Another thing I've been pondering (and usually I post these ponderances weeks apart so they don't collide):

Is it possible for a conversation between two people to not be about one person AND not be about the other person? In other words, can people talk about something else besides themselves?

Examples of talking about ones self include: stating preference, stating opinion, and even stating fact, which is subject to your personal interpretation, memory, and bias. Maybe even "The sky is blue" implies "I know that the sky is blue because I have observed it. What do you think about that?"

I ask because I get annoyed by people who talk about themselves all the time. Case in point, I'm annoyed with myself nearly 100% of the time. But it hurts my social life since I distance myself from people who leave me no choice but to talk about them, never letting in a word edgewise.

So, if there's something ELSE to talk about, I could use that to break the bad habit held by me and people that I know. Or maybe I'm totally out of practice for answering these odd questions myself.

I suppose if all you want to talk about is the statistical relevancy of scientific experiments, this might be possible.

IMHO (see, there I go, talking about myself), it's completely impossible to talk about anything without it being subject to your personal interpretation, memory, and bias, since the only knowledge you can have is... well... subject to your personal interpretation, memory, and bias.

Now... having a running monologue about oneself... I did this, I did that, I think this, yadda, yadda, yadda. That is both unnecessary, and annoying.

Most of what you count as talking about ones self, however, seem to me to be where most of the interesting convesations take place. That's your opinion? Why? What formed that opinion? How does that mesh with my own understanding that's completely opposite?
Certainly, there are also a lot of inanities included, but, well, that's the way it goes. On the otherhand, how much of "talking about oneself" isn't about the person, but just a way of introducing a topic of convesation -- "Hey, I read in the paper..." The important thing isn't that I read something in the paper -- what I really want to talk about is the content of whatever article it was. With some personal bias thrown in the mix.

I once read somewhere that there are three classes of intelligence -- those who talk about things, those who talk about people, and those who talk about ideas. Personally, I think that's a bit of tripe, and I like a good mixture of the three. To get what you want seems, to me, to restrict one unnaturally to the first.

Of course one talks about oneself, otherwise the conversation would be deadly dull!

I think in general, people need to feel connected to each other and they do that by listening to other's experiences and relaying their own. Sometimes it can get out of hand to where, like you say, they end up rambling on about themselves, but, thats life and thats how people are (especially in certain parts of the country). I'll usually just zone out or cut the person off and move on to something completely unrelated like nothing happened.

I must be looking at it the wrong way round. I avoid talking to some people I know because it seems they vigilantly and consistantly only talk about themselves. Any attempt to talk about something else is cut off back to talking about them. And if it's not cut off, the topic-not-about-them seems uninterestedly half-heartedly tolerated and not contributed to until my disinterest with talking to my new found brick wall makes me turn the topic back to them.

Maybe it's just me being paranoid, unsocial, or selfish (wanting to talk about myself instead). Maybe I should take the advice of REM and say, "Should we talk about the weather? Should we talk about the government?" On second thought, maybe not.

Either that, or perhaps a different approach. Drill in. If they steer the conversation on to themselves, push a little further and have them go deeper. Eventually, they will hit something they are either not comfortable about and stop (probably awkwardly), or you will get to know a lot about that person... Listen to what they say - that will guide you.