Divided by zero - False positives

Communicating is the gift that acts as a bridge linking the human with its needs. Being able to comprehend context is a sign of intelligence, and being able to transmit information and participating in a discussion proves even greater cognition. I believe this ability is what separates us from zombies; it is a common trope in the works of fiction to label these creatures with some form of idiocy, as their ability to communicate is limited to reception only.
In one of my previous articles, I mentioned that communication is in the far ends of the complexity spectrum, but as of yet, I lack the qualifications to prove it or even validate this fact.

Although the previous paragraph hints towards speech as a medium, communication can be executed using many forms: Through visual art, gestures, music and more...Spoken human communication is a skill that can be represented through the following venn diagram. The verbal communication is what everyone sees and hears, and the non-verbal communication is what carries emotions and anything that contains little to no syntax. It depends on various elements such as the tone and body language. It adds flavour to the delivered context, and may even reshape its meaning. I believe human communication underwent lots of changes in the non-verbal part, and the more I age, the more flavours I keep discovering. I sadly can not make a concrete comparison - as I was born in the 90's and had little exposer to my human peers - but most of the elders that I spoke with expressed their confirmations in this matter.

Communication venn diagram

The non-verbal side here can not sadly be taught and transferred directly, this is especially true due to the nature of what makes a human. The fact that human communication is complex can be backed using statistics, if you try to hold a short conversation with 10 different people on the same subject, depending on the subject of course, one may not observe the same outcomes and responses from these people. The way they react is mainly (re)shaped through their psychology, which is begins to form itself since their birth and influences their reactions.

I sadly struggle with the transmitting and receiving non-verbal communication, to the point that I may spend extra time just to process and decide on how to respond to the question "How are you?". Because of this anomaly, I end up confusing the average person, making them spend some extra effort into guessing my emotions; which may result in various interesting outcomes, and if I am playing the role of a receiver, I may sometimes lock myself out of sarcasm or jokes, making some people comment on how my brain wires could use more current. Some people have had difficulties distinguishing whether what I said was serious or not, this is because people like to believe what seems average to them and only a few, from my own experience, would validate what I say. This is mentally-taxing because some of what I express deviates from the average, and people's receptions of my endeavors may prevent me from having access to many opportunities like forming friendships and whatnot. One heuristic that I found working against such caveats is to tell people upfront -on day 1- that everything I say is serious and should not be taken as a joke; this way, I create a dynamic where I would not worry about transmitting false positives when speaking. Sadly, this approach shrinks my network, but at least it flourishes mutual comprehension.

Due to the aforementioned struggles, my mannerisms get compared to those of a robot. My ego gets damaged upon invalidation, explaining myself becomes then an unpaid job as I keep trying to find the right words and expressions for each person. I am super grateful when people receive me without questioning my legitimacy. But then, just as I wish to be validated quite often, I practice validation to create a fair experience for everyone, which may make me sometimes vulnerable to those with bad intentions. This latter example is one way for me to sympathize with those who face difficulties comprehending my speech in those times, since everyone these days could use a shield or two. There should be a balance somehow! Proof of this bottleneck can be observed when I have to converse with the average individuals; I get my facts denied upon verbally stating them, and when someone comes in and says the exact same facts with the same choice of words, they get validated. This often calls for the need to have an advocate of sorts that can help me transmit what I sometimes wish to say.

Emojis were created to facilitate these contextual transmissions, one has an emoji for pretty much any expression. I barely use emoticons, not that I don't like using them, but I always felt that what I write conveys enough information and having an emoji in my messages would bring me no emotional extras. As funny as it seems, this practice disregards what the receiving party feels when I send the texts; as of yet no one has complained to me on the matter. However, one great game changer that I have discovered in the last years, and wished if everyone would use it, is the tone indicator syntax. It is a small list of "codes" that can be put at the end of a message to indicate the tone. I find these much more useful than emojis, because being able to contextually sense the person's tone allows me to delve a bit deeper in their layers. Of course I would not use these in a work environment since I take everything seriously, but in other settings, I find these much more helpful than emojis. Take for example the wink emoji 😉, this one expresses (by default) various meanings depending and may be misinterpreted by some, but if you attach one of the tone indicator codes at the end of a message, I can immediately recognize your intentions. Some people find these small additions silly, completely discarding alexithymia, which mechanically disallows anyone that suffers from it to easily navigate this world, I mean come on! It takes only a second or two to type one of the codes.
I lost many nodes in my social networks due to the fact that the other party misinterpreted my intentions and phantasied a couple of assumptions without even taking the time to ask about my them.

My ultimate wish, which can never be fulfilled in my opinion, is to live in a world where every context exchange is transparent and clear. This can never happen due to our imperfections as human beings. I am not too deep invested in Carl Jung's philosophies, but I believe it's a good start for my argument, as masking our shadow is one thing that contributes to our corruption. Just imagine if everyone was honest about their intentions, we probably would not need to seek templates on how to apologize, apply for a job, or tell someone that we love them. Ontologies are one way to establish a linguistic union between all entities, but I am not sure how we would reach such levels of understanding. I can only wish for such a world for now, as the best I can do is to encourage others to simplify their speech and be honest. I noticed that the average person complains about how their peers could not catch a hint, or how these HR people encountered someone who lied in their resume, yet I still see that these same people participate in this cycle, argumenting that it's, sadly, the only way to efficiently survive, in other words, I would have to play their games too if I want to reach what I want. As previously mentioned, my wish can never be fulfilled, unless we collectively work together on making it happen, everyone knows that this transformation is something that everyone is going to benefit from. I sense that capitalism is one thing encouraging this behavior, making almost all players prioritize their own benefits instead of working on a common cause, but I don't think I am ready for such a topic.

This blog post serves as more of a rant in comparison to the rest of the articles in my divided by zero series to say the least. Few months ago I had the chance to encounter people who promoted all the philosophies discussed so far. Being around these people made me open up, I somehow had this strange feeling, wishing if we all treated each other like this. Coincidently, I had a speech on the matter with my father, who had arguments corelating to religion, saying that the devil will always influence humans into seeking shortcuts, hence why those with diverging goals would always sugar coat their speech to attain their objectives. Deciphering tone costs processing time, if we are aware of this, why do we keep relying on others to catch hints? A set of youtubers, whose content I really enjoy listening to, just recently released similar videos on this specific matter, the majority had their videos containing a diagnose on why people act like this but proposed no rocket science solution. We all know creating a crystal clear ecosphere is the best for all parties, so what are we waiting for?

I genuinely dislike the fact that lying, independent from any form, is deemed to be rewarding, is encouraged and seen as a symbol of charisma. I can't deny that I have never committed similar acts, but I am positive that if I have had told the truth in all of my past experiences, all the interactions -and by extension what came after said interactions- that were subject to my lies would have had a better ending. Funnily enough, in the theory of designing a system of multi-AI agents, truth telling is deemed to be the best strategy in negotiating, because it allows the system to stay fail-proof against unexpected circumstances. I can sadly only day dream about living in such environment, I am sure in a different life, almost everything would be better under these parameters.