But we convey a lot in a lot higher bandwidth, because we use parallel channels each with low bitrate limitations.
Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
211–220 of 263 posts
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#212As an interesting side note, ham radio operators heavily use a digital mode called PSK31. It stands for "Phase Shift Keying, 31 Baud".
As I understand it, the 31 bit/s transmission rate was chosen because it is close to the entropy that operators can generate by typing on their keyboards. PSK31 does not transmit 8 bit bytes, but instead uses what they call a Varicode, a kind of Fibonacci code. More frequent characters are encoded using fewer bits, thus the encoded bit rate is an approximation of the entropy in the text stream.
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#213But, 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 am blind, but I am not a primary speech synthesis user, I prefer tactile braille. However, I know a number of people which are using their speech synthesizers at rates similar to what you described above.
My theory/experience with this phenomenon is, that a speech synthesizer never makes any errors. When it pronounces a word, it will do so exactly the same way everytime the same word comes up. So the learning effect after a while is a bit higher then when you listen to a human. Humans will always have slight variation in how they pronounce the same word. So, as I understand it, you can "learn" to listen to your speech synthesizer on a fast rate more effectively then you would be able to listen to a fast human speaker.
And yes, I also listen to YouTube talks and audiboosk at about 1.5-2x rate. So I guess 80 bits per second is relatively easily doable for the receiver.
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really depends on language, if you're writing java, you'll be putting out a lot more than that due to how stupidly verbose it is.
So you're saying you're not a fan of RequestProcessorFactoryFactory.StatelessProcessorFactoryFactory? http://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/apidocs/org/apache/xmlrpc/server...
I think you mean InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState
https://github.com/zxlooong/jdk16045/blob/master/com/sun/jav...
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#215Earlier 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.
Is there a trick to get it above 2x (which is the cap in the UI). It'd be nice when watching videos of congress.
I created a simple browser extension for this purpose, "YouTube Turbo Button". As mentioned in the other comment, it can be easily done through the console, but I found having a button for it more convenient.
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#216Earlier 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…
There is a difference: people have been using small handheld objects to create images on flat surfaces for tens of thousands of years. Moving squares of plastic to remotely and invisibly trigger a change in the patterns of light emitted by an electronic display is somewhat different. This could explain some of the studies that have found differences in retention of typed and handwritten notes, but there are many confounding factors.
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#217Apologies 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…
You're saying phonology is the new phrenology?
Jokes aside, I agree that estimating the average absolute information content of a syllable seems pretty absurd.
However, if the primary goal here was to determine whether some languages convey more information per unit time than other languages, I think the authors did fine. To this end, they needn't define information per syllable in anything other than p.d.u. - procedurally defined units. If average Vietnamese speech has 2x the number of syllables/min as German, but it takes the same amount of time to recite War and Peace in both Vietnamese and German, it suggests that both languages convey the same high-level information 'per unit time', but not 'per syllable'.
And basically that's all they did... "We computed the ratio between the number of syllables [in the text passage] and the duration [it took to recite the passage]"
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#218Everything in AtOmXpLuS.CoM
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've known a lot of people that push podcasts, videos, and audiobooks to extreme speed. I knew a guy who'd turn video speed up to 8x so he could binge watch a season of generic anime in an hour flat. I knew a girl who'd get through paperback romance novels by scanning each page diagonally, in 10 seconds each. And here in this thread we have a lot of people bragging along the same lines. I just don't get the point. If…
Exceedingly slow narration, particularly what's normal for audiobooks, is annoying to me because it's slower than I process words. It's like walking with someone whose pace is far slower than your natural gait -- it takes more energy and concentration to slow down. It's why slow-talkers are so annoying. This isn't "how fast can I go through this" but "what is a comfortable pace"? So I bump the speed up, though usuall…
I think some audio books are slightly slowed down by default, many I've listened to sound more natural at about 1.2x
Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
#220> Each participant read aloud 15 identical passages that had been translated into their mother tongue
I doubt there is an objective way to ensure that no information is lost or smuggled in when you translate a text into another language. For example, English has more than 100 words for 'walk', whereas Toki Pona (a constructed language known for its extreme simplicity) has only one. But does 'stroll' encode the same amount of information as 'tawa'? Depends on what you want to use that information for, I guess. If you only want to know where I went this morning, they are equally good. If you want to know that my act of going there was a recreational activity, possibly part of my morning routine, they are not.