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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?

#231

Post by VyseofArcadia »

aziaziazi wrote: post #97
Asraelite wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bits are a perfectly acceptable way to measure biological information processing. These are not the boolean logic digital bits like on a computer. They're the more abstract concept of a bit in information theory. Take the number of distinct possible configurations a system can be in (accounting for statistical uncertainty/biases if needed), take the base 2 logarithm of that number, and you have the bits of informatio…

> Take the number of distinct possible configurations a system Easy for an isolated system. Human body is 6000 billion cells, each of them has many possible configurations, most of them share and process informations. I respectfully doubt there’s much to do with bits outside of a tiny bit if flesh in a petri dish.

6 trillion * number of configurations of each cell * number of configurations of interactions between cells = (very very large) finite number. The thing about numbers is that they go on forever. There's not a cutoff for "ok, this number is too big for bits".

Take whatever that mind-bogglingly huge number is, take the logarithm base 2, there you go, that's how many bits you need.

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

#232

Post by gf000 »

dantillberg wrote: post #193
tsimionescu wrote: post #100

It seems very odd that the article seems to be measuring the information content of specific tasks that the brain is doing or specific objects that it is perceiving. But the brain is a general-purpose computer, not a speed-card computer, or English text computer, or binary digit computer, or Rubik's cube computer. When you look at a Rubik's cube, you don't just pick out specific positions of colored squares relative…

> deciding that this is the most relevant activity to keep doing at the moment, instead of doing math or going out for a walk. How many bits of actual decision is going on here, as compared to the period of time that decision applies to? For example, if a person decided once per second whether or not to go for a walk, that could be 1 bit per second. But if that person is constantly transitioning back and forth betwee…

There is a whole "OS" in the background that is way more complex than all of our programmed systems. I may be hyped focusing on a complex program and really not think about anything else, but my body is still constantly senses, processes, and reacts to signals. E.g. I'm not ragdoll falling to the ground, which requires holding balance and tone, which is far from trivial. I also constantly listening to every possible danger, which would immediately override my current activity. I also react to internal signals like hunger or pain.

A bit dumb, but maybe relevant comparison might be asking why can an Apple Watch stay on for a single day only on a charge, while Garmin can do 2 weeks/a month? Because one is a general purpose computer, while the other is an embedded software that can only ever do that few things it is preprogrammed to do.

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

082349872349872 wrote: post #228
whatever0124 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by rahimnathwani »

dantillberg wrote: post #193
tsimionescu wrote: post #100

It seems very odd that the article seems to be measuring the information content of specific tasks that the brain is doing or specific objects that it is perceiving. But the brain is a general-purpose computer, not a speed-card computer, or English text computer, or binary digit computer, or Rubik's cube computer. When you look at a Rubik's cube, you don't just pick out specific positions of colored squares relative…

> deciding that this is the most relevant activity to keep doing at the moment, instead of doing math or going out for a walk. How many bits of actual decision is going on here, as compared to the period of time that decision applies to? For example, if a person decided once per second whether or not to go for a walk, that could be 1 bit per second. But if that person is constantly transitioning back and forth betwee…

  Personally, I only decide whether to go for a walk (or not) _at most_ once every few minutes.
Just because usually the decision is 'keep the current course' that doesn't mean no decision has been made.

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

#235

Post by luxuryballs »

I’m interested in the phenomenon that no matter how messed up (or absent) my sensory input becomes it doesn’t seem to impact my “inner observer”. The only thing impacting it is sleep or loss of consciousness, yet even then there can be moments during these states that this observer can become lucid.

It’s like the science of the soul and one notable implication is dementia, when people become unable to function and recognize things, I wonder if that “inner observer” is still just as in-tact as it is on a huge dose of LSD?

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

#236

Post by burnte »

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.

If you extend your arm straight out to point for example, that's significantly more than ten commands sent at once to your arm muscles. It's just non-conscious. That test measures a bunch of things all together too. Visual processing, color recognition, and conscious decision to act. I got just under 240, and considering everything I had to do, that's pretty neat.

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

#237

Post by burnte »

jknoepfler wrote: post #218
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.

But on the other hand, a "fast" debator from a high school debate team can process 260 words per second while compressing that down to notes, while simultaneously queuing up meaningful responses, while evaluating which/what to go with for a particular audience/judge, while listening for mistakes from their opponent. If you distill bitrate down to serialized responses to a canned psychometric task, sure, but why do we…

260 words per SECOND? Are you sure about that? I can only assume you mean for skim/speed reading.

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

#238

Post by sigmoid10 »

xattt wrote: post #187
sigmoid10 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider normal text compression and you're left with a few bits at best for most of those "fast talkers/listeners." And the human brain is very good at compression.

I feel like this is splitting hairs and moving goalposts. The pro side will always have some sort of explanation why it’s 10 bps or less without a way of actually proving it. This is a frustrating article.

>I feel like this is splitting hairs and moving goalposts.

How? The argument remains exactly the same and we're just discussed counterexamples to the statements of people who obviously don't get it.

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

#239

Post by sigmoid10 »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #184
xattt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen to a podcast at double speed. Assuming a normal talking speed of 150 words per minute, 300 words per minute of written word is not 10 bits per second.

(Shannon estimates 11.82 bits per word, so 300 WPM is 59.1 bits per second)

The Hutter prize submissions can get compression factors >9 on english wiki text. And if you're listening to podcasts the entropy is probably even lower. The human brain is obviously a much better language model than anything we have today, so you can assume that the latent layer in your brain deals with much less than 60 bits per second.

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

#240

Post by timerol »

dantillberg wrote: post #193
tsimionescu wrote: post #100

It seems very odd that the article seems to be measuring the information content of specific tasks that the brain is doing or specific objects that it is perceiving. But the brain is a general-purpose computer, not a speed-card computer, or English text computer, or binary digit computer, or Rubik's cube computer. When you look at a Rubik's cube, you don't just pick out specific positions of colored squares relative…

> deciding that this is the most relevant activity to keep doing at the moment, instead of doing math or going out for a walk. How many bits of actual decision is going on here, as compared to the period of time that decision applies to? For example, if a person decided once per second whether or not to go for a walk, that could be 1 bit per second. But if that person is constantly transitioning back and forth betwee…

> Personally, I only decide whether to go for a walk (or not) _at most_ once every few minutes.

And yet, if I walked into your office and shouted your name, you would have less than a second of reaction time, indicating that you are processing all sound around you and deciding whether to get up and talk to someone pretty much continuously.

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