I beg you, please read the paper before commenting. It's very interesting and it answers a lot of questions that might arise from just skimming the title.
The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
21–30 of 325 posts
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The response to the question of "where do they get 10 bits/second" can be found in the paper, in great detail if I might add.
I don't have access. Nor do most of us here probably. Can you share for us then?
this thread has 20 comments at the time of writing my comment. About two of them contain a link to the full paper, please take a look.
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#23Where do they get 10 bits/second? Heck, I can type way faster than 10 bits per second, even after gzipping the output. And when I consider the amount of sensory information that I consciously process (not that comes in, but that I conceptually analyze), it's got to be way higher. 10 bits/s doesn't pass the smell test.
English is about one bit per letter. If you type at a very fast 120WPM then you’re right at 10bps. Computers just don’t represent English very efficiently, even with gzip.
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#24I beg you, please read the paper before commenting. It's very interesting and it answers a lot of questions that might arise from just skimming the title.
Buddy, I followed the link and they want $35.95 to read the paper.
This is... not a recipe for a successful discussion between people who have read the paper.
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#25I beg you, please read the paper before commenting. It's very interesting and it answers a lot of questions that might arise from just skimming the title.
That might be the funniest comment I've ever seen on HN!
A plea to reason, that is probably not outside the posting guidelines, but is certainly in a gray area :-)
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#26I beg you, please read the paper before commenting. It's very interesting and it answers a lot of questions that might arise from just skimming the title.
Buddy, I followed the link and they want $35.95 to read the paper. This is... not a recipe for a successful discussion between people who have read the paper.
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#27Found the pre print if you don't have access
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#28Where do they get 10 bits/second? Heck, I can type way faster than 10 bits per second, even after gzipping the output. And when I consider the amount of sensory information that I consciously process (not that comes in, but that I conceptually analyze), it's got to be way higher. 10 bits/s doesn't pass the smell test.
English is about one bit per letter. If you type at a very fast 120WPM then you’re right at 10bps. Computers just don’t represent English very efficiently, even with gzip.
> English is about one bit per letter.*
* when whole sentences or paragraphs are considered.
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#29Where do they get 10 bits/second? Heck, I can type way faster than 10 bits per second, even after gzipping the output. And when I consider the amount of sensory information that I consciously process (not that comes in, but that I conceptually analyze), it's got to be way higher. 10 bits/s doesn't pass the smell test.
English is about one bit per letter. If you type at a very fast 120WPM then you’re right at 10bps. Computers just don’t represent English very efficiently, even with gzip.
> English is about one bit per letter
Where did you get that number from? How would you represent a letter using 1 bit?
Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
English is about one bit per letter. If you type at a very fast 120WPM then you’re right at 10bps. Computers just don’t represent English very efficiently, even with gzip.
> English is about one bit per letter.* * when whole sentences or paragraphs are considered.
What else would we consider?