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

#221

Post by afarrell » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:01 AM UTC

Rattled wrote: post #219

dredmorbius wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Part of the reason for this is that its rare for audiobook software to have a 0.9x playback option, but common to have a 1.25x option.

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

#222

Post by anoncake » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:03 AM UTC

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…

> And yes, I know information theory.

You clearly don't know linguistics though because the idea that a word conveys a constant quantity of information is hilarious.

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

#223

Post by Yuval_Halevi » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:07 AM UTC

My girlfriend has a transmission rate of at least 78 bits

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

#224

Post by thunderrabbit » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:10 AM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #180

thunderrabbit wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, I read too quickly and misunderstood their meaning of "bit rate."

> researchers took their final step—multiplying this rate by the bit rate to find out how much information moved per second

Thank you for your explanation, worth a bag of gold!

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

#225

Post by SXX » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:28 AM UTC

rimliu wrote: post #78

SXX wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell from experience that when I lay down in my bed with my eyes closed I could comprehend speech at much higher speed than I would while walking on the street. No surprise blind people can handle it better even though I have no clue how exactly it work in relations to the brain. I was always curios to make actual research / paper on this kind of thing, but as non-scientist I simply have no time to do so. So I…

Ever had to turn the radio/music in your car off in some tricky situations?

I don't drive, but I get what you mean.

Concentration is crucial here.

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

#226

Post by SXX » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

Causality1 wrote: post #74

SXX wrote: post #38

So here is my own experience. I was avid audio book fan for last 3 years and while ago some guy on reddit told me about how he listen books on Audible using high-speed option like 2.x. I never tried that before last summer since at higher speed speech become incomprehensible for me. What this guy told me is that it's just take time to adjust to it. So I basically started to listen for books at slightly higher speed.…

Why would you want to do that though? Isn't the experience of listening to it the point? If not, why listen to it at all instead of reading a detailed summary?

  > Why would you want to do that though?

Because I don't just listen for books for enjoyment of process itself. I love complex stories with hundred of characters and plot lines across many books. Reading something like Malazan or Wheel of Time is like a journey into another world for me and I deeply immersed into these world while exploring them. Yet amount of free time I have is limited so getting more information in short period of time is very convenient

I totally get it when some people just love to read books slowly while enjoying their coffee or looking at nature, but I'm into books for the stories and format of fast-paced audio is fine for me.

  > Isn't the experience of listening to it the point? If not, why listen to it at all instead of reading a detailed summary?

I feel like you imply that by listening on high speed I miss some part of experience. Yet other than voices being just slightly distorted (after some practice it's the same voices, but faster) I get exactly the same experience as any person who listen or read unabridged book.

On other side detailed summaries are not the same thing that author designed, but someone else rehearsal which is usually far from perfect.

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

#227

Post by wongarsu » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 10:08 AM UTC

sjy wrote: post #216

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…

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 conf…

While writing is ancient, in almost all cultures the ability to write hasn't been widespread until a few centuries ago. It just isn't that useful in agriculture when books cost a fortune, and historically almost everybody was a farmer. I doubt an ability possessed by a small portion of the population over a few thousand years had a large evolutionary impact.

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

#228

Post by vanderZwan » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

ahicks wrote: post #157

ahicks wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the blind dev who refactored a huge chunk of the Rust compiler [0]. I'm at roughly 800 words a minute with a synth, with the proven ability to top out at 1219. 800 or so is the norm among programmers. In order to get it we normally end up using older synths which sound way less natural because modern synthesis techniques can't go that fast. There's a trade-off between natural sounding and 500+ words a minute, and…

And as a followup to that--because really this is the weird part--some circles of blind people (including mine) talk faster between ourselves. That's not common, but it happens. I still sometimes have to remember that other people can't digest technical content at the rate I say it and remember to slow down. A good way to bring it out is to have me try to explain a technical concept that I understand really well. I h…

I kind of want to hear a "blind Danish" conversation now. For those unaware: Danish is phonetically one of the most difficult languages in the world, to the point where children who acquire Danish as their first language on average start speaking a few months later than children with any other first language. To clarify: speaking is not the same as understanding - toddlers are often capable of understanding language before they have the motor control required to speak it, which is why baby sign language exists.

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

#229

Post by Mikemo05 » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 10:54 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #91

knzhou wrote: post #49

Earlier 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 tend to listen to audio books at 2.5-2.8 times speed and all media I consum is at 2x speed.

Tip there are 10s of chrome extentios that allow you to change all html videos to 2x speed or even higher (including most ads on sites like YouTube and Hulu)

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

#230

Post by tralarpa » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 11:31 AM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #228

ahicks wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a followup to that--because really this is the weird part--some circles of blind people (including mine) talk faster between ourselves. That's not common, but it happens. I still sometimes have to remember that other people can't digest technical content at the rate I say it and remember to slow down. A good way to bring it out is to have me try to explain a technical concept that I understand really well. I h…

I kind of want to hear a "blind Danish" conversation now. For those unaware: Danish is phonetically one of the most difficult languages in the world, to the point where children who acquire Danish as their first language on average start speaking a few months later than children with any other first language. To clarify: speaking is not the same as understanding - toddlers are often capable of understanding language…

Are you Danish? (your account name looks rather Dutch)

I always wanted to know whether it's true what I heard some years ago: a friend told me that older Danish people are complaining that the younger Danish are harder to understand because there has been a trend in recent decades to swallow consonants even more than in the past

(that's something hard to image for me as a non-Danish speaker :)