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July 30, 2003
rules of conversation

Have you ever gone into a conversation with a certain set of rules? I do not mean rules of winning a debate, or convincing the other person to come out to lunch/dinner/country/play...
I would find it interesting to go into a conversation and to set the rule to speak in only 5 word sentences. Or how about making every 7th sentence a question. How about changing the topic every 45 seconds? Or how about agreeing with any odd numbered suggestions of the conversation partner and disagreeing with all the straight ones? (Very dangerous) There must be an unlimited number of such possible rules that could be applied to a conversation. Now these rules could be either applied with the knowledge of the conversation partner, or without the knowledge. If things happened without the knowledge of the other conversation partner, would it be possible to keep the rules from them? How long could the conversation continuer? Maybe the length of the conversation could be one of the rules.
The results could be a pathological simulation, or a lot of fun, an abstract encounter, a way to lose a friend, a way to accidentally find out something about someone (how angry they get, how understanding they can be.)
Hmm... this is obviously all nothing new. I have very often been involved in conversations in which my conversation-partner followed the following two rules:
"Whatever he says is concerning me and has a negative hidden message."
and
"I will fight him till the bitter end"
Hmm...
I had also the luck to be a participant in conversations in which the rules were:
"He is cute and whatever he says is funny, smart, profound... even if it is not."
(One could think that I would like the second one much more... but sometimes it is shortly followed by the first set of rules... which is sad...)

If I were any more distracted than I am now, I would probably run around wildly waving my arms, screaming, hitting walls and things and the road...
(No caffeine for me on wednesday afternoons...)
...
Would you like to apply some rules to your comments?

Comments

i will from here on

Posted by: takuan on July 30, 2003 11:02 PM

oh no... you are scaring me...

Posted by: Witold Riedel on July 30, 2003 11:14 PM
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