If agents can't communicate with one another, then how can people? "The answer is that we overestimate how much we actually communicate. Instead, despite those seemingly important differences, much of what we do is based on common knowledge and experience." In other words, we communicate by exploiting a common heritage of experience.
"The smaller two languages are, the harder it will be to translate between them. This is not because there are too many meanings, but because there are too few. The fewer things an agent does, the less likely that what another agent does will correspond to any of those things. And if two agents have nothing in common, no translation is conceivable."
In other words, agents that can't communicate with one another can't do so because of a lack of common experience. This is why higher-order agents responsible for conscious thoughts are blind, too -- they cannot communicate with, in any deep sense, lower-order agents.
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