Communication is hard. I spend a lot of time writing things
for people to read and act on at work, so communicating clearly is important to me. I
have found that it is far easier to miscommunicate than to communicate.
Which is really just saying its easier to fail than win. So, nothing new or
deep there.
I think we run into problems because people don’t really
understand how words work. So lets talk about that.
Imagine your mind is a vast warehouse of information. Rows
and rows and rows of boxes stored in industrial grade shelving. In our mental
picture, the boxes are words and are filled with everything our mind associates with those words. That can be the definitions of those words.
For example, the box labelled “puppy” would be filled with words like “dog” and
“baby animal” and “cute.” But it can also be pictures, smells, or emotions. Like that warm feeling you get when a puppy runs to you and curls up on your lap.
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| The mind: A vast warehouse full of useless trivia |
Let's say I want to communicate the concept “puppy” to you.
Ideally, my brain gnomes (all brain warehouses are run by gnomes) would grab
the correct box and ship it to you. And then you’d open it and see what I meant when I said "puppy." The glory of communication.
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| Box delivered |
But that’s not how it works. Because I have no way of
actually delivering the box to you. It’s in my head, after all. But say I saw a
puppy during my day and wanted to tell you about it. When I say, “puppy,” your
brain gnomes search for the box labelled puppy in your brain warehouse. They
pull the box off the shelf and look into it. The box is full of stuff. Some of the stuff is the same as mine, like “dog” and “baby animal” and “cute.” But other stuff is probably
different. Maybe there’s a picture of that one time a puppy peed on your sister’s
leg. Hilarious. Or the smell of your laundry covered in puppy vomit. Or how you felt that time when you wanted that puppy ever so badly but your cold hearted parents refused to hear your pleas.
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| My warm tears will melt their frozen hearts |
The gnomes have a problem. They are tasked with giving you
the information you need to understand me, but your “puppy” box is
different than my “puppy” box. So the gnomes use context. Was it a happy story?
They’ll probably send you the picture of that super cute puppy you saw at the
pet store last year. Was it a sad story? Maybe the gnomes send up that one
puppy you saw looking miserable in the rain when you were five.
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| Don't cry, little girl. |
But what if you grew up in West Nowheresville and have no
knowledge of puppies at all? Your gnomes are going to scour that warehouse and
come up empty. So maybe they send up a picture of a kitten because you were
talking about how cute it was. Or maybe they send up the way mashed potatoes
taste because both words start with “p” and you’re hungry and my story is
boring and… do we need another reason to think about mashed potatoes? No. Always think about mashed potatoes.
And that’s just one word about a simple topic. What if you’re
tired? By extension, your gnomes are tired. And tired gnomes are cranky. So
they’ll pretty much always send up the meaning of words that leads to you being
cranky too. Because misery loves company and tired gnomes are little jerks. Or
they won’t send up anything at all because they’re passed out in the middle of
an aisle. So you’ll just stare at me blankly while I talk. And what if you’ve
had too much to drink? Looks like your gnomes are going to stumble around
looking for word boxes. But they’ll probably be the wrong words entirely. Or
they’ll be the wrong part of the right word. We’ll be talking politics, and all
you’ll be able to think about is how “gubernatorial” has “goober” in it. Heh.
Goober. And we haven't even talked about what happens if you're super angry or super happy and what that does to the poor brain gnomes context sensitive algorithms.
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| Brain gnomes always awkwardly recline while smoking pipes on break |
And that's the crux of it. Communication isn't the precise transmission of information. Instead, it is asking the other person to search through
their memory for the word we used, sift through all the possible meanings of
that word that they know (some meanings probably completely different than what
you know), pick a meaning or two based on context (and how the gnomes happen
to feel at that moment), and string that meaning together with the meanings of
all the other words you just used. I realize the preceding sentence is long and
convoluted. That’s the point. If the gnomes get anything wrong at any point in
that chain of events, the wrong thoughts get communicated. It’s a wonder we
ever successfully communicate anything at all.
Brain gnomes, man. They live a hard life.
As an aside, the next time someone tells you that you just
need to read the “plain words,” stand up for your gnomes. You tell them, “Hey,
man, ain’t nothing simple for the brain gnomes in the warehouse of my mind.”
That’ll learn ‘em. That’ll learn ‘em good.
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