carefully.
The “trying to squeeze my ideas through a straw” metaphor seems much more fitting than “struggling to pick the signal out of the noise floor” metaphor, and I would focus instead on deliberately broadening the straw until you can just chuck whatever’s on your mind down that hallway without having to focus any of your attention on the limitations of the channel.
There’s a lot to say on this topic, but I think one of the more important bits is that you can often get the same sense of “low noise conversation” if you pivot from focusing on ideas which are too big for the straw to focusing on the straw itself, and how its limitations might be relaxed. This means giving up on trying to communicate the object level thing for a moment, but it wasn’t going to fit anyway so you just focus on what is impeding communication and work to efficiently communicate about *that*. This is essentially “forging relationships” so that you have the ability to communicate usefully in the future. Sometimes this can be time consuming, but sometimes knowing how to carry oneself with the right aura of respectability and emotional safety does wonders for the “inferential distance” and “conversational landmines” issues right off the bat.
When the problem is inferential distance, the question comes down to what extent it makes sense to trust someone to have something worth listening to over several inferences. If our reasonings differ several layers deep then offering superficial arguments and counterarguments is a waste of time because we both know that we can both do that without even being right. When we can recognize that our conversation partner might actually be right about even some background assumptions that we disagree on, then all of a sudden the idea of listening to them describe their world view and looking for ways that it could be true becomes a lot more compelling. Similarly, when you can credibly convey that you’ve thought things through and are likely to have something worth listening to, they will find themselves much more interested in listening to you intently with an expectation of learning something.
When the problem is “land mines”, the question becomes whether the topic is one where there’s too much sensitivity to allow for nonviolent communication and whether supercritical escalation to “violent” threats (in the NonViolent Communication sense) will necessarily displace invitations to cooperate. Some of the important questions here are “Am I okay enough to stay open and not lash out when they are violent at me?” and the same thing reflected towards the person you’re talking to. When you can realize “No, if they snap at me I’m not going to have an easy time absorbing that” you can know to pivot to something else (perhaps building the strength necessary for dealing with such things), but when you can notice that you can brush it off and respond only to the “invitation to cooperate” bit, then you have a great way of demonstrating for them that these things are actually safe to talk about because you’re not trying to hurt them, and it’s even safe to lash out unnecessarily before they recognize that it’s safe. Similarly, if you can sincerely and without hint of condescension ask the person whether they’re okay or whether they’d like you to back off a bit, often that space can be enough for them to decide “Actually, yeah. I can play this way. Now that I think about it, its clear that you’re not out to get me”.
There’s a lot more to be said about how to do these things exactly and how to balance between pushing on the straw to grow and relaxing so that it can rebuild, but the first point is that it can be done intentionally and systematically, and that doing so can save you from the frustration of inefficient communication and replace it with efficient communication on the topic of how to communicate efficiently over a wider channel that is more useful for everything you might want to communicate.
I edited my post to insert this distinction. You’re totally right that I’m really focusing on bandwidth and calling it low-noise. But I disagree about the degree of the distinction you’re making. In the case of the already-standard usage of “signal/noise ratio”, there’s no worry over whether the “noise” is really random. Twitter injects advertisements regularly, not randomly, but they still dilute the quality of the feed in the same way. Similarly, conversational land mines are functionally similar to distractions. First, because they tend to derail lines of thought. But second, and more frequently, in the way they influence conversation when they’re merely a threat looming on the border of the conversation rather than a certainty. We avoid deep topics both because they’re more likely to trigger defensiveness and because they aren’t so valuable (and indeed may even be harmful) if they’re interrupted. Indeed, I’m clustering them together because the two are somewhat exchangeable: a touchy subject can become quite approachable if you have a lot of quality time to feel it out and deal with misunderstandings/defensiveness (or any of the other helpful variables I mentioned).
To the extent that the underlying structure doesn’t matter and can’t be used, I agree that technically non-random “noise” behaves similarly and that this can be a reasonable use of the term. My objection to the term “noise” as a description of conversational landmines isn’t just that they’re “technically not completely random”, but that the information content is actually important and relevant. In other words, it’s not noise, it’s signal.
The “landmines” are part of how their values are actually encoded. It’s part of the belief structure you’re looking to interact with in the first place. They’re just little pockets of care which haven’t yet been integrated in a smooth and stable way with everything else. Or to continue the metaphor, it’s not “scary dangerous explosives to try to avoid”, it’s “inherently interesting stores of unstable potential energy which can be mined for energetic fuel”. If someone is touchy around the subject you want to talk about, that is the interesting thing itself. What is in here that they haven’t even finished explaining to themselves, and why is it so important to them that they can’t even contain themselves if you try to blow past it?
It doesn’t even require slow and cautious approach if you shift your focus appropriately. I’ve had good results starting a conversation with a complete stranger who was clearly insecure about her looks by telling her that she should make sure her makeup doesn’t come off because she’s probably ugly if she’s that concerned about it. Not only did she not explode at me, she decided to throw the fuse away and give me a high bandwidth and low noise channel to share my perspective on her little dilemma, and then took my advice and did the thing her insecurity had been stopping her from doing.
The point is that you only run into problems with landmines as noise if you mistake landmines for noise. If your response to the potential of landmines is “Gah! Why does that unimportant noise have to get in the way of what I want to do!? I wonder if I can get away with ignoring them and marching straight ahead”, then yeah, you’ll probably get blowed up if you don’t hold back. On the other hand, if your response is closer to “Ooh! Interesting landmine you got here! What happens if I poke it? Does it go off, or does the ensuing self reflection cause it to just dissolve away?”, then you get to have engaging and worthwhile high bandwidth low noise conversations immediately, and you will more quickly get what you came for.