Most definitions I've run across talk about some kind of logical abstraction layer, a decoupling of some full state from some sign/symbol sub-state or encoding. Then communication is the assertion that the sub-state can stand in for the full state.
We can do this where we can get a perfect match between one scale and another (physics/math) or between one machine's full state an another's (e.g. Steve's serialization+semaphor), at least until the machines degrade. But *that* use of the token "communication" is pure jargon, hijacked from the laity. When Joyce uses it at the pub to lament how she and her husband don't communicate very well, that's not at all what she means. What she means is closer to a leap of faith that she and her husband can somehow *think* the same things when triggered with the same token. (Or worse, that when some stranger in Iceland says the same token on the TV, all 3 of them, the Icelander, her, and her husband all resonate.) This is pure fantasy. The hairball of feedback(s) between Joyce and her husband might allow that resonance to be somewhat actual when they see each other every day, garden together, whatever. But as soon as they part, Joyce goes to the pub to lament and her husband goes to the Motel 6 to fornicate, "communication" becomes more fantastical/hallucinatory. The deserialized state triggered by the cinnamon sprinkles on Joyce's latte is VERY different from the state of her husband triggered by the cinnamon candle the hooker lit in the hotel room. Any pretense otherwise is not even wrong. Meaning comes from the hairball of feedback(s). Degrade the feedback and you degrade the meaning ... as witnessed by this very conversation ... so many words ... so many useless words. On 2/4/26 7:50 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
I guess I need to know what "cause" means to you. To me it means that ceteris paribus, if you havent flapped your lips in that manner I would not have passed you the salt.
On 2/4/26 4:14 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
When I first fiddled with distributed computing with early RPC technology... synced models with serialization of internal state transmitted, recieved and semaphored I came to appreciate obliquely just how "fragile" this idealized conception of "communication" was. That gave me sympathy with *one* conception of why you might say "communication doesn't exist" but continuing the spirit of paradox and oxymoron, here I am trying to "communicate" such to you and the rest of the group. Can you offer a better suite of terminology, a better framing for just what the *experience* I impute on group behaviours of impedance-coupled "agents", resonating (and dissonating?) amongst ourselves with linguistic signifiers (or signs) being the "intermediate vectors"? "coupled phonemics"? Just what is it we might be doing when we think we are commune(icate)ing?
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