But human nervous systems do have much higher bandwidth communication channels. We share them with the other mammals. It’s the limbic system.
I’m quite uncertain about how high-bandwidth this actually is. I agree that in the first second of meeting someone, it’s much more informative than language could be. Once the initial “first impression” has occurred, though, the rate of communication drops off sharply, and I think that language could overtake it after a few minutes. For example, it takes half a second to say “I’m nervous”, and you can keep saying similarly-informative things for a long time: do you think you could get a new piece of similar information every half second for ten minutes via the limbic system?
(Note that I’m not necessarily saying people do communicate information about their emotions, personality and social status faster via language, just that they could).
I’m quite uncertain about how high-bandwidth this actually is. I agree that in the first second of meeting someone, it’s much more informative than language could be. Once the initial “first impression” has occurred, though, the rate of communication drops off sharply, and I think that language could overtake it after a few minutes. For example, it takes half a second to say “I’m nervous”, and you can keep saying similarly-informative things for a long time: do you think you could get a new piece of similar information every half second for ten minutes via the limbic system?
(Note that I’m not necessarily saying people do communicate information about their emotions, personality and social status faster via language, just that they could).