Language is Civilization's Worst Inefficiency

Human language is the greatest inefficiency in knowledge transfer. While our brains and bodies store and process information at immense scales, language reduces this to a trickle of 1–400 bits per second. Language evolved to coordinate and bond, not to transmit deep knowledge, which makes direct sharing of internal experience or understanding nearly impossible. This bottleneck limits collaboration, intelligence, and progress. With AI and new interfaces, we may be on the verge of transcending language’s constraints.