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 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.