Formal languages and the value that doesn't make noise

I’ll wander through this without much grounding, because it’s a question I ask myself a lot.

We’re social beings and, as far as I know, we have no real telepathy. However well we “read” other people, and however well neuroscience maps our biases, we have little or no ability to truly perceive someone else’s inner world. Even if some of modernity’s foundational ideas came from introverts thinking alone, much of the “value” in the world is built in exchange and relationships.

Broadcast and treasure

We have limited attention and a clear bias toward whatever is most salient, perceptible, stimulating. We’re primates, particularly tuned to complex social behavior and very susceptible to color, loud sounds and gesture. Thinking in large numbers, most of us are more influenced by what we receive passively than by what we actively seek.

In that sense, whoever broadcasts ends up heard even by those who don’t want to pay attention, and whoever keeps treasure often goes unnoticed, or needs the active, present attention of the other person to reveal its real value.

If you see companies as organizations sustained by processes carried out by human agents (sensitive, social primates), the resources of political influence, such as speeches, gestures and presentations, are usually the most effective way to own a role, promote an idea or drive an action. And to be remembered for it.

The weight of formal languages

But I see that in a “data-driven” world, where every company is becoming a software company, other forms of language, especially formal languages (mathematics, programming, process engineering, law, accounting), are becoming more and more fundamental to running organizations maturely. Fields traditionally associated with introverts.

Communicating that value to different contexts and levels of learning stays just as important, and knowing how to argue and convince will always set someone apart. But there’s a growing tendency to recognize the “hidden” value in other forms of communication. Introvert or extrovert, shy or charismatic, you have to develop the quality of your communication, whatever the medium, and understand where the value of your action lies in that context.

Nobody becomes a musician just by talking

With LLMs, the idea that natural and programming languages will converge into some kind of “natural formal language” has gained ground. The idea that we’ll all become reasonable programmers just by talking seems odd to me.

As far as we know, humans have always developed formal or structured languages to specialize knowledge and expressiveness in a context: law, musical notation, accounting, mathematics, programming languages. It would be like saying someone becomes a musician without speaking rhythm, harmony and melody, or an accountant without knowing how to classify revenue, expenses, depreciation and taxes.

It’s fun that we can now tap into the internet’s collective knowledge just by asking and get a reasonable answer back. That knowledge matured over generations; it was just embedded into a new system. For it to become something useful, we’ll also need ways to build new knowledge and understanding with it. And language has always been our main tool for that.