WHY NTs do things with conversation

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Someone said it a lot better than I ever could have, so I'm quoting from another thread with permission from the author:

guile and beguile.

Tactics ... using tact.

I make up for the lack of such by doing explicit research on people I need to understand, which is time-consuming, but has its own advantages.

Aha! Now I understand it, or can relay to the topic. I read your earlier tread on this, but I did not quite get it.
It seems to me that most of them(NTs) are quite good to find a weak spot in others, and know presicely when or where to press the buttons.

I remember I discovered this "arms-race" back when I had friends. It gave me the impression of a real competition - knowing the most about the other's true opinion of you while giving out the least info about where they stand with you.

Already covered this. But to save the time searching and digging it out the posts, the short version:

To broach issues of great sensitivity with plausible deniability, and easing the listener into the full weight of understanding. For reasons of kindness and/or self-interest (can be both nefarious and altruistic reasons). People tend to stop thinking, and sometimes start swinging, when they get pissed off. Bringing it gently means greater chance of effective communication.

Then there is entertainment value, which is leads to engaging the listener more. I give you a good time, you listen to me. Maybe we entertain each other with this great stuff we've got to share. Again, more effective communication.

EDIT: Oops, missed one. Doing two things at once. Running dual channels has it's efficiency advantages.

P.S. Your "do things with conversation" idea is really another, I think a bit obfuscating, way of saying "the breadth of the things that humans communicate and how they communicate is far greater than the scope of the immediate, literal meaning of the words they speak and write". Yes, I've seen your initial post. No, I didn't bother mention this in there because the thread was already really long by the time I saw it. All the "do" things are just a different forms of communication for a different reasons.

I remember this too from my school days. It was amazing how many people were led on by others. There was also a kind of "logical intellectual" arms race going on too: there were limited places in the top sets.

I decided to take up the challenge of the "intellectual" arms race and did quite well. But in order to do that I found that I had to neglect an active role in the social arms race. This was true for some others too I'm sure. Fortunately knowing things won me a few friends. I have nothing against healthy competition: I just couldn't comprehend the cliques because I knew that everyone was a unique individual.

I have nothing against healthy competition either. But I do have something against covert competition that we're all supposed to pretend is not taking place.

To be known is to be predictable, so people try to conceal their true thoughts and emotions to avoid being easily manipulated.

Yes, indeed.

I’m a little confused by this. In order to make the claim that all the elements of a conversation are mere communication with no other intent you have to define communication as something more than the transfer of information. Transferring non-verbal information or hidden “between the lines” messages still falls under communication.

But what about making an impression, i.e. delivery? To me that seems like more than information. What if you’re trying to evoke a certain emotion in your listener through your communication? Trying to create emotions is “doing” something to me. It isn’t passive but active. I think us aspies tend to use communication in a mostly passive way. We send information but we aren’t very good at influencing how other’s react to the information we give. I know I’m very bad at delivering a story or joke in a way that others find interesting or funny.

Maybe they were trying to be polite and avoid the person any embarassment? Would be interested in what was the 'something is wrong'.

Maybe we are paranoid at times. Not all NT bite.

i have backwards directional sense and backwards sales skills. i can influence how others react to the information i give but it's the opposite of what i'd like. when i try to persuade a person to do something, it's almost guaranteed they will end up hating it. i don't do jokes well either.

a job interview is all about selling yourself.

I think that people pretend that competition isn't taking place to ease conflict and form alliances with others. No one is fantastic at doing everything, so people have to turn to each other for help from time to time. Different people are good at different things.

I think it all depends on what kind of competition one decides or is mentally programmed to actively engage in.

Perhaps people subconsciously allocate their mental processing power according to what outcomes they want to achieve/are capable of achieving.

I believe that someone who devotes over 50% of their mental processing power to pursuing solitary academic activities must suffer a deficit in their mental processing of social situations.

If socialising and being popular/funny is a person's main goal in life, this person's ability to do solitary activities (such as private reading) is going suffer because most of this person's time will be allocated to socialising.

If a person has a one track mind/narrow focus on one task, this person is going to have lots difficulty with any unrelated tasks because these aren't top priority.

I believe that there's always a trade-off between someone's ability to cope in solitary vs group activities.

There are people of course who have a 50-50% mental processing power split between solitary and group activities. These people are called "well balanced" or "well adjusted" and seem to be adaptable to a variety of situations without being mind blowingly brilliant in any one particular activity, but just good enough.

I think how someone copes very much depends on the social and physical environment s/he finds his/herself in. Some people's personailties are just better adapted to working in busy hyper-social environments than others. These people would probably suffer in highly structured, quiet environments that favoured solitary work though.

If people's personalities are in equilibrium with their environment, they feel comfortable and are able to succeed.