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Comment by alexambarch | Hacker News Reader

The most interesting takeaway from this article for me was that there's an inverse correlation between the number of syllables spoken per second and the bits of information conveyed in that time.

> Japanese, for example, has an extremely high number of syllables spoken per second. But Japanese also has an extremely low degree of complexity in its syllables, and much less information encoded per syllable.

It seems like our brains might only be capable of processing ~39 bits of spoken information per second. Now I want to see a comparison of the information throughput of other forms of communication!

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Maybe we can process more than 39 bps, since people will often increase the speed on podcasts. Perhaps the challenge is in transmitting.

Yeah, the sender-side is probably the main bottleneck, just consider how often people speak filler phonemes like "uhm", it's so common that you might not notice unless you're looking for them. They are basically placeholders into the data-stream, to indicate that it isn't over yet but there's a delay producing the next item.

In contrast, consider a listener who is equally focused and invested as the producer: They don't often indicate that their own buffer is full or request a repeat. While you may say "hold up" or "run that by me again", it's usually for reasons other than word-rate. (For example, to prompt the producer to try another encoding, to express disbelief or contempt, etc.)

I'd say less transmitting, and more preparation of the message.

"Please move" or "Get the fuck out of the goddamn way" both communicate the same information, one a bit more colorfully.

establishing and maintaining context, desired action and desired outcome take (well, me anyway) a substantial amount of time. Partly (for me) figuring out what the desired outcome actually is, and partly encoding that in a way that will be well received.

(Good) podcasts are not recorded at anything approaching the normal limits of understanding. They're paced for good conversation or storytelling and know that the vast majority of their listeners are multitasking, not giving them their full attention.

> It seems like our brains might only be capable of processing ~39 bits of spoken information per second.

I'm quite sure this isn't true, since I can listen to even fast English speakers at 2X speed and still understand them. Although that's right up against my limit, presuming the speaker is already on the fast side of normal.

I would say, rather, that the bottleneck is the human ability to synthesize and speak the message they intend to convey.

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