Updated: December 02, 2025

On Effective Communication

Effective communication is, at its core, the art of conveying ideas from one mind to another with maximum precision. Ideally, one would like to transmit exactly the thought that is in one’s head so that the recipient understands it completely as intended. In practice, however, several factors – such as the limitations of language, the context of the conversation, and the differing interpretations of abstract concepts – interfere with this ideal.

The Trade-Offs: Precision, Compression, and Practicality

When communicating, we constantly balance three main parameters:

1. Precision: Precision refers to how exactly the communicated message matches the intended thought. In an ideal scenario, every nuance of a thought would be preserved. In scientific writing, for instance, high precision is prized because it minimizes ambiguity. However, even science has its limits; for example, theories about events before the Big Bang are necessarily imprecise since they address aspects we do not fully understand.

2. Compression: Compression is the process of conveying complex ideas in fewer words. High compression can make language elegant and efficient. However, overly compressed language may sacrifice precision. For example, using a single term that carries multiple meanings might streamline a message, but if the audience does not share the same definition, the meaning may be lost or misunderstood.

3. Practicality: Practicality is about tailoring the communication style to the audience. When speaking with children or casual acquaintances, one might sacrifice some precision in favor of simplicity and ease of understanding. In contrast, detailed explanations with precise vocabulary might be necessary in academic or philosophical discussions – even if this means that the message becomes less accessible to a general audience.

The best communication strikes a balance among these three factors. In everyday conversation, most people prioritize practicality over absolute precision. However, when discussing complex ideas – such as philosophical concepts or scientific theories – it becomes essential to choose words carefully, sometimes even preface or define them to avoid misinterpretation.

Context and the Role of Audience

The effectiveness of communication depends heavily on context. For example:

Everyday Situations: When discussing mundane topics (like describing the color of a car), most people share a common understanding of the language used. There is little need for elaborate definitions.

Abstract or Complex Ideas: When ideas are abstract (such as the nature of "good" or the experience of success), differences in personal interpretation become more significant. Phrases like "the feeling of success" can be highly subjective, leaving room for varied interpretations. Here, it might be useful to provide examples or analogies – even though doing so may reduce compression – to help clarify the intended meaning.

Specialized Discourses: In contexts such as scientific reports or philosophical debates, precision becomes paramount. Even then, effective communication may involve a trade-off. For example, a speaker might choose to use compressed language if they assume a shared, precise understanding with their audience; yet, if that shared understanding is absent, the message may lead to misunderstandings.

The Ideal World of Communication

One might imagine a hypothetical "ideal world" where every person communicates with maximum precision. In such a world, ideas would be transmitted exactly as intended, and misunderstandings would be minimized. Misinterpretations – often the root of debates, conflicts, or even violent disputes – would be rare because everyone would share the same definitions and contextual understandings.

However, the reality is far from ideal. Differences in language, personal experiences, and context mean that even if two people hold the same core ideas about existence or morality, slight variations in how they articulate these ideas can lead to significant misunderstandings. This is especially true when dealing with abstract topics where the precision of language is paramount.

Still, we can talk about tendencies and limits. The more time people spend clarifying their terms, testing their assumptions, and subjecting their ideas to challenge, the closer they can move toward a shared conceptual landscape – even if complete agreement remains just out of reach. In that sense, an "ideal world" functions less as a description and more as a direction of travel: a regulative goal that shapes how we argue, listen, and revise.

In other words, if convergence is ever to happen, it will not be because we are forced into agreement, but because, over time, the space of defensible ideas shrinks under the pressure of criticism and evidence. Yet this picture of gradual tuning immediately raises a further question: what happens when people intentionally step outside the "tuning process" – when they agree to certain norms in words, but later choose to discard or reinterpret them? That is where communication meets social contracts, trust, and free will.

Social Contracts, Deceit, and Free Will

If two individuals fabricate a social contract – stipulating, for instance, that neither shall steal from the other – then even if neither has ever experienced malice, any breach of this pact can only be attributed to the exercise of free will. Such a deviation is not merely a failure of understanding but a demonstration that human behavior is ultimately governed by the capacity to choose. When one party acts against the verbally agreed norm, it is a conscious decision to alter the parameters of the contract (or trust), thus revealing the inescapable influence of personal will.

Here, communication does two things at once. On one hand, it sets the shared parameters: "stealing" is named, boundaries are drawn, and expectations are made explicit. On the other hand, the very act of defining a rule opens up the possibility of violating it. The contract makes a deviation visible where, before, there was only unarticulated possibility. To see this more concretely, imagine that two friends agree, explicitly, on a simple norm:

Social Contract "If either of us borrows the other’s tools, we will return them by the end of the week."

This statement already contains several layers of shared understanding: what counts as borrowing, what counts as tools, and what the end of the week means in practical terms. Suppose now that one friend takes a screwdriver on Monday and returns it the following Friday, believing this satisfies the agreement. The other, however, interprets "the end of the week" as Sunday evening and sees the early return not as compliance, but as a subtle violation – the rule has been broken, just not maliciously.

There is a second layer of fragility as well: the contract itself might be imprecise. One person may implicitly include "borrowing without asking" under the word "steal," while the other does not. What appears, from the outside, as deceit may from the inside be experienced as a simple mismatch of definitions. Social contracts thus sit exactly at the intersection of language and will: they depend on both the clarity of what is said and the integrity of the choice to honor it.

Both scenarios underscore the same point: a shared rule can be violated even when both parties believe they are upholding it, because the violation emerges from diverging definitions, not necessarily deceit. The very existence of a contract makes such divergence notable; without an agreed-upon boundary, there would be no sense of transgression at all. It is easy to see how this can occur when we try to create top-down contracts. The same cannot be said about notions in math that are built from the ground up.

Logic, Questions, and the Role of Free Will

Building on the assumption of the "ideal" world, consider this reasoning:

"If everyone operates on logic and a shared understanding of the world, then either no one will be confused or everyone will.
Everyone will be confused only if we try to believe a contradiction. Everyone knows logic. Therefore, if we don’t try to believe a contradiction, then no one will be confused."

Taken at face value, this sketches a neat picture of how confusion should arise in such a world. Once logic and the basic facts are shared, confusion becomes almost diagnostic: it appears precisely when we attempt to hold two incompatible beliefs at once. In that imagined setting, most questions would function like error messages in a program – indicators that something in our web of beliefs cannot be made to fit without contradiction.

But we do not actually live inside that neatly constrained world. Our questions do not arise only when we crash into explicit contradictions. We also ask questions when things seem to work but rest on assumptions we have never inspected, or on definitions we suspect might be too narrow or too broad. The very act of wondering, "Do we have to see it this way?" already loosens the grip of the current framework.

This thought experiment, then, does not merely tell us when confusion would arise under perfect rational coordination; it also highlights how far we are from that ideal. Questions are not solely born from rational breakdown. Often, they arise from the deliberate exercise of free will – the decision to challenge or modify an established parameter. By questioning a prevailing idea, we assert our ability to control its mutable aspects, transforming inquiry into a manifestation of creative freedom.

In this light, confusion is not only a bug in our reasoning; it is also a byproduct of our willingness to entertain alternatives, to loosen the constraints of the current "shared understanding" and see what follows. We choose, at times, to walk away from a settled definition or consensus – not necessarily out of perversity, but out of a desire to explore.

The Dynamic Nature of Ideas

It follows that when one party in a social pact unilaterally decides to change a previously agreed parameter, the resulting breach may lead the other to perceive deceit or moral weakness. This is not simply a breakdown of logical consistency but a testament to our intrinsic free will. While some ideas must evolve – driven by the imaginative urge to explore beyond established limits – others are preserved through consensus and rational debate.

We could think of our shared conceptual world as a structure with both fixed beams and moveable walls. Logical principles, basic norms of honesty, and the meanings of key terms play the role of beams: if these are shifted arbitrarily, the whole structure risks collapse. Other ideas – policies, preferences, interpretive frameworks – can and should move as we learn more. The art lies in knowing which parts of the structure may be renegotiated and which must remain stable for communication to function at all.

Practicality, as seen in engineering, often demands action over endless hypotheticals; an engineer must eventually build a paper plane rather than remain trapped in perpetual debate over its design. In the same way, conversations and social contracts must eventually "cash out" in behavior. We cannot live exclusively in the realm of possibility. At some point, we must choose a set of meanings, commit to them, and act – accepting that others may later challenge those choices, and that our shared language will continue to evolve.

Examples and Observations

One illustrative example comes from my reflections on discussions involving Jordan Peterson. In some contexts – such as his remarks on climate change – Peterson’s language is highly compressed. He delivers his ideas in a compact form, assuming that his audience will fill in the details. In contrast, when discussing topics like the Bible, he often dissects every word to clarify its meaning. This difference in approach shows how the balance between precision and compression can vary according to the subject matter.

Consider also how definitions can lead to miscommunication. Imagine that I invent a language that uses familiar English words but assigns them radically different meanings – for instance, where "good" means "bad" and vice versa. If I say "I like evil" in my language, a listener who interprets the word "evil" in its conventional sense might think I am endorsing wrongdoing. In truth, my redefined vocabulary might make "evil" a positive concept.

This is an exaggerated example for the sake of the argument, but you can think of a person's meanings being only slightly shifted from the true (collectively agreed upon) meanings for words. Yet each word used in a complicated argument might shift the meaning of it considerably! Consider this:

A: Do you think the event X written about in old books actually happened?
B: Yes, of course it did!
A: But we have no proof. I mean to say, if you could time-travel to the ascribed time and record it, would you see it actually happen in front of you?
B: Ah, well, then probably not.
A: How else could you have meant it?
B: Well, if we consider what the books talked about as being meta-truths about society, then of course it happened – and it continues to happen!

These types of conversations, although somewhat rare, can shape the thinking of someone in the unintended way if they do not probe to clarify meanings like B. In fact, these words are paraphrased from Jordan Peterson's interview with Alex O'Connor.

This underscores the importance of making your meanings clear and the potential pitfalls of ambiguity.

Consider the sharp contrast in his carefulness of answering a similar question:

JP: The question, "Did that happen?", begs the question: "what do you mean by happen?". But the reality of the concepts in your question, when you're digging that deep, are just as questionable about as what you're questioning!

I do agree with this statement made by Mr. Peterson, for which he is mocked facetiously online. He isn't the most consistent with his intent to clarify... even on religion!

The implications of a lack of precision can be significant! It can allow people to misconstrue meanings for generations without question.

But of course, we do not, and cannot, demand maximal precision from everyone in every context. You do not refuse to trust a mechanic with your car because they lack a degree in quantum mechanics; what matters is that they reliably operate at the right level of abstraction for the problem at hand. Much of modern life works this way: science communicates through compressed phrases like "X causes Y" while silently packing in probability, assumptions, and error bars; AI researchers speak of "learning" and "intelligence" in technical senses that sound deceptively human; economists use terms like "inflation" or "value" with narrow, specialized meanings that differ from everyday usage; and in interpersonal life, words like "respect", "commitment", or "love" quietly shift from person to person.

The world is, in a sense, built on these layers of abstraction and unspoken assumptions. The danger comes not from abstraction itself, but from mistaking one layer for another – treating a shorthand as if it were a full explanation, or assuming shared definitions where there are none.

Conclusion

Effective communication is a delicate interplay of precision, compression, and practicality. Through deliberate argumentation, embracing both claim and counterargument, we navigate the intricate landscape of ideas, refining our collective understanding much like tuning a delicate amorphous instrument. Despite the inherent challenges posed by free will and subjective experience, continuous dialogue helps to align diverse perspectives toward a shared truth.

At the same time, not all communicators bear the same responsibility. A casual conversation and a public lecture do not stand on equal footing. Those who speak as experts, as scientists, philosophers, public intellectuals, or "science communicators", occupy a position of amplified influence. With that influence comes a corresponding duty: to signal clearly when they are speaking technically or metaphorically, to define key terms when those terms are likely to be misunderstood, and to manage the trade-offs between precision, compression, and practicality with conscious care rather than convenience.

In the end, it is this congruence of (1) reasoned debate in the (2) exercise of free will with (3) the right level of abstraction by balancing the three-dimensional scale of precision, compression, and practicality that paves the way for a more rational society. Experts and laypeople alike contribute to this project, but those whose voices carry furthest should be the most attentive to how their words will be heard, not only to how they are meant.

And, of course, it would be optimistic to pretend that this essay itself has escaped the traps it describes. I tried to pin down precision, compression, and practicality at the outset, but there are other words- ideal, shared, rational, understanding, even communication- that might have assumped a shared understanding. If so, perhaps that is a small consolation: you have just found a live example of the thesis. Wherever my language has slipped, you are invited to argue with it- and in doing so, to help tune the very instrument I have been trying to describe.