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by craftkiller 431 days ago
With how great speech recognition is becoming, it seems like this is something remote workers could easily discreetly do since our conversations tend to be stationary, through a computer, and with only a small part of our body visible. Just wire up some electrodes to zap you every time the computer detects filler. I'm now seriously considering doing it myself.
3 comments
alex1115alex 431 days ago
One of our app devs built this recently, but for swearing:

https://youtube.com/shorts/FthRCwn1JuM?si=lC3eWAUI7sV-LL-r

A wearable speech coach would be awesome, though. Detect filler words and give you an alert on your HUD when it detects "uh" "uhm" etc.

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craftkiller 431 days ago
Neat! Without the electrodes I don't think it would be effective for me for "uhh" / "uhm". Considering how unconscious filler words are, I think I'd need the immediate unignorable feedback. But you've got all the logic there, it just needs to be made more violent.
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khafra 429 days ago
How should the speech coach stimulate you when it detects you using a particularly euphonously or impactfully?
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gcanyon 429 days ago
It would be about as easy, and certainly less painful, to just have a video processor remove and smooth over filler words in real time.

If the filler words are excessive it would slow down the apparent rate of speech, but obviously not the real rate of speech, by definition, since we're only removing words with zero semantic value.

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sneak 429 days ago
Why are filler words bad? Why do we need to be trained not to use them?
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physicles 429 days ago
People in this thread point out that filler words make communication less effective, primarily by being distracting.
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drekipus 429 days ago
if you've got nothing to say, you're just adding noise.
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sneak 428 days ago
Why do we care that much about the SNR of spoken words? Language is inherently quite redundant.
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drekipus 428 days ago
Redundancy is still "signal"

I don't think it's an argument of efficiency but rather the avoidance of noise.

The "ums" isn't redundant, it's not repeating or decorating the conversation. It's filler like static. Stops people from filling the gaps with their own thoughts

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