Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second
submitted 4 years ago by magnora7 from (sciencemag.org)
[–]Theo_Fridall 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun - 4 years ago (0 children)
I read a great paper once about human information reception of about 7 "units". If you put units together as in letters in a word, or words in a sentence), then you can still only digest about 7 "units" at a time.
I have a hard copy of the paper. I can't think if the title, but I'll try to find a digital copy and link later.
[–]Theo_Fridall 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun - 4 years ago (0 children)
" No matter how fast or slow, how simple or complex, each language gravitated toward an average rate of 39.15 bits per second..."
Well, yeah, that's exactly how averages work.
[–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun - 4 years ago (0 children)
The final sentence struck me:
“It really seems that the bottleneck is in putting the ideas together.”
Also thinking about how low a bitrate 39 bits per second is... it's maybe no wonder most animals haven't developed speech. It's a very subtle information gain.
I wonder how many bits per second come from body language and other non-verbal cues.
Also I wonder if it'd be possible to come up with a cell-phone encryption method that only uses 39 bits per second, if that's actually capable of representing human speech.
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[–]Theo_Fridall 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun - (0 children)
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