Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 263 posts

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

#191

Post by ta1234567890 »

> After noting how long the speakers took to get through their readings, the researchers calculated an average speech rate per language, measured in syllables/second.

> No matter how fast or slow, how simple or complex, each language gravitated toward an average rate of 39.15 bits per second

So does this mean that we are "understanding" only those 39 bits of syllables per second, or more like we are using those 39 bits to index something like an internal address space?

And if the latter is the case, how big would that address space be?

It would also be cool to see this complemented with the data rate (bits/second) of emotion communicated per second and see if that increases the total effective rate of communication between people.

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

#192

Post by skosch »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #191

> After noting how long the speakers took to get through their readings, the researchers calculated an average speech rate per language, measured in syllables/second. > No matter how fast or slow, how simple or complex, each language gravitated toward an average rate of 39.15 bits per second So does this mean that we are "understanding" only those 39 bits of syllables per second, or more like we are using those 39 bi…

The article explicitly concludes that the speaker is the bottleneck, not the listener. You can understand sped-up Youtube videos just fine.

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

#193

Post by canjobear »

lenepp wrote: post #174

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…

What do you see as the contradiction between Wittgenstein and information theory?

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

#194

Post by ta1234567890 »

skosch wrote: post #192
ta1234567890 wrote: post #191

> After noting how long the speakers took to get through their readings, the researchers calculated an average speech rate per language, measured in syllables/second. > No matter how fast or slow, how simple or complex, each language gravitated toward an average rate of 39.15 bits per second So does this mean that we are "understanding" only those 39 bits of syllables per second, or more like we are using those 39 bi…

The article explicitly concludes that the speaker is the bottleneck, not the listener. You can understand sped-up Youtube videos just fine.

Yes. And they say that we can listen at a rate of up to 120% more, which means 46.8 bits/second of syllables.

So then, does it mean we "understand" 46.8 bits of information, or that we are using those bit to address some other, maybe bigger/more complex or detailed, memory space?

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

#195

Post by sabujp »

thrwayxyz wrote: post #153
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…

I'm fully sighted but I use espeak tts at around 1000wpd for fluff text like ecnomist articles and 300wpm for heavy going text like the text sections of math books. I also watch most video at 2/3 times the speed since the skills seem transferable.

what flags do you use for espeak, just -s 1000 seems incomprehensible to me

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

#196

Post by knzhou »

avinium wrote: post #179
knzhou wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm... then perhaps it's good that I'm extremely particular about how I type my LaTeX, down to microadjustments to the kerning to make it look nicer.

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

#197

Post by CAMLORN »

shakna wrote: post #190
josephpmay wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find any recordings of 800 WPM synths. Would it be possible for you to make one? I'm curious of what it sounds like.

I don't think it'd be legal for me to hand you an espeak recording, but it works fine at 800WPM. espeak -s 800 "Things to say."

You can pass Espeak recordings around legally. It's just GPL. The license applies to the software, not the content produced via it.

I will attempt to remember and find the time to take my demo recording of this on Rust compiler source code that's currently in dropbox and put it up somewhere more permanent. I doubt Dropbox will care for me much if I allow HN-volume traffic to hit my account. It's Espeak using an NVDA fork with an additional voice that some of us like, so vanilla espeak is in the ballpark.

What I don't remember is if vanilla non-libsonic espeak softcaps the speech rate. It might. I believe new versions of espeak integrate libsonic directly, but that old versions just silently bump the speaking rate down if it's over the max. I haven't used command line espeak directly for anything in a very long time.

Libsonic is an optimized library specifically for the use case of screen readers that need to push synths further: https://github.com/waywardgeek/sonic

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

#199

Post by dkarl »

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…

This is fascinating; thank you. How does an audio book read by the author, such as Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, which contains autobiographical information, compare? Is it more like a social situation that you need real time to absorb, or do you prefer it at a higher speed? How does a stage play compare? Do you watch movies sped up?

Also, how does your "baud" vary with your familiarity with the ideas? I can't imagine it's independent. As a ~35 year old programmer with a decade of professional experience and a decade of hobby experience before that, I cracked open SICP for the first time and found almost everything familiar. I had digested the ideas from other sources, so I could read at a "natural" rate. If I had read it as a teenager, it would have been a mindfuck, and I would have taken multiple slow readings to understand. When you talk about numbers like 800, are you talking about writing that challenges you and changes the way you think, or are you talking about stuff you do for a living that is just information you're already primed to accommodate?

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

#200

Post by JohnBooty »

bradknowles wrote: post #96
dfhdshfff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to watch a lot of lectures at a high speed. But I've came to realize that the faster I watch something, the faster I forget it. It is like the infromation doesn't have the time to settle in my memory, despite me understanding it. It's maybe because when things are slow, I can use the dead time to think about the implication/corner cases of what's being said.

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.

IMHO it's primarily because you have to process and comprehend the information in order to make a decision about what's important enough to jot down.

Although, anecdotally, I find that writing notes by hand is better for recall than typing.

I'm not sure if this is because writing activates different parts of the brain, or simply because writing is slower and forces me to therefore think harder and comprehend better because I need to be 2x as selective about what makes it into my notes.

My money's on the latter, but who knows?

Post reply on HN