[ilaksh]

Human communication will change dramatically once useful invasive brain-computer interfaces are available.

People will suddenly realize that the reason language is primarily serial is simply due to the fact that it must be conveyed by a series of sounds. There will likely be a new type of visual language used via BCI "telepathy". It may have some ordering but will not rely so heavily on serializing information, since the world is quite multidimensional.

[satvikpendem]

Indeed, it reminds me of the movie Arrival (and the short story upon which it's based) where the heptapods are able to show a complete sentence and story within one glyph. I thought it was interesting just how much the movie focused on linguistics, which is rare to see in Hollywood films.

Something else that's interesting about language is it's just a form of compressive medium for thoughts; I think of a concept, then I put it into words (compression) that you the listener then have to interpret and understand (decompression) and then fit your brain state to the new data you've received. It's overall a very lossy medium compared to what brains can do. It would be much easier to beam my thoughts and images and videos in my mind directly to you.

Unless you or I have aphantasia, of course.

[ilaksh]

Right and I would go so far as to say that most types of intelligence are a type of functional compression also.

There's definitely room for direct transfer of concrete unrolled information. But at the same time we would still need some forms of abstraction in many cases.

I think the biggest issue with the compression of natural language is that the loss is different for each person, since everyone's "codec" varies. In other words, people often interpret language in different ways.

But suppose that humans or AIs or AI-enhanced humans could have exactly the same base dictionary or interpretive network or "codec" or whatever for a (visual or word-based) language. Then we could get away from many of the disputes and misunderstandings that arise purely from different interpretations.

[arketyp]

I wonder what the limits are to such a universal codec. From what I've gathered about synaesthesia (e.g. from V.S. Ramachandran, or Galton earlier), it varies quite significantly between persons. I believe it's said that some 3% of people have aphantasia for instance. That means entire modalities would be excluded for some in a latent space glyph language. Unless, I suppose, one could find ways of stimulating the synaesthetic connections artificially too.

[SamPatt]

In a popular sci-fi (avoiding spoliers), the alien race has transparent skulls, and their visible thoughts are broadcast to anyone within visual range.

It does seem more efficient than sound.

[flangola7]

I want to know the scifi

You may base64 to spoiler proof it

[lithiumii]

I think it's "VGhlIFRocmVlLUJvZHkgUHJvYmxlbQ==" The aliens cannot lie to each other (they don't even have the idea of a lie), because their thoughts are transparent to each other.

[esafak]

Sounds like a recipe for conflict.

[inglor_cz]

It would certainly be a very violent shift towards a very different societal equilibrium.

Few, if any, people who currently have power, would be able to absorb the sheer amount of hitherto hidden distrust or resentment that their subordinates harbor towards them.

Interestingly, there might be two very different end stages.

Either a very open society where people at the top are selected to be non-narcissist and stoic, or a very closed and oppressive society where the absolute ruler is kept in power by a bunch of truly zombified and obedient warriors whose loyalty is real and unshakeable, and who will kill anyone whose brain entertains any rebel ideas too much.