This is why it's critical for us to predefine thematically relevant words and phrases we intend or assume to be relievent to important discussion. Language is an imperfect tool. This is a common communication factor considered for philosophical discussion that I think is undervalued in day to day discourse.
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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That's why it's key to communication to have the person you're speaking with reform the idea and send it back to you. So you can both agree that you have the same idea.
When it's just one person sending the idea, verbally, or even visibly, and the other person just agrees. You don't know the model they've internalized. It's not until they act, or until they re-explain the idea back to you that you can have confidence you have a mutual understanding.
That's why active communication is so critical. You especially see this in crew resource management
Agreed. It's often called steelmanning which is the opposite of strawmanning.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/steelman
Thank you, that's a phrase I was not familiar with.
It seems more appropriate for critical analysis rather than communication between peers. But it's a great concept
There's research that shows that even when 2 people are talking about very simple matters, the their mental models of the issue and interpretations of the subject are completely different the vast majority of the time. There was an interesting podcast about it that I'll try to dig out from months of history in my podcast app.
I'd love to hear it if you find it
Found it! Had to look through 4 months of history.
That's compatible with information theory. You have a piece of information, the moment you encode it (turn your idea into words) that piece of information is transposed to a little different piece of information, then the channel of transportation adds a bit of noise (depends on the environment, most often literal background noise), and then the receiver decodes the to a different piece of information (turn your words into an idea of their own).
Understanding this concept is an important communication skill. Information theory gives a bunch of tools to minimize the difference between the idea in your head and the perception of the idea by your peer.
- You can add redundancy, aka say the same thing twice in a slightly different way.
- Use questions to validate your understanding.
- Have your peer use their own words.
- Use a different encoding, aka draw a picture, a diagram, or use gestures instead of using language to communicate
Hence why Dennis pulls out a giant paper whiteboard to explain his D.E.N.N.I.S. system
I really hate it when people call for impromptu meetings and are completely oblivious to what you mention. People are absolutely incapable of bridging mental gaps. Nobody explains common vocabulary. Nobody explains the expected goal of conversation. Nobody evens the playing field. Instead, you watch people confused and asking stupid questions, before they arrive at a constructive mental place, right before the meeting is over.
Communication is art and a skill. Just because someone is talking a lot, doesn't mean they communicate well.
If you can efficiently enable a group of people to arrive in a mental context where they can contribute value to a decision or process, you are a valuable team member.
IMHO this always requires preparation. You can't expect to have a valuable exchange if you yourself can't fully imagine the mental context the other people are in. At every moment you have to understand what might be keeping them from understanding you, and then approaching the specific conflict. "Why don't you understand me?" is something you should never have to ask yourself.
Also, yes, build more prototypes and actually watch some shit go instead of talking so fucking much. Pictures are a thousand words and a real thing is like thousands of pictures. Stop talking already!
There's also the difference between what you think the words you say mean and what they understand from your words.
i think you misunderstood OP.
I don't think so, my point was that there's not only uncertainty in converting the idea to language and language back to an idea, but there's also uncertainty when transferring language from one person to another.
The comments section here is absolute gold for anyone that aims to improve communication skills. Great post op.
Welcome to post-structuralism, enjoy the ennui. And the cognac.
If I'm not mistaken, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I recall that the ancient greeks dedicated a lot of effort in bettering communication of ideas.
Yes! Rhetoric, the study of the available means of persuasion! Lots of professions still do that today: speech writers, advertisement creators, academic rhetoricians, some linguists, some anthropologists or sociologists, some historians…
Yes, best to assume you’re always misunderstanding, or at least not understanding completely, a conversational comment until you have a holistic understanding of where they’re coming from (ie you become familiar with them and how they think and what they value).
That is a bit how humans always explained human experiences - by explaining it through how modern technology works.
Years ago it were mechanical mechanisms that explained how we think. Before that it was a pinhole camera. Today it is information technology.
But that‘s not how humans think, interact, and live in the world. You’re model doesn’t explain why some people are boring and some are meszmerising. Some spoken words can resonate with your body and emotion (think of songs) some not. Some people such as Italians speak with hands and gestures as well and need it to understand the other.
That‘s why for me web calls are okay for just some information sharing but when it comes to even more intense and effective exchange, humans have to be in one room - to be in wave.
With just showing an idea, the problem is that humans aren’t in your head and see the world through the windows of the eyes (pinhole camera concept). Humans interact and move and see the world. That’s btw one of the breakthroughs in robotics - moving robots can much better interact with the world.
I appreciate your thoughtful response, but I think you may have slightly missed what I meant by that. My point was about the inherent limitations of language as a medium for conveying abstract ideas, not necessarily about how humans interact with one another on a more deeper level.
Language, while powerful, is inherently concrete. Words and phrases are symbols that stand in for the ideas, emotions, and experiences we want to share. But just like a photograph of a beautiful view, language can’t fully capture the essence of what we’re trying to communicate. When we translate an abstract idea into words, some nuance or richness is inevitably lost, much like how a 2D image can’t convey the full depth, sound, and emotion of the original scene.
You’re absolutely right that human interaction involves much more than just words, like body language, tone, and physical presence all play roles in communication. And that’s exactly why being in the same room as someone can create a richer, more immersive exchange. But even in those situations, we’re still mostly using language to translate our thoughts into something the other person can understand. The point I was making is about the gap between the abstract idea and its expression through language and how something can get lost in translation, regardless of how well we try to convey it.
Showing an idea, rather than explaining it, would therefor be equivalent to letting the person experience that beautiful view first-hand rather than via a photograph. It may still not have the same effect on them than it had on you, but atleast now you're both thinking about the same thing.
sometimes it really be like that.
There’s also some thinkers who say that thinking only ever happens through language, so talking could be more of a mapping of “thinking words” onto “communication words”.
Yeah I've always wondered what the mind would be like on someone that doesn't know any languages. Would something like anxiety or rumimation even be possible for a person like that?
I disagree, though. I, for one, know that I "feel" or "visualize" a concept in my head and the words to define that idea comes after. I often talk really fast because my thoughts are going faster than words can form and I feel like I'm trying to catch up to them.
Your statement also suggests that animals that don't have a "language" can't think, which is an odd thing to believe imo..
That's why invented stupid shit like powerpoint and now the world is dieing
A bad workman blames his tools. As much as I have been tortured with pointless PowerPoints, it is incapable of inflicting harm without the arsehole in charge of it.