4 ms·

> human speech appears to have a universal transmission rate of around 39-bits per second This is unacceptable, we need a modern language that packs informatio

> human speech appears to have a universal transmission rate of around 39-bits per second This is unacceptable, we need a modern language that packs information tighter!

danudey 4y ago
We need to start in schools, teaching our children to speak in zstd. It could more than triple their throughput!
atulvi 4y ago
Not a language, but a font: https://dotsies.org/ https://dotsies.org/ Discussed in HN multiple times https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703805
carlob 4y ago
I know you're probably joking, but for those out of the loop, the result your parent was referring to is that more verbose languages have faster speakers and the two effects compensate one another pretty well. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594
Terr_ 4y ago
I think this is in jest, but to answer seriously: No, I think that's actually backwards, trying to make a language more "packed" will harm information flow. Evidence suggests the real limit is how quickly human brains can take ideas/qualia, convert them into abstractions, and encode the abstractions into language. This is because (A) very different languages still exhibit similar limits and (B) those limits appear to be governed by the sending-side. People can comprehend spoken words at a higher rate than they can spontaneously emit them. So trying to make the language more "compact" would likely just waste precious brain-cycles on the compression step, which isn't actually necessary when your mouth already supports talking faster. Technology analogy: Two computers are collaboratively solving a problem with back-and-forth messages. The network connection is actually very good, however the bottleneck is the CPU in each computer. Will the problem be solved faster if you change the transmission style from plaintext to gzipped?
- O__________O 4y ago
  >> “People can comprehend spoken words at a higher rate than they can spontaneously emit them.” If you have any links to research supporting this, I would be interested.
  - Terr_ 4y ago
    A Large Inclusive Study of Human Listening Rates [1] focused on finding optimal generated-speech rates for screen-reader software: > The mean Listening Rate was 56.8, which corresponds to 309 WPM. Given that people typically speak at a rate of 120-180 WPM, these results suggest that many people, if not most, can understand speech signifcantly [sic] faster than today’s conversational agents with typical human speaking rates. While there was some difference between the visually-impaired and normal-vision respondents, I don't think it's enough to matter to the thesis of my post: > [...] The mean Listening Rate for visually impaired participants was 60.6 (334 WPM) while for sighted participants it was 55.1 (297 WPM). 1: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3173574.3174018 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3173574.3174018
    - O__________O 4y ago
      Thanks, reviewed research, unclear though how a synthetic voice reading off a single word per unit of measure is an accurate gauge of average listening rates. From page 4 of 12 of the PDF you linked to, “Rhyme test: measures word recognition by playing a single recorded word, and asking the participant to identify it from a list of six rhyming options (e.g., went, sent, bent, dent, tent, rent). We used 50 sets of rhyming words (300 words total), taken from the Modifed Rhyme Test [27], a standard test used to evaluate auditory comprehension.” The word list research used is on page 30-31 of 55 of this PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Hecker-3/publication/235074239_Psychoacoustic_Speech_Tests_A_Modified_Rhyme_Test/links/5f186991a6fdcc9626a6b15f/Psychoacoustic-Speech-Tests-A-Modified-Rhyme-Test.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Hecker-3/public... If true, test appears to not even measuring word recognition, it’s more accurately measuring a single phoneme recognition. If the listener correct picks the correct phoneme from a multi-choice list, researchers assume person would hear and understand 100% of any expressions received at that rate of speed; which in my opinion is clearly flawed. I would be the first to agree that testing listening comprehension rates is hard to do, hence why I asked to review research, but to me, unless I am misunderstanding something, unclear how this research actually provides any meaningful observations.
dev_tty01 4y ago
No, latin is the only language we'll ever need! It is much closer to the fundamental truth, unlike these modern languages that make unnecessary abstractions of what is really going on at the low level.
kbelder 4y ago
I wonder if the bottleneck is in speaking or listening.

> human speech appears to have a universal transmission rate of around 39-bits per second This is unacceptable, we need a modern language that packs information tighter!

danudey 4y ago

We need to start in schools, teaching our children to speak in zstd. It could more than triple their throughput!

atulvi 4y ago

Not a language, but a font: https://dotsies.org/ https://dotsies.org/ Discussed in HN multiple times https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703805

carlob 4y ago

I know you're probably joking, but for those out of the loop, the result your parent was referring to is that more verbose languages have faster speakers and the two effects compensate one another pretty well. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594

Terr_ 4y ago

I think this is in jest, but to answer seriously: No, I think that's actually backwards, trying to make a language more "packed" will harm information flow. Evidence suggests the real limit is how quickly human brains can take ideas/qualia, convert them into abstractions, and encode the abstractions into language. This is because (A) very different languages still exhibit similar limits and (B) those limits appear to be governed by the sending-side. People can comprehend spoken words at a higher rate than they can spontaneously emit them. So trying to make the language more "compact" would likely just waste precious brain-cycles on the compression step, which isn't actually necessary when your mouth already supports talking faster. Technology analogy: Two computers are collaboratively solving a problem with back-and-forth messages. The network connection is actually very good, however the bottleneck is the CPU in each computer. Will the problem be solved faster if you change the transmission style from plaintext to gzipped?

O__________O 4y ago
>> “People can comprehend spoken words at a higher rate than they can spontaneously emit them.” If you have any links to research supporting this, I would be interested.
- Terr_ 4y ago
  A Large Inclusive Study of Human Listening Rates [1] focused on finding optimal generated-speech rates for screen-reader software: > The mean Listening Rate was 56.8, which corresponds to 309 WPM. Given that people typically speak at a rate of 120-180 WPM, these results suggest that many people, if not most, can understand speech signifcantly [sic] faster than today’s conversational agents with typical human speaking rates. While there was some difference between the visually-impaired and normal-vision respondents, I don't think it's enough to matter to the thesis of my post: > [...] The mean Listening Rate for visually impaired participants was 60.6 (334 WPM) while for sighted participants it was 55.1 (297 WPM). 1: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3173574.3174018 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3173574.3174018
  - O__________O 4y ago
    Thanks, reviewed research, unclear though how a synthetic voice reading off a single word per unit of measure is an accurate gauge of average listening rates. From page 4 of 12 of the PDF you linked to, “Rhyme test: measures word recognition by playing a single recorded word, and asking the participant to identify it from a list of six rhyming options (e.g., went, sent, bent, dent, tent, rent). We used 50 sets of rhyming words (300 words total), taken from the Modifed Rhyme Test [27], a standard test used to evaluate auditory comprehension.” The word list research used is on page 30-31 of 55 of this PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Hecker-3/publication/235074239_Psychoacoustic_Speech_Tests_A_Modified_Rhyme_Test/links/5f186991a6fdcc9626a6b15f/Psychoacoustic-Speech-Tests-A-Modified-Rhyme-Test.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Hecker-3/public... If true, test appears to not even measuring word recognition, it’s more accurately measuring a single phoneme recognition. If the listener correct picks the correct phoneme from a multi-choice list, researchers assume person would hear and understand 100% of any expressions received at that rate of speed; which in my opinion is clearly flawed. I would be the first to agree that testing listening comprehension rates is hard to do, hence why I asked to review research, but to me, unless I am misunderstanding something, unclear how this research actually provides any meaningful observations.

dev_tty01 4y ago

No, latin is the only language we'll ever need! It is much closer to the fundamental truth, unlike these modern languages that make unnecessary abstractions of what is really going on at the low level.

kbelder 4y ago

I wonder if the bottleneck is in speaking or listening.