A conversation requires listening and talking. I have trouble holding my own thoughts and listening at the same time so that I feel I want to interrupt. In holding my thoughts, I can't truly be present for the others comments. And if I let mine go, at the next pause, I often can't recall them.
Hi Ken, Your final sentence about being able to convince anyone of anything if only you had the right words reminds me of what I read about Gustave Flaubert, a French novelist. He was a stickler for using the unique right word. It is well known that he would often spend weeks searching for just the right word to use. So, in a serious conversation, we probably should occasionally pause and try to find the right words to make a point.
While I don't claim to have achieved my earlier ambitions, there generally is one best word to be used, and throwing a dart at a list of synonyms from a thesaurus probably isn't going to do the job.
Some additional thoughts on the right words. I learned about the left brain-right brain model of the brain back in the 1970s. Learning that the left half of the brain processes verbal data and the right half processes visual data changed my technical writing for the better. I then understood that using only words was reaching only the left half of the reader's brain. The reader was then only getting a half-brain understanding of what I was trying to say. So, I began adding many more illustrations to reach the right brain as well. My technical writing then got much better because using words and pictures created a whole-brain understanding in the reader. Okay, so what does that mean for ordinary verbal conversation. To me, it says use only concrete words instead of abstract words if possible. If only an abstract word will do, then repeat the same thought but use different words the second time around. Clarity is the most important first step for a serious conversation, followed by brevity and simplicity. If you are sending an important email where you don't want to be misunderstood, then include some images or photos to reach the right brain as well. The same applies to public speaking. Namaste.
I learned about some of the different ways that people learn while I was teaching EMT and paramedic students. For myself, I learn best by reading. In fact, when I was in college I would sometimes skip class in order to study for a test in the same class that I was skipping since I could learn more from the book than from the instructor. For me, the acronyms that teachers like to use were lost on me. It took me more time to learn the acronym than to learn the facts and principles that the acronym was intended to teach. Rather than learning algorithms for treating various medical situations, I would prefer to learn why these treatments are dictated, how they act upon the body, and so on, because then I truly knew what I was doing rather than simply memorizing the prescribed treatments. Then the protocols and the algorithms made sense, if they made sense, and sometimes they didn't. However, while teaching others, I had to learn the acronyms, algorithms, and all of the other tricks for memorization, because many of my students simply weren't capable of learning any other way. I think we all learn from doing, but some of my students simply couldn't understand something until they had a chance to do it. Words matter, but more so to some people than to others.
I also did some teaching before I knew about left brain-right brain. But even then, I managed to do a reasonable job of it. One of the innovations that I used was open-book midterms and finals. My students were blown away by being able to use their textbooks, notes, and anything else they wanted to bring to the exam. They found out soon enough that I was not interested in how good their memory was, but rather in how well they could solve problems.