Consider the words on the screen. There are two sources of information.

  1. The words, how they’re arranged and such.

  2. The meaning that you assign to the words. Meaning drawn from a lifetime of memories.

99% of the information comes from the assigned meaning. So 99% of what’s going on here is you talking to yourself.

  • infinite_ass@leminal.spaceOP
    2·
    3 days ago

    In the past you received a symbol, and a meaning to go with that symbol.

    In the present, you refer to that meaning when you see that symbol.

    Yes, there was some kind of deeper communication in the past. The dictionary was written (among other things. Like the vastness of non-symbolic experience. Sensations and such).

    But in the present, in the act of “reading”, it’s just you, the dictionary (symbolic and nonsymbolic) and the symbol stream. However you slice it, the dictionary is large and the symbol stream is small.