Communication is......?

(This post is intended for a specific audience who already possesses knowledge of the concepts I am referring to. If you do not know what these concepts are, this message is not intended for your consumption.)

INFORMATION

All modern computation is based on calculating the amount of information that can flow through a communication channel. Some information is lost in the system, i.e., through friction with the internal walls of the system. The amount that can be communicated successfully is often referred to as the carrying capacity of the system, while the part that ends up being lost is often called entropy. This computational theory essentially posits that information is the opposite of entropy, and that these two properties are situated at opposite ends of a scale of probabilities. If the interpretation of a message completely matches the intended meaning of a message, then the conditional probability of the message being received = 1, whereas a complete mismatch = 0. Thus, any error rate expressed as a conditional probability between zero and one is attributable to either: a) the random noise of the communication channel; or b) differences between the knowledge structures held by the sender and the receiver, that are being used to encode and decode the information being communicated, respectively. 

However, the binary nature of the units used to calculate the accuracy of any interpretation of a message presents something of a philosophical paradox for people who believe that truth and falsity are something that exists independently of the observer. If you think about it, a conditional probability of one renders the communication of the message completely redundant, because it adds nothing new to what was already known by the receiver before the message was sent by the author. On the other hand, where the conditional probability of the message being received is zero, the intended meaning is completely lost, and the message will be indecipherable, as in the case of total randomness. This effectively means that as our understanding of any communication starts to reach absolute truth or falsity, the communication of the message becomes a completely meaningless waste of energy. Thus, the target for maximising a communication's utility, or usefulness, to human beings as biological entities, must be a partial understanding, that has only a 0.5-0.75 conditional probability of being correct. Thus, anything between a 50:50 or 75:25 split between recognising existing knowledge and inferring new knowledge into a message must be the most desirable state for any of our communication channels to be in.

This position assumes that all forms of communication require the expenditure of energy. This is a branch of science that involves the thermodynamics of conducting materials. It has led to the evolution of 'quantum computers' and materials that can transmit electrical impulses (quanta) at superlow temperatures. This is necessary to eradicate any interference from the noise of the entropic heat bath that normally surrounds us. This science tells us that any form of organised energy is information. And the amount of information being held within a system is referred to as its kinetic energy, which may be different for different systems at different times within the evolution of the communication process. Where a potential gradient exists across the threshold of two different systems, the laws of thermodynamics tell us that the energy will flow from the higher to the lower energy level system. Thus, the ability of living organisms to maintain knoweldge structures that reproduce themselves through verbal communication, presents us with something of a paradox: according to the laws of thermodynamics, everything should end in an entropic soup of total randomness, but as human beings, we appear to be consistently heading in the opposite direction, towards greater and greater forms of organisation and understanding.

In the 1970s and 80s, scientists began to realise that the randomness we perceive may not always be the entropy we try to defend ourselves against. Chaotic dynamics may also appear within a system. Chaos looks like random bits of information, but actually, chaos is a higher order of organisation. Chaotic dynamics only appear when the drivers of the system force more information through the system than the carrying capacity of the communication channels allows. It doesn't break the system; in fact, it can create new capacities that didn't exist previously. Because chaotic dynamics only appear in systems that have amplified/damped feedback within them, we can control them in the same way feedback is controlled through the amplification system of a rock guitar. This means it can be decoded by those who possess the codes for its encryption. Unfortunately, for anyone else, it might just look like randomness and be ignored or excluded from their conscious attention. As a super-organised state that is incredibly hard to decipher, Chaos can be used to encrypt really valuable things like Bitcoin. Given that the evolution of encoding and decoding systems goes hand in hand, it may not be long before Bitcoins start to go missing in the ether, but we probably won't know where, or how, or why for a long time after that. 

LOGIC

Regardless of the mathematics involved, when we want to understand what communication is, the information flow between a sender and receiver becomes the starting point for further understanding. So here is my logic, or philosophy, for understanding communication as a process in nursing theory. To understand this process, it is not necessary to understand the carrying capacity of a communication channel; we can leave that area of mathematics to the computational scientists.

1. According to one interpretation of the wave-particle conundrum of quantum physics, the Observed Reduction (OR) of otherwise irreconcilable superpositions can occur at a cellular level. Conception might therefore be the point at which the possibilities of quantum mechanics become the embodied actualities of classical physics, and consciousness (within a simultaneity plane) becomes possible

2. Communication cannot occur without consciousness, and consciousness cannot occur without communication. Thus, the two phenomena are identical processes: the limit of our consciousness is the limit of our ability to communicate.

3. Where communication between two or more points occurs, a mutual consciousness can be inferred between two or more identities, where an identity is defined as being a position, occupying a specific time and place in space-time.

4. Identity Work is defined as a geometrical translation of one position through another position and back onto itself. This process is carried out by healthcare professionals in the form of autological research that is commonly referred to as "Reflective Practice"

5. Identity Work begins at the Mirror Stage of development and becomes a hardwired process after puberty, which enables an observer to perceive themselves through the reactions of others to their communications

6. Communication involves energy being transmitted as information in a message between an author and an audience in a process that crosses a potential gradient, at rates that depend on the medium but always less than instantaneously, causing a cusp catastrophic change of state, that is equivalent to a lightning strike, or the behavioural impulse of a living organism

7. All transmissions of energy as information occur within the same simultaneity plane (where information is defined as negative entropy, i.e., non-randomness)

8. Some of the fastest impulses in the animal kingdom are the behavioural reflexes. These occur during the activation of the autonomic nervous system and can spread in a communication flow through Emotional Contagion. This is how a flock of birds and a shoal of fish can move in unison.

9. Behavioural reflexes occur within the context of emotions that may be differentiated via a basic palette of six facial and body signals that Darwin originally identified as happiness, sadness, disgust, joy, anger, and fear.

10. Beliefs (expressed as a subjective probability) prioritise one emotional reaction to a set of circumstances over all other possible emotional reactions

12. Empathy allows the intransigence of a belief system to be challenged by considering other possible emotional reactions to the same set of circumstances

13. Empathy involves the meaning of a message being interpreted according to the relative positions of the other identities involved in the communication of a message, i.e. the author(s) and their audience(s) 

14. Because of empathy, simple collective cultural interpretations prioritising one emotional reaction to a set of circumstances over others will always eventually conflict with the majority of complex individual autobiographical ones

15. Empathic social systems will always evolve towards more complex emotional states, from simple ones 

16. As evolution moves beyond the basic palette of the six elementary emotions, its belief systems must become less universal, more species-specific, and more idiosyncratic to the complexities of the individual emotional experiences involved

17. The brain evolved to bridge the simultaneity plane through the development of memory capacities

18. Memory capacities have learnt how to store sensory information long enough for it to be integrated into meaningful conceptual categories and rule-based routines called "algorithms"

19. Language probably originated as a means of communicating between members of the same species as they move relative to one another, through space and time

20. Language will probably always lag behind the development of more complex emotions, and facilitate their construction into more stable belief systems

EMPATHY

All of the above are involved in the evolution of our capacity for empathy. Empathy involves the non-verbal communication of emotions. It is fundamental to the delivery of all healthcare processes because not all patients are able to communicate the source of their suffering at initial inspection, so clinicians rely upon the non-verbal communications of the patient to infer the meaning of their symptoms correctly. Individual clinicians may possess more or less of the trait of empathy at the start of their training. This may change over time. 

More risk-averse, stress-intolerant organisations tend to hamper the communication of emotions by constantly relying on the suppression of negative information to manage the power differentials within their hierarchies. This may be effective in the short term, but it is a counterproductive strategy for the longer-term management of stress and emotions. It causes a dissociation between our emotional experiences and the narratives the organisations give us to explain and explore them. This generally leads to systemic malfunction and eventual collapse of individual clinicians, ward teams, and the care pathways they operate within.

The ability to record our thoughts and convert our feelings into words has helped us externalise our memory processes and regulate our emotions. Narratives that are passed down through generations become an important part of our cultural myths and symbols. They form an integral part of our identities, and the promisery notes we trade as the symbolic representations of trust and truth. The inability to identify and restructure our emotions through the use of our language is called Alexithymia. This deficit is higher in our more neurodiverse communities, where it could be argued, emotional dysregulation has been selected for, as a means of survival.

LANGUAGE

Language conforms to the laws of thermodynamics in a statistical way. In English, the more common words we use - pronouns, logical operators, articles - use a smaller number of digits because they have a much higher frequency than the less common words - nouns, verbs, etc. Thus, in German, it is common for a noun to be represented by the combination of nouns from a lower level of conceptual specialisation; the more complex concepts therefore, have a longer representation in terms of the number of digits. In English, the dividing line between structural and content words is about 5 digits. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 5 plus or minus 2 is also supposed to be the size of the short-term memory's capacity for remembering a series of objects. Research suggests that when people verbalise their thoughts and feelings, the combination of high and low frequency structural and content words they use tends to balance out to a relatively constant homeostatic average. This represents the 50:50, or 75:25, balance referred to earlier, where the maximum amount of new knowledge that can be imparted through a communication channel ultimately depends on the carrying capacity of the system. 

In this context, the formal thought disorder (FTD) of schizophrenia would appear to be an expression of the same pressure of speech that is seen in bipolar disorder, only at a higher or lower level of organisation than normal speech would allow. During a manic phase of information processing, more information is being forced through the language system than it can manage. The capacity can be reduced by many different factors, all of which could eventually cause a chaotic form of language to emerge, that is referred to as FTD. FTD references the lack of a coherent structure, or grammar, that can knit together loose and overlapping conceptual categories that have fluid/permeable boundaries. This system is driven by a need for survival, and/or a deficit in the capacity to communicate needs/risks. The processing demands on the brain create a dissociation between the mind and the body. At this point, there may be a loss of empathy within and between identities. This is what we refer to as 'madness': It represents a breakdown in the normal structures and processes that we rely on for the performance of the identities that have been constructed by and for us, through participation in the organisations that we exist within. 

As proof of concept, it is possible to consider pronouns as linguistic tools that are used to position identities, relative to each other, within their respective geo-political and socio-temporal hierarchies. Pronouns, singular and plural, appear in English so frequently that the number of letters is restricted to between 1 and 3, and occasionally up to 5 characters long. If the pronouns identify the subject of the sentence, adverbs and adjectives are added next to link the subject with an object. They have an average length of 5 characters with a fairly modest range around that of between 3 and 7 characters. Most of these words code the identity, the subject, as having, being, or doing something to something or someone else. The object of the sentence is then realised in a noun or verb phrase, that contain an average of about 5 to 7 characters, but with a long, long tail, up to about 10 characters. Anthroplogical research suggests the average length of these words has increased over time, with the evolution of more and more complex ideologies. These words are essentially symbolic labels for learned concepts, that exist as memories in the minds of their users. They are used to provide the meaningful content of a sentence, rather than the shorter words that provide the majority of the structure. 

This organisation, of nodal content within a structure of relational arcs, together facilitate the transfer of information as networks of interconnected knowledge. Add to these basic subject-object sentences, a grammar that embeds the author of the message, the actors, and their audience, within a past, present and future, with a history of possessions, and obligations, relative to each other, and suddenly the social logic of the linguistic framework is complete. Violations of this logic, violate the spatial, temporal, and social relationships upon which the audience base their collective understanding, and cultural perspectives. Thus, any transgression of the logic incurs a loss in believability, a loss of faith in the authenticity of the author, and the value of their constructions. Whereas, the author who adheres to this logical framework, continues to make sense, and they command an authority and truth that accumulates value, because it can be trusted in, implicitly by their audience.

MENTAL HEALTH

Obviously, the absence of resources that we need to maintain our mental health is much harder to identify and quantify than the presence of the physical resources we need to maintain our physical health. But this is the job that mental health nurses have to do, and a lot more of us will be required to do a lot more of in the future. As we progress to ever greater levels of human understanding and civilisation, hopefully we will start to understand more about the origin of any 'errors' within our communication systems, and those we currently stigmatise and label, with harmful words and narratives, in a misguided attempt to lock them out of the perfection that we endlessly crave for ourselves.