# How to learn from conversations

_(This is a post from a daily blogging experiment I did at [neelnanda.io](http://neelnanda.io), which I thought might also fit the tastes of LessWrong)_

I’m currently in the middle of a [virtual conference](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagxvirtual2020/), so one thing heavily on my mind is how to get the most out of talking to people who know more than me. How to get as much information as I can, how to get it efficiently, and how to ensure I actually understand it and retain it! I think this is a very learnable skill, and one that I’ve cultivated a lot over the past 3 years. Having fascinating conversations with interesting people is one of my great joys in life, and I care a lot about being able to do this well! In this article I’ll try to convey some of the key tools I’ve developed!

Health warning: I get the feedback that I come across as fairly intense in conversations, and sometimes give the vibe that I’m judging whether the other person is worth my time. I try to minimise these, and to pay attention to the other person’s comfort level, but this seems like a pretty inescapable cost of this approach!

*   **Ask questions**

*   This one is pretty self-explanatory - ask a lot of questions! You want to make life as easy for the other person as possible. Shaping a conversation, and figuring out _what_ to talk about takes a lot of cognitive work, and asking question makes life a lot easier for the other person
*   **Technique:** Notice curiosity

*   I find that often conversations, especially small talk, end up being about stuff that just isn’t _that_ interesting. And this is terrible! If you’re talking about things you both find exciting, that’s a mutual win!
*   My main solution to this is to notice the hint of curiosity, or excitement, at what the other person is saying. Often someone’s statements have a lot of different points and information in them, some of which is much more exciting than others. I’ve found it valuable to practice introspecting on how excited I feel about each part, and asking questions about the bit that feels coolest

*   This often needs several layers of iteration, but is a pretty efficient way to move from small talk to something new and cool!

*   Introspection is a difficult skill, and generally Noticing emotions is something that I could [talk at length about](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GLPaZamxqkx7XJbXv/the-skill-of-noticing-emotions). But it’s something you can get better at with practice

*   Main points: You want to get as much **surface area** on the emotion as possible. Notice when you feel it, common trends, associated physical sensations. Flag to your mind that this _matters_ and is important to you

*   Simulating historical examples mentally, and dissecting the feeling of curiousity can help to notice it in future

*   **Technique:** Noticing confusion!

*   If they mention something that feels a bit wrong, or off, ask about it!
*   Often it’s hard to formulate a precise question. In those cases, just saying “You said ___, I feel a bit confused about why that works, can you elaborate?” goes a pretty long way! And can be more effective than trying a specific question, when I’m confused about what I’m confused about
*   Variant: Notice when they refer to an aspect of the world that is super unfamiliar to me.

*   Prompt: “Could I talk about that for more than 30 seconds?" If not, ask about it!

*   The internal experience is that I’m trying to build a model in my head of what the other person is talking about. And every so often I notice a hole in it, or it throws an error. _That_ is the feeling of confusion

*   Gain **surface area** on the conversation

*   Often the bottleneck for asking questions is not having the context to know what to ask about! This is super bad when I talk to a domain expert in a completely novel area - I lack the intuitions to know what to ask about, or what would be interesting

*   I call this context + intuitions **surface area**, and I think a key goal is figuring out how to get as much as possible

*   **Technique:** Using _their_ intuitions

*   Conveniently, you’re talking to someone with a lot of surface area, and you can often access this with the right questions!

*   Eg “what surprised you when you got into X”, “what do people often misunderstand”, “what are most important problems in your field”

*   **Technique:** Asking for examples

*   Examples are an _amazing_ way to learn things! So often, conversations turn into meanders through abstract terms and ideas, which loses its grounding in what I actually understand. If I can understand an example, that often conveys a _ton_ of information
*   Having a specific example can often motivate questions, point to confusions or curiosities, because I can _understand_ an example, even if I don’t get the overall idea
*   From an information theory point of view: We _want_ to communicate concepts, but we have to translate them into words. This can lose a lot of information. Examples are another channel of communication, that can identify errors in translation
*   A _key_ mental habit I’ve built is to always ask for an example, whenever anything feels confused in my head

*   **Technique:** Paraphrasing

*   Paraphrasing means repeating back what I _think_ they’re saying, _in my own words_, and ask whether this is correct

*   Very important: Always _ask_ rather than telling. Be humble, it’s easy to misunderstand! And easy to come across as annoying or arrogant or strawmanning if you misrepresent their point

*   This is an _insanely_ key skill. I do this about every 5 minutes in most conversations, and this identifies a _ton_ of misunderstandings.

*   If there’s one thing you get from this article, let it be paraphrasing!

*   Paraphrasing is my main error checking tool, because by translating things back into my words, I often identify errors. It’s much easier for the other person to correct something wrong, than to explain something clearly.

*   If you’re skeptical, I highly recommend just trying it. It’s disturbing just how many times I misunderstood something the first time

*   It's also helps me retain the information, by giving me some processing time, and forcing me to check I _actually_ got it
*   It’s easy to breeze through a conversation, zoning out a bit. Paraphrasing forces me to be active, and really engage
*   Another fun bonus: I think the ability to put complex ideas into words is a really useful one. A habit of paraphrasing forces me to get _a lot_ of regular practice, and I’ve become dramatically better at this skill over the past few years.

*   This has noticeably improved my learning and teaching skills