Refining Conversation

Conversation is not the same as the written word. 

When you read a transcript of a lively discussion, it often looks as if we’ve forgotten how to speak. Sentences zig-zag, filler words appear, we change tack mid-thought, someone interrupts, and on paper we can seem semi-literate. We blame the voice-to-text software, but the truth is that real-time conversation is messy by design. 

Think about how we listen. We are not like a driverless car with hundreds of sensors. We have one brain that’s simultaneously attending, drifting, and free-associating. We catch enough to respond, yet our thoughts wander to whatever the moment triggers. Transcribe that dance and it’s chaos. 

Inside my own head (and, I suspect, yours) there’s a five-person committee chattering away. Jonathan Haidt’s “rider and elephant” analogy captures it well: the rider (conscious mind) believes it’s steering, but the elephant (subconscious) actually decides where we go, and only afterwards does the rider cook up a justification. Free will exists, but it’s more like gentle guidance than total control. 

That’s why stories matter. They take those bouncing ideas and smooth them into a clear arc: beginning, conflict, resolution. Even then, a short story or a two-hour film is a drastic simplification of real life, which is infinitely messier, full of randomness and ambiguity. Storytelling is how we compress complexity so we can think, and act. 

Writing is the workshop where this compression happens. Forcing thoughts onto the page helps us sequence them, trim the excess, and discover what we really believe. It’s also why I’m excited about large language models. They act like mirrors to our half-formed ideas—reflecting, rearranging, challenging. Modern AI isn’t rigidly rule-based; it learns the way children and, yes, elephants learn: through iteration, feedback, and embodied patterning. 

That’s not something to fear. Humans excel at adaptive learning too, especially in the context of relationships and collaboration. The task is to stay aware of what our inner elephant is absorbing, remain reflective and conversational, and keep refining the stories that steer us. 

Conversation is the raw material, writing is the refinery, and learning (human or artificial) is the fuel that keeps the whole system evolving.