Yes, although I’ve heard mixed things about how many chunks you actually have, and that the number might be more like 4.
Also, the ideas often get propagated in conjunction with other ideas. I.e. people don’t just say “politics is the mindkiller”, they say “politics is the mindkiller, therefore X” (where X is whatever point they’re making in the conversation). And that sentence is bottlenecked on total comprehensibility. So, basically the more chunks you’re using up with your core idea, the more you’re at the mercy of other people truncating it when they need to fit other ideas in.
I’d argue “politics is the mindkiller” is two chunks initially, because people parse “is” and “the” somewhat intuitively or fill them in. Whereas Avoid Unnecessary Political Arguments is more like 4 chunks. I think you typically need at least 2 chunks to say something meaningful, although maybe not always.
Once something becomes popular it can eventually compress down to 1 chunk. But, also, I think “sentence complexity” is not only bottlenecked on chunks. “Politics is the mindkiller” can be conceptually one chunk, but it still takes a bunch of visual or verbal space up while parsing a sentence that makes it harder to read if it’s only one clause in a multi-step argument. I’m not 100% sure if this is secretly still an application of working memory, or if it’s a different issue.
Yes, although I’ve heard mixed things about how many chunks you actually have, and that the number might be more like 4.
Also, the ideas often get propagated in conjunction with other ideas. I.e. people don’t just say “politics is the mindkiller”, they say “politics is the mindkiller, therefore X” (where X is whatever point they’re making in the conversation). And that sentence is bottlenecked on total comprehensibility. So, basically the more chunks you’re using up with your core idea, the more you’re at the mercy of other people truncating it when they need to fit other ideas in.
I’d argue “politics is the mindkiller” is two chunks initially, because people parse “is” and “the” somewhat intuitively or fill them in. Whereas Avoid Unnecessary Political Arguments is more like 4 chunks. I think you typically need at least 2 chunks to say something meaningful, although maybe not always.
Once something becomes popular it can eventually compress down to 1 chunk. But, also, I think “sentence complexity” is not only bottlenecked on chunks. “Politics is the mindkiller” can be conceptually one chunk, but it still takes a bunch of visual or verbal space up while parsing a sentence that makes it harder to read if it’s only one clause in a multi-step argument. I’m not 100% sure if this is secretly still an application of working memory, or if it’s a different issue.