Beyond Words: Thought Communication #

So I’ve been thinking about this weird limitation we all just accept without questioning it. We have these incredibly rich, complex thoughts - like when you’re imagining a solution to a problem, you might see it spatially, feel the emotional weight of different parts, have this whole multi-dimensional understanding of it. But then when we need to communicate that thought? We have to squash it down into words. Linear, one-after-another words.

It’s kind of insane when you think about it.

The bottleneck problem #

Take movies, for example. When a director like Christopher Nolan makes Inception, he’s not really telling you a story with words - he’s showing you what it feels like to be inside a dream, how time might bend, what psychological states look like when they become physical spaces. You get his thoughts directly through your eyeballs and ears, not through some clunky translation into language.

And it works! You understand things about his vision that would be impossible to capture in text. Try describing that spinning hallway fight scene in words - you’d need paragraphs, and you’d still miss most of what makes it meaningful.

Why this matters for AI #

This is why talking to AI systems feels so frustrating sometimes. You have this clear mental picture of what you want, but you have to:

1. Take your visual/spatial/emotional thought
2. Translate it into words
3. Hope the AI understands your word-translation
4. Get back something that may or may not match what you actually meant

It’s like playing telephone, but one of the people in the chain only speaks a different language.

What if instead of typing “make me a website layout that feels modern but trustworthy,” you could just sketch some rough boxes and shapes, maybe add some colors that capture the mood you want? Or play a piece of music that has the rhythm and energy you’re going for?

Other ways thoughts could travel #

I keep thinking about all the non-language ways we already communicate complex ideas:

• Drawings and diagrams - ever notice how a quick sketch can explain a system architecture better than pages of documentation?
• Music and sound - rhythm, tension, release, harmony - these communicate emotional and temporal patterns that words struggle with
• Physical gesture and movement - dancers and athletes communicate incredibly complex ideas through motion
• Visual metaphors - the way a good infographic can make relationships clear instantly

The thing is, we already know these work. We just haven’t figured out how to use them to talk to computers yet.

The weird part about perspective #

Here’s what’s interesting though - even when filmmakers successfully beam their thoughts into your brain through movies, you still interpret everything through your own experience. The director’s version of “loneliness” might hit you completely differently than it hits me.

But maybe that’s not a bug, it’s a feature? Maybe the goal isn’t perfect thought transmission - maybe it’s about giving richer, multi-dimensional input that preserves more of the original thought’s complexity, even if interpretation varies.

Like, I’d rather have you misunderstand my detailed sketch than perfectly understand my simplified word-description, you know?

Where this could go #

I have no idea how to build this stuff, but I can imagine it. AI systems that can take your rough doodles, understand the emotional context from music you share, pick up on spatial relationships from how you arrange elements on a screen.

Instead of prompt engineering, maybe we’ll have thought engineering - learning to express our ideas through whatever medium captures them best.

The future of human-AI communication might look a lot less like typing and a lot more like… well, like thinking, but externalized.