I can only imagine the difference it would make if instead of telling about your idea you could show it
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.
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
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
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…
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.
