We humans live in a world we are ill equipped for.
We are “tooled” in terms of evolution for the Stone Age, but the modern environment we live in is more complex than a cave.
Few examples –
We crave sugar, salt and fat because it was hard obtaining them.
We have cognitive biases which are survival-optimized to a danger-rich environment.
We prefer spending as little energy as possible since finding more meant risk.
Our language is one of these prehistoric tools – geared for transferring simple ideas from one human to another – in a time the ideas formed in neighboring brains were similar in scope and shape.
Today’s world makes these prehistoric tools not only ill-fitting but also taxing on the individual, group and society in general. If we take the previous examples –
Cravings cause health hazards in a society of abundance and economic gain from manipulation of these cravings (i.e. by many companies in the food industry).
People make poor financial and other statistical-based decisions (which also are being exploited by some profit seeking organizations).
People are bad at choosing what to spend time on and about physical activities (and too – are being exploited by entertainment – including social, gaming, news – and similar industries).
Language is no different.
We pay in efficiency – spend vast quantities of time on transferring ideas
We pay in results – intentions miss-communicated cause personal and sometimes national harm
We are manipulated by others – to buy, to conform, to support, to believe
We use “hacks” to walk-around some language limitations – adding analogies and metaphors to compress ideas, using non-verbal communication (gestures, visuals, sounds). But they are not perfect in results and have diminishing returns on the time spent conjuring them.
This requires a solution.
When one is found – its fruits will impact everything. It will transform what and how we do and who we are as a species.
The research towards it must discuss the problem, the solution’s impact – humanistic and economic, draw inspiration from existing and historical types of communication, linguistics, look into arts, slang, humor, machine, technology and intelligence, brain operations, animal communication, non-animate data transfer (genes, atoms, particles), cultures and more.
What it is not is researching communication channels. It is about content – data that is being transferred. It is also not a research into finding a new “language” or improving on existing ones. This has been attempted and failed many times in the past 200 years (as an example – Ithkuil is a sort of “solution” using current tools).
We do not need “a faster horse”. We need a Transporter Room.
