I agree there would be challenges around information selectively. I expect Runasimmi can speak more "quickly" "efficiently" about labour-based taxation in the form of terraced plateaus growing cocoa than Inuktitut, but would find itself in deep contrast in the opposite direction speaking of the ice flo route and the associated ice quality a polar bear took hunting a seal.

Also, just because a syllable "encodes more bits on average" does it imply faster transmission rate? Just because French encodes gender information into it's language and syllables, isn't knowing the gender of a shovel at best "check bits?" Used for detecting transmission errors but not intrinsically critical data?

I'm not a linguist. I'm barely a scientist. I'm fascinated by the assertion that it's easy to establish "bits per second" on syllables having somehow abstracted away social context. I'm not saying you're wrong or they're wrong, just that this rubs my naive intuitions exactly the wrong way... Which speaks more to the quality of my intuitions (apparently quite bad) rather than the real science by people actually in the field.