The biggest challenge in communication
The same information could mean different things to different people. It’s very hard to make children understand the wisdom you gained from experience. They experience the world in a different way than you do. Age is not the only factor, culture and other experiences shape how we interpret information.
Delivery of information in a manner that embed’s it original intent is a difficult task, but not impossible. What are some of the characteristics of such information? What are some heuristics we can apply to create such information. Ultimately, when we communication information, we are seeking a change in state, first mental in the mind of the audience and then in the external world.
There are so many factors that influence this process. The way information is designed and packaged, the way it is communicated, the way it is interpreted and understood by the mind, they way it is applied in the external world. It is currently impossible to be able to control all these aspects.
We need a different way to achieve outcomes we intend. When we are working at scale, it is impossible to know and control every moving part and predict how it will work. We have to create decentralized systems similar to the ones that exist in nature and be able to harness their power.
Often times, when we use a term e.g. self-mastery, people come with preconceived notions of what that means. The meaning may be influenced by what kind of background the person comes from and the individual human experience the person has gone through. Thus, when we are communicating meaning, the risk of this initial misunderstanding can be reduced by explaining the term in your own human experience, so that the other person can relate to it, possibly by defining the term and telling some stories of how you have come to define the term or by way of examples. My own story of what I thought when my dad mentioned “communication skills” when I was in high school. My individual experience of communication skills at that time was limited to the common childhood experience of witty banter, snarky comments and “burns” the school children indulge in. It was informed by the experiences I had had by that time in my life. In my social circle back then, people who were able diss others intelligently, deliver quips and sharp insults and crack wise jokes were well respected. My idea of communication skills was the verbal fluency with which such quips could be delivered. That idea has changed a lot now.
