<i>However, the best way Howard gets the truth out of his guests is by lying directly to them about a specific piece of their life. By telling them a lie about themselves, the very first reaction they have is to correct it and by doing so, they give the answer he’s searching for.</i><p>This is very useful Usenet+ trick to get an answer to a question. You could be nice and simply ask a question: "How can I do X in Y?" and you might get an answer. Maybe.<p>Or you could simply assert, "It is impossible to do X in Y", and get a flood of replies because, well, xkcd 386 should cover it.<p><a href="http://xkcd.com/386/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/386/</a><p>edit: It occurred to me that there may be a practical way to spin this when getting software requirements. For example, you could simply ask, "Is <some quality or feature or behavior> important?" Ir you could phrase it as an assertion: "OK, so I'm assuming that <some quality or feature or behavior> is not important." Or some variation.<p>I wonder if that difference in phrasing leads to getting better details. That is, in what way does how you phrase something (question or assertion, positive or negative) push a response in one direction or another?
Welcome to Elicitation 101 [1]. The author points out one of the most obvious and easily used ones:<p><i>Deliberate False Statements / Denial of the Obvious</i>: Say something wrong in the hopes that the person will correct your statement with true information. “Everybody knows that process won’t work—it’s just a DARPA dream project that will never get off the ground.”<p>[1]<a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/counterintelligence/elicitation-techniques" rel="nofollow">http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/counterintelligence/...</a>
As someone who is socially awkward, especially at small talk and the superficial dialog that seems to preface any real discussion or conversation, I find Howard Stern to be amazing to listen to. He can talk about one small thing for minutes at a time without you realizing how much time has gone by.<p>I don't really appreciate his humour, but analysing his conversations is very interesting and educational.
What was fun to me was when Howard interviewed Paul McCartney. Howard tried ever interview trick in the book, and Paul deftly swatted them away. It was great watching two masters spar at each other.<p>I saw the same thing when Prince Charles was interviewed by 60 Minutes, where Prince Charles effortlessly parried every tactic tried by the reporter.
I remember reading that a variant of this technique was used way back to coax Beethoven to perform for guests. He was known to not want to play on request (iirc, it was a pride "I do what I want when I want, I'm not your dancing monkey" kind of thing).<p>So if you wanted to get him to play for you, you merely had to poorly play one of his works, and he would be so annoyed that he would react by playing it the right way).<p>I wish I remember where I read this (hadn't thought of it in years, so I may have details wrong, but the premise is the same).
I use the devil's advocate approach to gathering software requirements. I argue against what I feel are good ideas and argue for what are seemingly not so good ideas. As long as you don't get too far off track the discussion is often very enlightening about what your customers actually want to build. The downside is that you either end up feeling like or looking like an idiot because you're seemingly on the wrong side of idea (BTW I'm not claiming that I'm not an idiot). Letting everyone know that this is your approach doesn't have much, if any, downside and alleviates this problem. Having another person to tag team with makes it less exhausting. It works for the same reason that Stern's approach works - people love to tell you how you are wrong.
The Interviews are more interesting if the person is naked.<p>If you don't have to follow the broadcast rules, you can ask questions nobody else can.<p>If you hire a black female as your co-host people won't be so quick to call you a racist or sexist.<p>(that's what I learned)
"Learning this skill won’t necessarily make you a better software engineer, or entrepreneur, but it can get information from people that are otherwise not willing to reveal it."<p>Pfft, every successful entrepreneur I've met from the Kansai area of Japan does this. The first step is knowing the price of everything, isn't it?