Chapter 32 Do people really chat?

You are bored at the dinner table; family tradition commands you to be there, although you would love to be in your own home.What fun things can you do to pass the time?I have a solution, an unpopular but fun little game that uses scientific observation and you have to make a mark from time to time.But since you're sitting at the table with no paper or pens, just grab a napkin and a bottle of cherry jam.When something happens, you dip your finger in the bottle and mark it on a paper towel.This is a very simple and easy to observe thing, the situation is as follows: go and listen to what cousin Alberta is talking to Uncle Ferremon, and then listen to what Uncle Ferremon answered, and look at his The answer is not going astray.If this is the case, draw a line on the paper towel.Look, Grandpa is discussing the state of the country with two pedantic young men, listen carefully to what they're talking about, and when the conversation crosses over, you'll have to draw another line of jam on the paper towel.Just like that, you draw a horizontal line every time someone in the conversation gives an answer that has nothing to do with the content of the conversation.It's really interesting, though, a tissue is definitely not enough.Why?

I will tell you the conclusion here.We are generally poor at having rational conversations, answering questions fully, thinking through arguments rationally, and disagreeing or agreeing thoughtfully.We call ourselves Homo sapiens, that is, rational beings, but as a matter of fact, we might as well tear that label off our foreheads.We are all proud of the tool of the intellect—language—as well as the human-to-human communication that conveys information and expresses reason.Yet those who spend their days eavesdropping secretly, impolitely, and even illegally (hey, shame on you), are aware of the presence — or lack thereof — of so-called sanity.People involved in a discussion often don't listen to the other person or pay attention to the context of the argument, thinking only about what they have to say.In this way, back and forth, the conversations are staggered from each other.

In addition to exchanging information and weighing views, dialogue and discussion have another function. This is actually equivalent to a colosseum. People use "dialogue" to gain a strong position.Of course, what people are after is not some huge, powerful position of power, but mostly a small one.Our genes push us to seek higher status, to always want to be better than others.We often achieve the above goals through words, and the amount of words is very important.In a meeting, the proposal proposed by the person who speaks the most is often adopted.The content of what he said is not important, what is important is how much he said, this is the weapon to gain balance.I understand, this situation sounds weird, but I can explain it to you.Dominance and attention run parallel in the complex human behavioral system.People who get more attention are also relatively high status compared to those who are unknown.But how do you get the attention of others?Just by talking, talking, schmoozing.The content is not important, the key is to say.Dialogue is like a battlefield, and your mouth is your weapon.

In English, it is "take the floor" (join speech/discussion), so the floor may refer to the floor of the Colosseum. It is said that a university is an ivory tower of high IQ and great wisdom.Let’s forget this saying, as long as you listen to the content of each meeting, you will understand.I've held meetings in college for decades, and I've always been a jerk, a passive, obsessive observer of behavior in the academic colosseum.While I don't have hard data to back it up, I do find a correlation between the amount of time people talk and their (I'm only using him here, not her) ambition.They repeat themselves over and over again, and the content is not the key, but how often they speak.Similar situations can also appear at the bar of the bar, the table at the party and many receptions.

And it doesn't stop there, speaking is not only about powerful status and ambition, it's also often used by people to prove that they're not inferior.Without looking up any academic materials, people subconsciously understand that verbal behavior can determine a strong position, so they use it.No one wants to be put down by the crowd for not speaking in a discussion, so there is always something to say.As long as everyone can hear you speak, the content is another matter.Here, I can let in a secret, politicians have such a system in their brains, maybe not on purpose, but they still do it, talk about it all day long.The more politicians talk, the more often they appear on TV, the more prestige they build, and the more votes they ultimately get, the more power they have.So for humans, speaking and communicating don't need to be consistent.

By the way, another good example of people's limited exchange of information in a conversation is interrupting others in the middle of a conversation.You can grab another tissue and count the number of times the conversation was interrupted.How many times did he (she) interject in order to state his or her point of view before others finished speaking.It seems that people are often completely uninterested in what the other person has to say, always thinking of "my business first", and in this way, the conversation often turns from a dialogue to a monologue. There are plenty of other examples where our language isn't that rational at all, but that's a long way off.Let me give another example at the end.As efficient as human language is, we're not good at explaining clearly.Take tying shoelaces, for example. It is not difficult at all, but it is almost impossible to describe it in words.Also, when you talk to someone, you always want to stand face to face with him or her, which is more convenient.But if you want to tell the person on your right what is on your left, you will keep looking left.You can try a small game, stop a passerby, point to the road behind him (her) and ask how to go next, and see if his (her) head is looking at you right in front of you, or Turn the road behind you.Haha, everyone is hit, no one can escape.As a result, the person who asked for directions may not have understood the explanation of the passer-by.There is no logic in such situations.

Why exactly?How do we explain the poor performance of our language as the vantage point of reason and communication?We can go back hundreds of thousands of years and find an explanation in the roots of human language.In any case, we don't know exactly how human language arose, but researchers have come up with many interesting hypotheses.One interesting and widely accepted one is that our language is first and foremost a social glue, not a channel of communication, but a way of uniting group members and strengthening collective cohesion.A well-functioning group is important for humans, and it was also true for the earliest humans and great apes.Monkeys achieve group unity by scratching lice in pairs.

When the scale of catching lice reaches a certain level, many pairs of monkeys will appear, and such pairwise combinations unite the whole group.The larger the group size, the more time and energy the monkeys spent picking lice, and a large group meant many potential pairwise combinations.That's fine for monkeys, not for the groups our ancestors lived in.Ancestors spent a lot of time catching lice, so they couldn't find food, educate children, and do the things that life had to accomplish.Therefore, the ancestors transformed that method into another system - vocalization for hundreds of thousands of years.They make their presence known to each other by making sounds.We don't know exactly what kind of sound they made, but it is very likely that monkeys' tactile communication was replaced by vocal communication. It is sound that brought our ancestors together and formed the bond in the group. .

The vocal cords can produce a variety of sounds, so more and more sounds appear in the rules of social behavior.None of us need a wild imagination to deduce that different sounds have different meanings.Some said "everything is quiet", some said "I want to eat", some said "be careful" and so on.In this way, a vocabulary library came into being.Much later it will be possible for a language to convey more information.In short, human vocal communication was first a social cohesion mechanism, and later it had the function of transmitting information.Today, such examples abound.The researchers "overheard" a large number of conversations, in which the function of social glue of language was manifested.Many conversations seem to have no purpose of conveying any information, and their real purpose is to ensure social solidarity between the interlocutors.

Language initially had a social purpose only, before it took on new functions as a channel of information.In the same way, it is possible to infer other functions, such as nesting and bonding between lovers, entertainment through art, and the angry Colosseum and so on.Now you should understand the specific background of those strange situations above, right?It's very interesting to see -- or rather hear -- these things in everyday life, and to entertain us when we're bored at family gatherings. Whoops, no more cherry sauce, no more paper towels, let's get to dessert.