9  What is Communication?

Communication describes a remarkably broad range of skills & tools. that you may think it’s on the verge of losing any meaning at all. Indeed, it’s one of the few truly universal phenomena, perhaps it is the only truly universal phenomena. that is uiverwe can imagine is almost , as a thing for we can which we such a vague word, and broad is defined so broad and describes is one of the few topics

9.0.1 Communication Models

Figure 9.1: The typical communication model, as used in e.g. Shannon (1948)

9.1 What is special about STEM

Why is it necessary to discuss communication in STEM separatly. Isn’t communication jsut communication?

10 Models

One of the unifying themes that connects STEM disciplines is the use of models. Indeed it is so fundamental to our personal understanding of the world we inhabit that we take it for granted. This will form the basis of understanding communication reframing it using a language familiar across STEM.

n = 1

we can – and will – look at what insights research provides; but sometimes the most valuable tool to deal with something right in front of us is our own bext judgement informed by experience.

10.1 Knowing or Feeling?

i.e. Decision making (in Communication)

If we had to actually pay attention to and consciously make decisions so as to maximize the probability of a desired effect, we would be overwhelmed. Instead we do this for those cases where we either subjectively feel or objectively know will have the greatest impact. Knowing that any specific decision, isolated from context, will have a large impact on the outcome may be informed by previous knowledge gained by research or experience, but it is not necessarily better than a decision made on a feeling that places the decision in the context in which it will be made. Indeed, the two sources of information can be complementary. Tasked with having to actually identify these questions, then carefully consider how each choice may affect the outcome and then make a conscience decision, is reductionism as absurdity in the real world.

The best decision to make is the one you don’t have to. Instead of trying to quantify, measure and further describe every possibly decision and try to convince yourself that you can actually model the the complexity of your decision, allow decisions to be a natural product of the cultural values. i.e. we are constantly and passively affirming our core principles and beliefs that are rooted in the mental models of how we see the world.