Neurotypica

Language doesn't transmit thoughts; it cues retrieval. When you say "freedom," my brain pulls up whatever cluster of ideas, experiences, and associations I've built around that word. If you grew up in a context where "freedom" meant personal autonomy and minimal interference, and I grew up where it meant collective liberation and mutual support, we'll hear completely different concepts when the word is spoken. The word is just a pointer---it retrieves the chunk, and the chunk is built from experience, not defined by a dictionary.

So what can you do? Start by mapping overlap before highlighting difference. Find a concrete example or experience you both share, show how your idea connects to that, and then refine from there. You're not transmitting the concept whole; you're guiding their brain to build a chunk similar to yours by cueing retrieval of related experiences they already have. Assume nothing is obvious, and check that the chunks you're both working with are in the same neighbourhood before you try to explain the fine details.

Communities chunk ideas differently because they practise different things and value different patterns. If you're trained in one discipline and I'm trained in another, the same term retrieves completely different networks of associations. "Theory" means one thing to a physicist, another to a psychologist, and something else again to a literary critic. It's not that one is right and the others are wrong; it's that the communities have built different infrastructure around the word through coordinated practice.

So what can you do? Learn the other person's frame before you try to communicate within it. What are the rituals, the artefacts, the shared references in their community? If you can speak in-frame---use their chunks, their examples, their aesthetic---communication becomes vastly easier. Alternatively, explicitly name the frame shift: "I'm using 'theory' in the physics sense, not the everyday sense" or "When you say 'natural,' are you meaning evolutionarily adapted or chemically unprocessed?" You're making the chunking visible so both of you know which retrieval you're cueing.

When you hear someone speak, your brain doesn't passively record the words---it generates predictions about what they're going to say based on your model of them, the topic, and the context. Then you match the incoming words against that prediction. If your model is confident, you'll hear what you expect even if they said something different. This is why people who disagree deeply can both walk away from a conversation feeling like the other person "didn't listen"---they were each hearing their own predictions, not the actual words.

So what can you do? Lower your precision and slow down. Give concrete examples, repeat key points in different ways, ask the other person to paraphrase what they heard. You're creating space for bottom-up signals (the actual words) to update the top-down model (what they expect you to mean). The more confident their prior, the more work it takes to shift it, so don't assume one clear statement will do it. Communication is iterative updating, not one-shot transmission.

Misunderstanding happens when one person is speaking from their model (top-down) and the other is responding to specific data (bottom-up), and neither adjusts to meet the other. You say "politicians are corrupt" (a general model), and they say "but what about this politician who isn't" (a specific data point). You're talking past each other because you're operating at different levels of abstraction, and neither is bridging.

So what can you do? Match their level first, then guide them to yours. If they're speaking in abstractions, ask for examples. If they're giving examples, acknowledge the pattern and then zoom out to the general principle. You're adjusting the negotiation between top-down and bottom-up until you're both working at the same altitude. Once you're synchronized, you can move together---but trying to pull them to your level without meeting them first just generates more mismatch.