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The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

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Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#221

Post by cycomanic »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #151
mystified5016 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 bits per second is effectively nothing. Not even a single cell could operate at 10 bits per second. Every organic system would collapse immediately.

Remember, this is an intermediate encoding of a hidden feature space between perception and planning. What you see at the start and the end of the neural network might be very different. Consider this: Typing at 60 words/minute, 5 characters/word and 8 bits/character gives a gross bit rate of 40 bits/second. With today's compression algorithms, you can easily get 4:1 reduction in data. That leaves you at approximatel…

So the argument is that compression is not processing? That's a very weird definition of processing. Also when we do this we can always argue that we get down to 10bit/s, just change the compression ratio.

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#222

Post by whatever0124 »

aebtebeten wrote: post #204
burnte wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did read the summary and see what you saw, but that still leads me to believe the headline of the article is clickbait and that the authors don't understand that action signalling doesn't require the same bandwidth as information processing, but even then it's way more than 10b/s. Look at a backhoe. It has a few levers and a couple pedals. EXTREMELY simple interface. Each lever and pedal is basically 1 bit for enga…

Here's a simple reaction test: https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime It's 1 bit (discriminate red vs. green) but I doubt many here can manage 100 ms, which is what it would take to implement 10 of those decisions per second.

This measures latency not processing power. You can have 10 b/s or 1 Gb/s of processing power with the same latency.

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#223

Post by ssl-3 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #216
ssl-3 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll have a good think about whether we can process things in parallel or only in series the next time I decide to walk and chew gum while bouncing a ball, not tripping over things, and staying out of traffic.

none of those activities need involve conscious decisions, however

Having a think is not a conscious activity?

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#225

Post by Jensson »

082349872349872 wrote: post #214
bsder wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between latency and throughput.

True, maybe you can find a test which asks, instead of a single button click, to click one of 4 possibilities for a reaction? EDIT: see appendix A.3 Perception

You mean like typing? Typing we click buttons accurately in sequence, people can type way faster than 10 bits per second.

Then consider something more complex like drawing, you draw way way way more than 10 bits a second.

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#226

Post by 082349872349872 »

ssl-3 wrote: post #223
082349872349872 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

none of those activities need involve conscious decisions, however

Having a think is not a conscious activity?

that, yes, sorry.

I meant walking, chewing gum, dribbling a basketball, and avoiding traffic.

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#227

Post by mrguyorama »

zelon88 wrote: post #174

Human's can transfer up to 39 bit/s during normal speech, so I highly doubt that it's accurate to describe human "throughput" as being only 10 bit/s. https://www.science.org/content/article/human-speech-may-hav...

How long a time can you continuously generate that 40bps? If you can only do that 1/4 the time, that's 10bps

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#228

Post by 082349872349872 »

whatever0124 wrote: post #222
aebtebeten wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a simple reaction test: https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime It's 1 bit (discriminate red vs. green) but I doubt many here can manage 100 ms, which is what it would take to implement 10 of those decisions per second.

This measures latency not processing power. You can have 10 b/s or 1 Gb/s of processing power with the same latency.

yes, but the greater the latency, the greater the number of bits per period required to get the same throughput.

I come in around 250 ms on the latency, which means that to get up to 10 bps I'd need to actually be able to discriminate between 6 choices each time.

To get up to 100 bps?

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#229

Post by 082349872349872 »

Jensson wrote: post #225
082349872349872 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, maybe you can find a test which asks, instead of a single button click, to click one of 4 possibilities for a reaction? EDIT: see appendix A.3 Perception

You mean like typing? Typing we click buttons accurately in sequence, people can type way faster than 10 bits per second. Then consider something more complex like drawing, you draw way way way more than 10 bits a second.

not like typing, which is largely automatic; conscious decisions per second.

EDIT: not the expanded bit rate, the optimally compressed bit rate, if that makes sense?

EDIT2: typing at 90 wpm is 1,5 wps, or <10 bps according to Shannon (~1 bit per letter, 5 letters per word)

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#230

Post by ordu »

hathawsh wrote: post #177
sigmoid10 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone here even read more than the title? The article literally explains that you perceive at a rate of 10^9 bits per second. But after filtering and preprocessing in the outer brain you are only left with about 10 bits per second for conscious processing for things like motor functions. Yes, you can see a Rubic's cube and perceive all sorts of facts about it and the environment at the same time. But try solving…

Another way to put it: try to perform a skill you have never practiced. For example, if you've never played the piano or tried to read sheet music, see how long it takes you to play a few notes correctly. It's complex enough that you'll very likely find yourself limited to around 10 bits per second. You shouldn't count the bits handled by visual processing, basic motor control, and other things you have practiced all…

> You shouldn't count the bits handled by visual processing, basic motor control, and other things you have practiced all your life.

Ok, but how to count bits for your example with piano? It has 80 keys or so, isn't it? Should we take log2(80)=6.32...? Of if you are working with only part of the keyboard, maybe we should take log2(7)? How many bits per seconds of processing it takes to keep my hand on a keyboard in a right way that was shown by a tutor? How to measure it? Does my experience with a guitar makes it easier? How many bits easier?

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