I don't seem to have as bad a case of finding inexact communication painful as you do, but I'm frequently enough brought up short when what seems like a perfectly clear and obvious feeling doesn't have words to express it. Sometimes I can get a pretty good fit with a lot of thought.
I didn't realize just how bad English is (I don't know whether other languages are better) for describing simple spatial relationships. I think it took ten minutes or more for me to describe a little pivoting brush in my printer to a mechanically adept friend. I knew what I meant, he's good at visualizing. Maybe I can come up with a protocol for such things with an order for talking about orientations and motions.
I'm not sure whether that was a sidetrack, but it might be a clue that when accuracy of communication can be checked, there's much less of it going on than one might think.
Anyway, I agree that conveying what you mean rather than just kidding yourself that you're getting anything across is a real problem.
You probably are making it harder by starting with very abstract, emotionally charged concepts. but it's a hard problem. People don't even agree on what science fiction is, or to put it another way, "science fiction" is a more abstract and emotionally charged concept than it appears to be at first glance.
I'm tempted to conclude with some advice, but I probably don't know enough about your situation.
I don't understand what precisely you intended to say. Are you questioning the relation of language to qualia (and possible differences in qualia between different people), or possible mistranslations between different persons' idiolects, or something else? Sometimes, it is better to give one concrete example than a lot of abstract words. For instance, I have difficulties to imagine what situation this
Do you ever get the feeling that you tried to tell someone something, and they understood what you said, but they didn't understand what you intended for them to - BUT - it still worked?
may possibly describe.
It brings to mind Feynman discussing how people count in their heads and how amazed he was at how different the internal processes could be for such a simple concept that gave the same results. Description here; I recall seeing a video of it on YouTube.
I realize that this is not standard fare on lesswrong. I have as yet found no community other than this which I'd expect to receive valuable feedback and discussion from regarding the pedantic bologna that my mind spews. I am learning to communicate more effectively but find the encyclopedias of experiential relevance behind words themselves as they pertain to a unique mind to be immense roadblocks towards constructing my own understanding of life or communicating my own to others.
Anybody else have this issue?
I see where this connects to philosophies which stand debunked in lieu of the "current state" of philosophy. I do not know exactly how to communicate that to myself in a way which makes fluid sense.
Please keep in mind that I've only just begun digging through this site! I'm posting this in hopes of having my ambiguity ripped to shreds.
The specifics are unnecessary, the concepts of love and God chosen as experiences tied to words immeasurably unique to each individual. I see the connections coming to light even as I type this up as to why this post is a futile relic of thought processes of my past, but there is still a lot of this that sticks with me that would be interesting to have dissected, as cognition does not always present itself clearly!
How many people do you meet out there who actually ask people "are you okay?" ...and actually mean it? They seem to generally be people caught up in an inner monologue in which they are caring because that's the narrative they choose to follow. Not to say that there is anything inherintly wrong with caring because of an ethical concern; it doesn't always have to be about intimacy.
But the care is expressed in a paradigm where once it's said their focus is averted because it's satisfied the need to 'care'. Like... they care, but they are speaking to themselves.
The whole idea of the internal monologue that I see people maintaining... hmm. Not sure where to start. So language is an organizational and communicative tool, right? It allows communication of abstract thought from person to person. So language only holds levity if it is common - if everybody uses the same collection of letters/symbols/sounds/patterns/vocal inflections/facial expression and whatnot. But even though we all use the same words, something like "red" is going to mean something completely different to me than it will to you, because our realities, the spaces within which our minds construct the 'external', must never be the same. These words evoke an emotional response within us and generally they can relate with similitude.
But language is something that exists really only externally, in a sense. Thought is much quicker than language but we still speak things in our heads because we desire communicability and we're used to a world where things happen at a language-paced level.
Do you ever get the feeling that you tried to tell someone something, and they understood what you said, but they didn't understand what you intended for them to - BUT - it still worked? Because the language was ambiguous enough, they heard something you were giving as 'advice' and found a way in their minds eye for those words to fit in as 'advice' and accepted them, because they were primed to. Even though they never really heard what you felt. They heard the same concrete words that you spoke, and understood them perfectly, but for the fact that language on an individual basis is abstract and the fact that they will process it through the lens of their own internal 'language' means they'll never really see what you see, feel what you feel kinda thing.
And as far as YOUR inner monologue goes, there is only one. There is only one collection of emotional associations and memories and neural networking in EXISTENCE which finds itself speaking the 'internal' language that you speak.
Hence,
to me love is love
but to you love is love
and it's pretty damned unusual for two people to connect on that in a pure and unmarring level. It takes a long, long time for peoples' internal monologues to sync up. Even now, I am explaining this to you partly because I want to share and partly because I want to explain it to myself and not because you want to hear it.
Am I tripping myself up so hard from the starting gate simply by choosing to point fingers at outlier concepts such as love or a psychological deific construct?