The secret of communication

The gleaming red Ferrari appeared out of the corner of my eye as I stepped onto the crossing. It was a good 50 meters away, so usually there would be no cause for alarm. However, in a fit of unbridled puerility, the driver chose to floor the pedal and accelerated(!) with me half away across the road, narrowly missing me as he passed. I flipped him the bird, mostly out of civic duty

Our villain, plainly incensed by the flagrant disrespect of my gesture, screeched to a halt 20 metres past the crossing. Then, much to the alarm of his comely passenger, he stood up out of the convertible’s seat and begun to shout angrily in my direction. Seemingly oblivious to the queue of cars beginning to form behind him he waved his arms at me whilst unleashing a torrent of invective in Maltese. Perhaps the gentleman’s mood would have softened if he knew that his tantrum was going to stimulate a new contribution to communication theory.

I introduce here a new perspective on communication. I demonstrate that by dividing messages with the parameters of ‘intent of the emitter’² and ‘comprehension of the receiver’ we gain fresh insight into a number of day-to-day puzzles.

It is the objective of private conversation between two friendly individuals to remain in this domain. There is no advantage to be gained by emitting information that the other party cannot understand (2nd Quadrant). In special circumstances such as a negotiation, each party will seek to avoid giving away information unintentionally (3rd Quadrant).

Complete Mutual understanding is only possible when the density of the information emitted does not exceed the bandwidth of the receiver. This fact makes the ability to tune your emitted information density to your listener a core social skill. Whilst the bandwidth of the receiver is positively correlated with IQ, it has very strong domain-dependence.

If I’m trying to explain concepts about poker, libertarianism or self-optimization with a new acquaintance I have to be sensitive to his bandwidth to avoid boring or confusing him. If my roof is leaking and I need a plumber, then the boot is on the other foot. Now he’ll be the one tuning his information output to ensure that I understand just why I’m going to pay him 200 bucks for a funny-looking pipe. Any information emitted intentionally which exceeds the bandwidth of the receiver will necessarily spill into the second quadrant…

Emitted information that is opaque for one receiver may be mutually understood (1st Quadrant) by a different receiver. One common reason for opacity is the lack of a cipher (the message may be encoded in a language unknown to the receiver) and for this reason it is the objective of most security transmissions to stay firmly in the second quadrant for all but the intended recipient.

Another common reason for opacity is overload of working memory (holding multiple concepts in mind simultaneously is required to understand a chain of reasoning). Prominent examples of this flavor of opacity include talking to your dog, conversations about online poker at the pub and any attempt to explain the rules of cricket to an American³.

Notice that as soon as a third party is added to a conversation dynamic there is the potential for gain from selective opacity. If you’ve ever felt left out by an ‘in-joke’ then you’ve experienced the unpleasant sensation that results from known opacity⁴.

Far more dangerous is unknown opacity, where a receiver believes he has understood a message when in fact he has not. The knowledge that somebody has actually understood a given message is often more valuable than the content of the message itself. The operation of aircraft control towers, emergency service calls and education all rely on accurate checks that the recipient has understood the message.

This seems a worthy juncture to highlight a common dating error for men, the “What to say” fallacy. Men often believe that their lack of success with women lies with opacity- if only they could say the right things they’d get the girl. In fact their weakness resides in the information they emit unintentionally which their potential paramours understand quite clearly.

The third quadrant unifies poker, social interaction and the journey of personal development. All three of these are games of communication and uncertainty.

Poker is the most salient example of the importance of understanding information that is emitted unintentionally. It is as a consequence of the game’s live roots that the popular perception of ‘tells’ in poker is quite narrow in scope, restricted to reading another player’s hand from their mannerisms.

In fact the concept of tells extends well beyond this domain to the interpretation of bet-sizing, bet timing and betting patterns. In the fast-paced, data-driven world of online poker we move beyond a bluff needing to ‘tell a story’ to there being hard evidence that a player’s lines are ‘balanced’. If an astute opponent can go through his database (either manually or with a data-mining tool) to find that you never value bet with a certain pattern, he can call your bluff with confidence.

Those who dismiss online poker as, “just luck” will often cite the fact that, “you can’t see the other guy” as evidence to support their case. Curiously these people make the same mistake as self-proclaimed ‘math guys’ who believe that knowledge of pot-odds and a hand chart should be enough to make them beat the game.

The error both groups make is one of attribution: they overvalue the first quadrant- where the material facts of bet-sizes and probabilities are available to all players, and undervalue the third- where information is revealed inadvertently by one or more parties.

I intend to write a lot more on the third quadrant for both my poker and non-poker readers. There are ‘tells’ in far bigger games than poker, if we can only learn to read them.

The fourth quadrant is the most mysterious because mutual ignorance is impossible to measure in all but the most trivial situations. Notice that as a consequence the total information transmitted is rarely quantifiable with any precision.

I have placed Scientific Research in this quadrant, with the perspective of the natural world as a source of ever-present unintentional emissions⁵(Whilst this description could be applied equally to a well-fed infant, I trust the reader to take it at face value!) One might argue that is the aim of Scientific Research to delve into the fourth quadrant to transfer information into the third.

With the quadrant model explained, we return to the sidewalk altercation with hot-headed Ferrari man with a fresh perspective. We see in his erratic behaviour the perfect illustration of a failure in communication.

In quadrant one, his only successful intentional communication was that I annoyed him greatly and that he had some choice comments to make on the matter. However, his abuse being in Maltese- a language which alas I do not understand- every detail of his invective was lost on me in quadrant two.

The third quadrant is, naturally, the most interesting. For he was in a Ferrari and I was a pedestrian. I was a rather fetching pedestrian, but a pedestrian all the same. Prior to his outburst he could have nonchalantly sailed on, elevated status intact. However, when he stopped his car to rail at the perceived slight he unwittingly revealed a great deal about his own self-image. A ‘wealthy bad boy’, secure in himself, would not be perturbed by a minor show of disrespect from a humble traveler of the heel-toe express. Through his actions our villain revealed himself as an impostor, a clucking bird quite unsuited to his chosen vehicle.

In the fourth quadrant lay all the information that a man fluent in Maltese might have discerned that I could not. Our villain’s choice of words would doubtless reveal more about his inner state, of which I had seen quite enough. With a wry smile, I gave him a wave and went on my merry way.

Did the ‘Four Quadrants of Communication’ model provide you with food for thought? Do you have any anecdotes of failed communication to share? Join the discussion in the comments below!