Consider the words on the screen. There are two sources of information.

  1. The words, how they’re arranged and such.

  2. The meaning that you assign to the words. Meaning drawn from a lifetime of memories.

99% of the information comes from the assigned meaning. So 99% of what’s going on here is you talking to yourself.

  • BoozillaEnglish
    5•21 hours ago

    That’s an interesting way of framing it. But I think it’s more correct to say that our shared understanding of language and definitions of words means we are mostly translating the writer’s thoughts and intentions as best we can from their mind into our minds.

    It’s true that no two people will be 100% in sync with their understandings and internal definitions of things, but the overlap will be quite large. So hopefully, actual communication is possible from person A to person B.

    However, it’s also possible for people to “talk past each other” as we often see in political discourse. So it’s highly imperfect. But I would not say it’s just a person talking to themselves when they read what another person has posted.