Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second • Hacker News Board

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#171

Post by akjetma » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:19 AM UTC

Scientists started with written texts from 17 languages, including English, Italian, Japanese, and Vietnamese. They calculated the information density of each language in bits—the same unit that describes how quickly your cellphone, laptop, or computer modem transmits information. They found that Japanese, which has only 643 syllables, had an information density of about 5 bits per syllable, whereas English, with its 6949 syllables, had a density of just over 7 bits per syllable. Vietnamese, with its complex system of six tones (each of which can further differentiate a syllable), topped the charts at 8 bits per syllable.

how can you encode 643 syllables using 5 bits? same for 6949 syllabes/7 bits?

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#172

Post by ColanR » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:22 AM UTC

ahicks wrote: post #169

taneq wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's incredible. Do you find it frustrating talking to actual humans now? I'd imagine it feels like they're speaking in slow motion. Edit: Hah, just saw your post on talking faster to other people who have the same audio skills.

Other people in realtime aren't...I guess the best way I have to put it is informationally sparse. There's a lot going on beside what's being said in conversation. Synths don't imply things for example; in a context with active implication slowing/pausing the synth is sometimes necessary. The skill doesn't extend beyond the blatant transfer of information. In social contexts and especially when you can't go off any v…

> audiobooks aren't annoying, but they're below my baud if you will. Net result: boredom/falling asleep to whatever it is and the need to actively make an effort to listen. Some things which require active listener participation--math lectures for example--are different.

That sounds like a similar description to what it's like for people with IQs significantly higher than the average.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#173

Post by ssalka » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:30 AM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #15

But, he says, instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. Some years ago I worked on an accessibility project for an app and website designed for people with disabilities. One…

For me I imagine the bottleneck would rather be how quickly I can translate my thoughts into speech. Oftentimes I will start out talking to myself to explain a topic, only to eventually digress into my "mental monologue" because I start to process thoughts faster than I can say them.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#174

Post by lenepp » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:32 AM UTC

Apologies for being harsh, but this kind of thing is the phrenology of our time. I know it's utterly conventional to think this way about language in some circles that present themselves as doing legitimate science, but the view that you can calculate the amount of information in human speech, except in a super-technical sense that doesn't match any of the reporting on this study or the way people are interpreting it, has to be called out for the total nonsense that it is. It doesn't bear a moment's honest reflection.

And yes, I know information theory. It's language that these folks - many of them prominent and celebrated within their utterly normalized professions, just like in the days of phrenology - are fundamentally mistaken about. What quantity of information do you think there is in the word "trump," for instance? Is it the same over time, to bring up just one feature of how this funny thing called context informs human speech?

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is a good place to start if anyone's interested in understanding this issue.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#175

Post by geomark » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:43 AM UTC

akjetma wrote: post #171

Scientists started with written texts from 17 languages, including English, Italian, Japanese, and Vietnamese. They calculated the information density of each language in bits—the same unit that describes how quickly your cellphone, laptop, or computer modem transmits information. They found that Japanese, which has only 643 syllables, had an information density of about 5 bits per syllable, whereas English, with its…

If I understand this correctly, it isn't that they are uniquely encoding each syllable. It's that they are encoding the information in each syllable. Many syllables have very low information content and must be combined with other syllables to convey information. Many other syllables are redundant.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#176

Post by jerf » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:54 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #52

dual_basis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can watch YouTube content at 3x without issue. I did this without much intentional effort - I simply downloaded an extension which allows me to speed up the video in increments of 0.1x using a keyboard shortcut. Whenever it felt slow I would speed it up, and whenever it felt too fast I would slow it down. Without paying much attention to the actual numbers I had reached over 3x within a month or so.

I tried this right now with the trick below. 2x was no issue but 3x... that was a big step. It sounded like word salad. As if my brain was decoding the words out of order and was unable to assemble them into sentences.

It also depends on the density of the original content. Some things flow nicely at 1.5; others can be cranked up to 3x or even beyond if you turn on subtitles because they're just another YouTube video padded to hit the magic 10 minute mark, or whatever it is now, and you don't really need the audio.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#177

Post by thunderrabbit » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:57 AM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #56

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #8

> instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. “It really seems that the bottleneck is in putting the ideas together.” Glad this paragraph was in the article, clears up their m…

Okay, but the experimental subjects didn't put any thoughts together but read out some text aloud...

The same text, at that. So the text has N bits of information and it was, according to the article, spoken at different speeds per language. So N bits at different speeds per language, exactly the opposite of their claim.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#178

Post by alexandercrohde » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:58 AM UTC

I don't get the methodology. If you have a short-story, and translate it into 10 languages (and translate very well), it should have the same amount of information in it in each translation, no?

Therefore the transmission rate will simply be proportional to the time to read the story. This idea contradicts what their study found, no?

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#179

Post by avinium » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 3:02 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #99

bradknowles wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to understand it, I would encourage you to write down notes about it by hand. For some reason I do not yet understand, the motion of physically putting pen(cil) to paper helps ingrain that information into your brain, in a way that typing it into a computer does not.

Some people say writing is better because typing is "unnatural", but from an evolutionary standpoint both are extremely, equally unnatural activities. There's no reason moving a cylinder of graphite with one hand should be inherently better matched to the brain than moving squares of plastic with two. My personal guess is that, with fast typing speeds, it's too easy to just copy things word for word. With writing, yo…

I have a pet theory that our brains are hard-wired to store information "better" if it bears some kind of personal/individual imprint.

In other words, we can "store" knowledge more efficiently when written in our own handwriting than when typed into a neutral/generic text editor.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#180

Post by bagacrap » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 3:58 AM UTC

thunderrabbit wrote: post #177

bonoboTP wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but the experimental subjects didn't put any thoughts together but read out some text aloud...

The same text, at that. So the text has N bits of information and it was, according to the article, spoken at different speeds per language. So N bits at different speeds per language, exactly the opposite of their claim.

No, the text does not have the same amount of information in every language, because they are talking about the information in the audio, not the semantic value. Your brain categorizes each syllable it hears into one of N classifications, where N differs by language. So the max intelligible playback speed (in syllables per second), multiplied by the syllabic entropy (in bits per syllable), tends to land on 39bit/s.