I ran into some research in which the rate of information transmission of various natural languages was compared. It turns out that in languages that are spoken faster, as measured in phonemes per second, the information carrying content, measured in bits per phoneme, is smaller.
This doesn’t seem likely to generalize reliably to specialist constructed languages. I believe that it is true it when it comes down to average people talking about everyday things, but specialist subjects use specialized jargon and a shared bank of knowledge to communicate very complicated ideas very quickly. As a simple example, words like xor and nand, once they are fully understood and become automatic, do increase the rate of information transmission; likewise introducing the concepts behind ‘bacteria’, ‘molecule’, and ‘atom’ results in much quicker communication about a certain aspect of the world.
If you are constructing a language to hold rational debate, it does make sense to increase information transfer by expecting, and teaching, the language learners to match complex concepts with simple words. This should mean, in practice, more information per phoneme per second in the targeted areas.
While there will be a trade-off between time spent learning the framework and ability to communicate quickly, most rationalists are happy to spend time learning useful frameworks.
This doesn’t seem likely to generalize reliably to specialist constructed languages. I believe that it is true it when it comes down to average people talking about everyday things, but specialist subjects use specialized jargon and a shared bank of knowledge to communicate very complicated ideas very quickly. As a simple example, words like xor and nand, once they are fully understood and become automatic, do increase the rate of information transmission; likewise introducing the concepts behind ‘bacteria’, ‘molecule’, and ‘atom’ results in much quicker communication about a certain aspect of the world.
If you are constructing a language to hold rational debate, it does make sense to increase information transfer by expecting, and teaching, the language learners to match complex concepts with simple words. This should mean, in practice, more information per phoneme per second in the targeted areas.
While there will be a trade-off between time spent learning the framework and ability to communicate quickly, most rationalists are happy to spend time learning useful frameworks.