conversational creativity

“Things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. When you understand that, you abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.” - Leonard Cohen

Most dialogues are just monologues in disguise.

i cannot overstate how big the difference is between

a - learning a map, then venturing into the territory, and

b - venturing through the territory, then finding out there are maps

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”... See more

starting to suspect having a good conversation and feeling connected is not primarily eye contact or asking a lot of questions or not talking about yourself or whatever, or even curiosity, but some yet more fundamental thing that drives all of it like ... joie de vivre??

i get the sense the core thing is actually quite simple, and all the indicators... See more

There are only so many ways to begin talking, but with each exchange, the combinatorial space of what might come next expands dramatically. By the tenth turn of a genuine dialogue, we’re navigating billions of potential conversational states.