I wonder, though, if the author failed to pinpoint the likely cause of this effect. Yes, I believe that there is an element to it that involves signaling alpha security in a non-verbal way, and another element to it where the sheer rarity of your speech raises its perceived value.

But consider this, which I suspect may be the dominating force at play: if you follow the author's algorithm and only speak if you feel as though saying nothing will have greater cost in the future to put things back on the rails, what are you doing if not filtering out the lower-quality, lower-urgency, and lower-importance thoughts that you might otherwise utter. I believe that the effect of this is that if you only utter the crème de la crème of your thoughts, then people end up suspecting that you're more brilliant than you actually are. At the very least, people will come to learn that if you have something to say, it will likely be well worth their attention.

It's simply a matter of keeping your lower-quality thoughts as the part of an iceberg submerged below the surface.

I preface grade fights by saying, "I won't change your grade" and then talk about the paper to the extent necessary. The right way to get better grades is to do better work next time. Being on this side of the desk has definitely made me more skeptical of the students who said, "So and so was a hard grader / mean / hated me," mostly because those things might be somewhat true but can almost always be overcome by greater effort, at least at the undergrad level.

Also, grade fights can sometimes be won through silence, as James Fallows describes: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/03/-quot-... . His post is titled, "When you're done talking, stop," which might be slightly better advice than "rarely talk." Since learning the silence trick, grade fights have plummeted in length, since now I've learned to just sit there and give one sentence answers once the substance of an issue has been covered.

... Well, other than being a teacher?

It would be interesting to hear the other sides of the story:

"Yeah, when he finally spoke, we were all surprised he could still talk, it was sort of weird. But I guess he was our manager so we had to listen to him".

"When he went silent in the middle of the negotiation I wondered what the hell he was doing; is this some sort of new trick?"

Dispensing this kind of wisdom seems to be yet another popular form of 'premature victory lap' on HN, where fairly wet-behind-the-ears types with no major runs on the board can puff themselves up by handing out the Keys to Their Success.

I've also used the technique many times myself. I've run 3 businesses, and it's an exceptionally powerful tool in negotiation. Not, of course, applied bluntly like an imbecile (like the "boss" mentioned in one of the other comments), but subtly, at the right moment, without emphasising it. Letting the other person think, talk, and say what you need them to say rather than trying to goad them into it is an essential business skill. You probably use it without even thinking about it.

So, really sorry that you personally found nothing of value here (many other people did, from the looks of it) but I don't think the personal attacks were called for and they're out of place on a normally respectful forum like HN.

It is sad that your pointless name-calling now dominates what was a healthy discussion. I wonder how many people didn't post interesting comments and anecdotes because they saw your territorial markings at the top of the conversation. You should be ashamed of yourself.

All this being said, my remarks stand. Your post reads like an uninterrupted barrage of self-praise. This idea is neither new, nor thought-provoking, and is justified entirely by your own assertion that you're a Really Effective Guy.

Your solipsism continues, with you convinced that a wonderful exploration of your big idea was just around the corner until that Onan guy came and fucked it all up, with his awful, mysteriously-at-the-top-of-the-discussion-for-some-reason, posting. Your major anecdote in support of this comes from a situation where you were the boss and the evidence of how well it went is entirely from you. Aside from us all trotting out our own tales of how wonderfully we too resolved various situations in similar and equally subjective fashion and praising you for your insight, I'm not quite sure what you're looking for here.

I didn't think it was all that long. I often post things longer than that, in email form or on blogs/websites I own (and probably even here as comments). Seems like an ugly thing to say and not at all accurate.

I could say the same thing about the blog post. It's seems to me it's not saying anything except "I'm a smart guy".

Very often, posts of that character are rooted in personal vendettas.

Now THIS is uncalled for. As is saying his post is smearing, worthless, and constitutes a personal attack, but this is most uncalled for.

I think onan_barbarian just thought that the idea from this blog post isn't really novel or interesting enough to be submitted here and that the author stated it in a way that makes him sound a little full of himself. He was being a little mean while making his point but people often react like that when something "rubs them the wrong way", no?

Many people on HN come across as socially awkward, full of themselves and so on. Hackers are not exactly known for their suaveness as a group. (Personally, I have no fondness for suave people, but I imagine commenting on that would really strike people as "uncalled for", personal attacks, sweeping generalizations, and so on.) I don't see how sounding to someone else (not me) like he was full of himself invalidates the point or makes it uninteresting. I also don't see how even if it were guilty of such things that merits the characterizations in onan_barbarians remarks of "fatuous self praise" and so on. For me, it is good food for thought. I tend to be too talkative. I've had to work on such issues. I rarely find good insights into the type of problems that causes.

Anyway, it would probably be best to drop this. I'm quite tired, which is not a good place from which to try to politely disagree or parse out such things. And I strongly suspect that we are both merely putting out the fire with gasoline (since I really don't think you intend to be ugly and I certainly don't either), which really adds nothing of value any way you slice it.

Peace.

I think that if you look beyond the messenger, you will see a message worth reading, irrespective of who has delivered it.

In any case the point is moot. The original post in question isn't that profound (introspective insight is in rather short supply) and most of the evidence mustered in support of it comes from experiences where the guy is just telling us how awesome something that he did was. It could well be that he should have handled the situation by reading both disputants the riot act and breaking up the meeting; we have no evidence beyond his say-so. Maybe this clever-clever "I am the Silent One" stuff just wasted vast amounts of everyone's time...

If you don't think the OP is interesting/insightful and/or you have nothing interesting/insightful personally that you can add to it, just don't vote it up. If you're capable of it and have the time, come post a more intelligent treatment of the topic in the discussion. But to take the time to type out even a half-dozen lines of cutting sarcasm -- haha, he quoted his father, how embarrassing! -- well, what does that give me, one of the mass of readers who come here for sustenance?

The original post was short enough to read, and covered a basic idea that could have served as a foundation for more meaty discussion. E.g., how it's different if you're being quiet but you aren't the "boss" in the discussion, how much body language matters, etc.. At the very least, well-told stories of how being quiet can backfire.

Maybe that's in here, somewhere; but now I've used up my HN break trying to sift through the complaints about complaints, and complaining about them.

Years of attempting actual self-improvement do make one weary of hearing people praising themselves for doing stuff that isn't very profound or impressive. Sad to say, the experience of actually improving yourself by doing something difficult involves regular meetings with the realization that you aren't as smart as you thought you were, or as organized, or as persuasive, etc.

Constant struggling against your own carelessness, partial understanding of your field and the limits of your intelligence doesn't usually lead to this kind of half-smart undergraduate self-congratulation. Those who aren't struggling are either going to be rampaging, obvious successes, or are comfortable and smug exactly because they're not doing anything all that hard.

The original guy was resolving some problems in a team of devs at Accenture, not putting a man on the moon or sequencing the human genome for the first time or building Facebook or whatever.

I think this is a great lesson. Good speaking arises from good listening, because only good listening will give you the best sense of what everyone else is thinking and what you need to say to explain your own thoughts to them.

It's a humorous twist on a Bible verse: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: [and] he that shutteth his lips [is esteemed] a man of understanding." (King James Bible, Proverbs 17:28)

http://wisdom.tenner.org/1/post/2011/07/the-small-wheel-list...

Ultra-condensed summary: if you want people to pay attention to what you say, spend 1/3 of the time listening with your mouth shut, 1/3 rephrasing and asking clarifying questions to make sure that you've understood, and only after that, spend 1/3 of the time actually saying things (which now have a chance of being listened to...).

    "Tourne ta langue 7 fois dans ta bouche avant de parler"

    "Turn your tongue 7 times in your mouth prior to talking"

Carefully crafting the flow of words is as important as the words themselves. Same apply to writing.

Silence, like body language, is an essential part of "verbal communication skills" - that's the point I'm making. You can no more learn "verbal communication" without learning to use silence than you can learn "driving skills" without learning to look in the rear-view mirror... (poor analogy, but you get the idea)

Yes and no.

I think "talking more", in the sense of finding more occasions to speak: more meetings, more conferences, etc, would be helpful.

However, I don't think using more words during each of those occasions would improve your verbal communication skills.

To use another popular adage that drives the point home: brevity is the soul of wit.

Nature deplores a vacuum, and silence will draw someone out. Counter-intuitively, it also gives permission for people to speak who otherwise would be too shy.

I'm wondering if that has to do with internal "speed"/timing issues. My ex was a slow talking, quiet sort (and shy/introverted) and I tend to talk a lot and talk fast. A big issue in our marriage was when we argued and I felt like I took really huge pauses to try to get him to speak but he still wouldn't speak so I would resume talking to fill the silence. His take on it was that I never ever shut up and there was no way to get a word in edgewise. I imagine if we had overcome this issue, the marriage would have gone a great deal more smoothly. I had to actively teach our younger son, who is more like his father in this regard, to simply "interrupt" me and his fast-talking older brother. Otherwise, he feels like we don't "let" him talk. There is a big disconnect in the internal timing here -- he seems to not be able to judge how/when to jump in the way his brother and I do. So when he simply "interrupts" us, I defend it if his brother gets irritated or something.

However, a separate but related trait is that I often find myself internally running through several iterations of what I want to say, only to realize that by the time I've winnowed it down to the relevant info and am ready to speak, the conversation has moved on.

I have also found that silence can be very useful in an educational situation. When I tutor kids in math and they are having trouble working through a problem, the tend to look at me after 5 seconds of effort and expect me to help them. I just stare at them until they go back and look at the problem again. 75% of the time they figure it out. I'll admit, I got the idea from Plikt (the tutor of Valentine's children in Speaker for the Dead)

Isn't it impossible to distinguish signal and noise on a per-sample basis, though? A sample has no context, only a frequency. By itself, it can be both - no?

       "The more you're heard, the less you're listened to"

There is also a huge difference between silence in a group setting, which just means letting others speak compared to silence in a 1-on-1 conversation in which you are forcing someone else to make a move.

Whereas the first is relatively simple to pull off, it also just affects the signal to noise ratio and might give others the impression that you are more intelligent than you actually are. Once that intelligence is put to the test this becomes anything but simple.

The second one can be a lot more difficult. Most people are not accustomed to silence, they prefer noise, they live in noise and they hide in noise. If you are not comfortable or confident enough in how you use silence it will backfire and you end up in a situation that is just awkward.

Take following examples:

1, when in a group of friends engaging in casual conversation, staying quiet tend to get you ignored. You will be labeled as "that quiet person" unless you are already a respected member of the group.

2, in business meetings, the most important persons on the table will never get ignored. And it's best for them to NOT dominate the meeting so the other attendees can express their views.

3, The ability of commanding a conversation is highly valued in society, and such skill cannot be gained by being quiet all the time. In fact, even conveying your message across the table takes skills that can only be learned after much practice.

I think one of the big reasons this is effective is because when you're not talking, you're listening, and this lets you figure out which stuff actually matters.

I had a manager who would do the say-something-then-sit-in-silence thing. It was absolutely horrible. Basically, you had to be a sociopath in order to not feel perpetually uncomfortable around her. Every 'normal' person working for her was absolutely miserable. I'm sure she thought she was being very clever.