Why AI Conversations Are Always One-Sided  🔗 **Source:** [Why AI Conversations Are Always One-Sided](https://share.snipd.com/episode/e0df6bd4-dda1-4afe-8fe0-ca4424811eaa) ## Highlights - **Conversation Types Determine Connection** - Super Communicators recognize multiple simultaneous kinds of conversation that use different brain systems. - Charles Duhigg found mismatched conversation types (emotional vs practical) explain why couples feel like two ships passing in the night. Transcript: Charles Duhigg The reason I wrote Super Communicators is because I had written a book called The Power of Habit a number of years ago, which is about the science of habit formation. And I heard from a lot of people who said, you know, this really changed my life. It helped me build new exercise habits, helped me stop drinking or smoking. And, and that was really powerful. But I, I also fell into this bad pattern with my wife. I was working at the New York times at that point and I would come home from work and I'd start complaining about my day. And I'd say like, you know, my coworkers don't appreciate me or my boss doesn't realize what a genius I am. And my wife would do this pretty natural thing. She would give me some pretty good advice. She would say something like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. And instead of being able to hear her advice, I would get even more upset, right? And I would say like, why aren't you, why aren't you on my side? You should be outraged on my behalf. You should be telling me how smart I am. How much is their fault? This is something I'm sure is familiar to everyone who's listening, right? Because like this happens again and again and again in all relationships. And so I went to these researchers and I asked them, why do I keep falling into this trap? Like I'm a professional communicator. I'm a journalist. Why do I keep making this mistake? And they said, well, actually we're living through this golden age of understanding communication. For really the first time, we can see what happens inside someone's brain as they're having a conversation. And you think when you're talking to your wife that you know what that discussion is about. You think that you're talking about your day, or you think that you're talking about where to go on vacation next week, or if you're at work, well, you know, what the budget should be for Next quarter. But actually, there are many different kinds of conversations all happening at the same time. And unless you and your wife are having the same basic kind of conversation, you're going to feel like you can't connect with each other. You're going to feel like you're two ships passing in the night. And so I thought that was really interesting. I started digging into that and that gave birth to Super Communicators, the book. ([Time 0:04:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55d06510-e7eb-46d1-9101-fd2f6cdaa68b)) - **When Venting Met Practical Advice** - Charles recounts complaining about work to his wife and getting advice when he wanted empathy. - That mismatch (his emotional venting vs her practical advice) repeatedly escalated and inspired his book research. Transcript: Charles Duhigg And I heard from a lot of people who said, you know, this really changed my life. It helped me build new exercise habits, helped me stop drinking or smoking. And, and that was really powerful. But I, I also fell into this bad pattern with my wife. I was working at the New York times at that point and I would come home from work and I'd start complaining about my day. And I'd say like, you know, my coworkers don't appreciate me or my boss doesn't realize what a genius I am. And my wife would do this pretty natural thing. She would give me some pretty good advice. She would say something like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. And instead of being able to hear her advice, I would get even more upset, right? And I would say like, why aren't you, why aren't you on my side? You should be outraged on my behalf. You should be telling me how smart I am. ([Time 0:04:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/05ecf609-732e-4c91-ab68-e76c40b56144)) - **Set Rules Before Hard Conversations** - Before hard talks, name the anxiety and set rules for the conversation. - Use a meta-conversation: state the specific question to solve and agree to postpone unrelated grievances to avoid kitchen sinking. Transcript: Charles Duhigg To first of all, acknowledge that this is a hard conversation, right? I wanna bring this topic up with you. I feel a little awkward doing so. It might make you feel awkward. The anxiety that a hard conversation produces, oftentimes if we voice that anxiety, we help resolve it a little bit. Not fully, but we make it a little bit less painful. And then the second thing is to set rules for the conversation. What psychologists, as you know, would refer to as a meta-conversation. Let's talk about how we want to talk to each other. To say something like, okay, look, I want to talk about where we're going to go for Thanksgiving. I know that when I bring this up, sometimes we start talking about each other's moms in not kind ways. Sometimes we start talking about money. Let's set all of that aside and let's just talk about the logistics of where we're going to go for Thanksgiving. And then I promise we can talk about moms and we can talk about money some other time. Let's just decide like together, what is the thing that we want to talk about? What's the resolution? What's the question we want to answer? When you do that, suddenly you are sitting side by side and it's not you versus them. It's the two of you versus a question or a problem together. ([Time 0:09:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cd70915c-ea2d-44ad-8134-4577dd65f4cd)) - **Three Brain-Based Conversation Buckets** - Duhigg defines three buckets: practical, emotional, and social conversations tied to different brain regions. - Misalignment (e.g., emotional speaker, practical responder) prevents connection even when content seems obvious. Transcript: Charles Duhigg Yeah. So a super communicator is this person who has these skills, right, who uses these skills. And we talked about the skill of proving that you're listening. Another really important skill is recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring. And in general, these different kinds of conversations, they fall into one of three buckets. There are these practical conversations where you and I are making plans together or resolving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize with me. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and how we relate to society. And I told that story about my wife and I kind of missing each other because what was happening is that I was having an emotional conversation. I was complaining about my day and talking about how like I feel underappreciated. And my wife responded with a practical conversation. She started giving me advice. And that's why we couldn't connect with each other. That's why we couldn't fully hear each other. It actually comes down to parts of our brains. So those three different kinds of conversations use different parts of our brains. And that when we're not using the same part of our brain at the same time, it's very hard for us to feel connected. Rana el Kaliouby Yeah. If you're having a practical conversation, I imagine that's invoking your prefrontal cortex. Charles Duhigg Oh, absolutely. Prefrontal cortex, emotional conversation is amygdala, the interior structures of the brain. The social conversation tends to take over the medial network that's kind of at the peripheries of our brain. ([Time 0:10:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d20edec6-2b3d-4ae3-910d-ad8b159872cf)) - **AI Mimics Conversation But Lacks Reciprocity** - AI can imitate conversation types and ask questions, but humans expect reciprocal emotional feedback. - Duhigg argues we don't believe our words change AI's internal state, so the reciprocal echo disappears. Transcript: Charles Duhigg Like we've all experienced this. When you're talking to a chat bot, you know, it'll ask you what you're feeling and it'll ask you about your feelings. It'll try and figure out whether you're like trying to solve a problem or you're trying to just express yourself. One important thing that we've learned about conversations is that when I say something to you, the way that you respond, and in particular, believing that my words have an impact on You is a very, very important part of that conversation. So if I say something that makes you angry, there's some information that I'm receiving from that anger. If I say something that makes you feel good, I feel a sense of pride in making you feel good. If I tell you something that's interesting, I feel smart because I see that you're interested. The feedback that we get from the person we're talking to and how that affects our internal state is a critical aspect of how conversations unfold. But when we're talking to AI, we do not believe that we are changing anything in the AI, right? I don't believe that like I'm actually making an AI feel proud. I don't believe I'm impressing an AI. I don't believe that an AI actually feels the emotions that I'm feeling. And so as a result, that reciprocal echo of what's happening disappears. And it's because oftentimes when we're talking to AI, we're not getting that reciprocal feeling that talking to a real person gives us. ([Time 0:12:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a8f20e4a-13a6-4196-9fd1-5c2b09106cab)) - **Neural Entrainment Powers Connection** - Neural entrainment explains why great conversations feel good: brains and bodies (heart rate, breathing) sync and thoughts align. - Duhigg ties entrainment to dopamine/serotonin release that motivates us to seek connection. Transcript: Charles Duhigg Yeah, that's exactly right. So when we're in a great conversation, our bodies and our brains start to change. So in this conversation, for instance, without us realizing it, our heart rates have started to echo each other, to become similar. Our breathing rates have become similar. Isn't that so cool? Yeah. Even though we're surrounded by like thousands of miles, right? And if we could see inside our brains, what we would see is that your thoughts and my thoughts are becoming more and more alike. We would see like the peaks and the valleys together. And that kind of makes sense when you think about it, because if I tell you about something I'm feeling, you actually feel that emotion a little bit, right? If I tell you about an idea, you experience that idea. And within neurosciences is known as neural entrainment. The goal of communication is connection. Neural entrainment is the mechanism for that connection. When we have a good conversation, our thoughts become similar. And as they become more similar, we feel closer to each other and we feel like we actually can hear each other with higher fidelity. ([Time 0:24:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/504d760a-cb2f-4645-a291-6691df68c023)) - **Phone Norms Evolved Over 15 Years** - Early telephone users treated calls like telegraphs, using phones only for brief transactional messages. - After ~15 years people learned phone norms and phone calls became multi-hour personal conversations. Transcript: Charles Duhigg Have a real conversation on the phone. Right. Because up until then, all conversations that happened basically face to face, maybe through letters. And people would say like, look, if you can't hear their tone of voice, if you can't see their expressions, if it's a letter and they haven't sat down and sort of edited it and made sure That they're getting exactly right and really like tried to figure out what they want to say and how to say it, you're never going to have a real conversation. That's laughable to us today. But what's interesting is that for the next 15 years, they were basically right. If you look at the transcripts of early telephone conversations, what you see is that people used them as telegraphs. Rana el Kaliouby Oh, how interesting. Charles Duhigg They would call up the grocery store. They would be like, here's my order. And the other person would say, okay. And then they would hang up immediately. Like there was no awareness that you could have some back and forth and some chit chat. Huh. Now, what's interesting is that after about 15 years, everyone used the phone for real conversations. By the time you and I were in middle school, we were having conversations that were like seven or eight hours long each day. I remember those. They're the most important conversations of our life. So what happened there? ([Time 0:26:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/78b14a78-a126-4000-bc5f-f0331212d04c)) - **Prove Listening In Written Communication** - In asynchronous text, prove you read the message by replying in-line and answering each question. - Identify the conversation type (practical vs emotional) before responding and adapt tone accordingly. Transcript: Charles Duhigg Asynchronous? Okay. So first of all, I think is if you're responding to an email, actually read the person's email, right? Like, like, like prove to them that you're listening. Yeah. That like, you say like, okay, you brought up three questions. Let me go through those three questions in order. Right. I often do this. I like reply and then I put my responses inside their email to show them that I'm paying attention. The second thing is to try and figure out what kind of conversation is happening here. It's very easy in a text-based conversation just to assume that it's practical, right? That this person is like bringing up a problem and they want a solution. But there are lots of emotional conversations that happen online. I'm sure if you looked at your kids' phones and if I looked at my kids' phones, what you would see is that they have conversations with their friends where they're texting just strings Of emojis. Rana el Kaliouby Right. Charles Duhigg That's an emotional conversation, right? They're not trying to convey like an argument or a piece of information. They're trying to convey a feeling. So pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening. And then the third thing is, just remember that you oftentimes have to bend over backwards to be clear. ([Time 0:32:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e2f52d84-4001-4cfd-aa6e-67f52fdabd20)) - **Be Explicit And Polite Online** - Bend over backwards for clarity online: avoid sarcasm and add politeness to lower temperature. - A single please and thank you reduced Wikipedia edit conflicts by ~30% in a cited study. Transcript: Charles Duhigg And then the third thing is, just remember that you oftentimes have to bend over backwards to be clear. So sarcasm is very easy to detect when we're talking to someone because we can hear it in their voice. It's almost impossible to detect when they're typing. We don't know if they're being serious or sarcastic. So sarcasm probably should not happen in any kind of typewritten communication. We also know that, for instance, being more like even a little bit of politeness works much more effectively in online communication than it does offline. So there's this interesting study that was done of Wikipedia editors. They were all like debating with each other and arguing and flaming each other over like, you know, some change that they wanted to make to a page. If just one of the editors would say, please and thank you, it would bring down the temperature of the entire conversation by about 30%. And so that's what I, when you're talking about those rules, these different rules, if you think about it, if you just take a second and say, like, how is a text message different from An email? Is different from a phone call? Is different from speaking face-to You can come up with a bunch of rules for yourself really easily. ([Time 0:33:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e709f166-d5b1-4a95-8ede-2d4bf993edf3)) - **Use AI To Rehearse Tough Talks** - Use AI as a rehearsal tool: do dry runs for tough conversations to clarify goals and phrasing. - Duhigg notes AI won't predict the other person perfectly but helps you practice and organize your thoughts. Transcript: Charles Duhigg And if anything, if AI can help us practice, like it's not a bad thing to, if I'm going to have a tough conversation with my spouse to go and say like, okay, Chad GPT, you're my spouse. Like, let me work this through with you. Let's do a dry run. That doesn't mean that Chad GPT is going to do a great job of anticipating what my spouse might say, but it does mean that it's going to help me again as a repository, as like a diary. It's going to help me get more clear on what I'm hoping to happen in this conversation. ([Time 0:38:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c2c5c26d-c593-4542-8dfb-032d4ca40831))