On interpersonal communication

I've spent a lot of time making two pieces of silicon "communicate." In this sense communication most simply put is the transfer of data. The issue with people is the circuits that run their brain are sufficiently complicated that we can't transfer data between them with ones and zeros.

Nonetheless, communication has been extremely important to our survival. Distinguishing between the kind of grunt that meant "there's a tiger over here" and the one that meant "there's food over here" (or better yet "I'm interested in procreating right now") is pretty obviously useful.

Let's look at a case study. If one caveman knew something, and they wanted another to know something, they had to convey it with a grunt. The messenger caveman has to decide what kind of grunt to make to convey meaning. This grunt has to be heard, and then interpreted by the receiver caveman.

It is interesting to think about what the caveman knows at this point- say he saw a bush with juicy, ripe berries under a beautiful tree with the sun shining through the leaves... there is no way for him to communicate this. All he can do is make the noise that the other caveman may interpret as meaning "food." This shows the degradation in data quality that occurs when information is conveyed.

But is the quality really that degraded? Maybe all that the receiver caveman heard was a grunt. We can imagine the receiving caveman does not just hear a noise. He heard "food." He then probably realizes that the information being conveyed is "there is good food over here." Based on his knowledge of good food, and maybe his knowledge of the previously-unripe berry bush over there, he may reconstruct from this grunt a similar scene- a bush of juicy, ripe berries under a beautiful tree.

In that communication there was a filtering of an analog experience through one caveman into a low-fidelity signal, then a reconstituting of an analog experience by another from that signal. They are not the same experience, but they are close enough for the communication to have achieved its goal.

Important to this successful communication is
Agreed upon grunt patterns (language)
Knowledge of good food (shared prior context?)
Knowledge of berry bush locations (environment, also part of context)

This reduction/expansion handicap has stayed with us through the years. Despite the efforts we've made to overcome it through expanding our vocabulary and grammar past grunting (with varying levels of success) it is still impossible to convey an idea fully from one person to another. I still have to apply a filter to my idea to distill it into words, then you have to reinterpret those words into an idea. Hopefully they are the same. My goal as a writer is to make them at least similar.

PS

Apologies for the fact that every character in this metaphor was a man, it's just that in my experience men are much better communicators anyway. A cavewoman could mean just about anything with a food grunt- i.e.

"Ungha (food)"
"What? Are you hungry?"
"Unggggh (why are you even asking that?)"
"Or are you saying your tummy hurts? You ate something bad?"
"Ungha Ungha (no dumbass, I'm hungry)"
"Ok ok what do you want to eat? Tex Mex?"
"... (I don't know)"
"We're pretty close to Chuys, we could go there."
"Unnnngha (absolutely not)"
"Ok, well, then what do you want?"
"... (I don't know)"

And if you can't yet tell- this isn't even a representation of a cavewoman. It's a typical conversation with my girlfriend, and she has command of a lovely vocabulary that she refuses to employ.

"Ungah (I'm interested in procreating right now)"
"Wait, really??"
"No."