Words Carry Only 30% — Language as a "Seal"

The Mass of Zero Notes #1

You chose your words with care, and yet the other person took them to mean something entirely different. Most of us have had that experience.

In improvised performance, this kind of misreading can actually generate new energy in the room. But in everyday communication, where the aim is to convey an intention accurately, the same gap can be fatal. In this note, I want to look at how these gaps in interpretation arise, through the lens of what I call "Tone."

The Resonance of Improvisation, the Mold of Words

In improvisation, "Ma" (the interval) and "Error" can become part of the expression because they are wrapped in a bodily "Tone." The intention behind a sound born from emotion is always fluid, and its interpretation is, at root, left to others. Countless tones from everyone in the room, myself included, overlap and sometimes move in directions no one intended, building into a great swell of resonance. In this act of co-creating a field, even misreading becomes fuel for the resonance.

But when we rely on "words" to convey something in daily life, things become complicated.

As signs for naming things precisely, words are overwhelmingly functional. As a means of conveying the vague feelings that arise within us, however, they are remarkably inefficient.

The fluid "intention" we hold inside is pressed into the rigid molds of existing vocabulary and grammar the moment it becomes words, and there it is fixed. I call this process the "sealing" of information.

The 70% That Falls Away in the Seal

However warm the feeling, the moment it becomes a sign called a word, nearly 70% of its intention falls away. What reaches the other person is perhaps 30% at most.

The listener receives that 30% of signs and interprets the intention by filling in the rest with "their own experience and bias." The impressions a word evokes, and the circumstances in which it is received, differ for each of us.

Around the sign called a word, a blank space spreads out. What meaning gets added to that blank depends on each listener's impressions of everything, born from their own memories.

So between speaker and listener, a gap in understanding is always arising. Communication through words carries this inescapable fate from the very beginning.

Face to Face: An Endless Act of Co-creation

Even so, in face-to-face conversation, the 70% that has fallen away does not simply turn into misunderstanding. The improvised "Tone" of a speaker's trembling voice, or the heat of the room, guides the listener toward filling that blank with a "generous completion."

The listener, too, wanting to understand the other person, tries to keep fatal gaps to a minimum. Face-to-face communication, in other words, is an endless act of co-creation in which both sides keep improvising to make up for the failures of signs.

Note: The figures of 30% and 70% used here are felt values, not scientific findings. Whether we measured brainwaves or tried to explain it in language, the very degradation of transmission described in this essay would occur in the process. Arguing over the "true" percentage is therefore meaningless. I offer these figures provisionally, as a benchmark for the fact that degradation occurs in transmission, and as a rough guide to the constant asymmetry between what is sent and what arrives.

Next: The More Words We Add, the Less Gets Through

What happens, then, when a speaker tries to overcome the frustration of not being understood by ignoring the resonance of the "field" and relying on the sheer "quantity" of words to convey 100%? A fatal paradox awaits. In the next note, I want to write about this paradox of the "70% blank."

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These notes explore the margins of the paper The Mass of Zero (2026).

Research page · Paper (DOI: 10.22501/rc.4327675) · Next: #2 The More You Explain, the Less Gets Through