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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?

#301

Post by sigmoid10 »

ghurtado wrote: post #244
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.

> And the human brain is very good at compression Yes, but in order to measure its bitrate accurately you need to tell us whether that compression is gzip, zlib, zip or 7zip. They don't all produce the same results. If we are going to be utterly ridiculous about this conversation, let's at least be complete.

How would that be relevant? The only relevant aspect for this discussion is that language is tightly compressible, which noone here has challenged yet. But I've seen noone come up with a true example where you'd be actively processing high entropy data at a rate that disagrees fundamentally with the paper.

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

#302

Post by atoav »

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…

Well and not only that, your brain is at the same time processing incoming sounds which it spatializes based on the minor phase/level differences and based onnreflections within the ears themselves. Your brain processes all feelings for all body parts, including a big chunk of skin, temperature perception, sense of gravity to balance yourself, etc.

If you received 10 bits once a second describing all of that, good luck, you probably won't survive the next 15 minutes.

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

#303

Post by seanhunter »

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…

Your argument boils down to “exclude anything faster than 10 bits per second, so then you’re limited to things which are 10 bits per second or less”. It’s extremely unconvincing.

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

#304

Post by seanhunter »

fzeindl wrote: post #297
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…

Could the 10bits be some sort of instruction-set-address-width? Meaning that while you are solving the rubik‘s cube, your brain has the capacity of switching into one of 2^10=1024 possible next states, which might fire nerve impulses for the body and also come with a new set of 1024 next states? When focusing on the cube about 20 or 30 of the next states could be related to the cube, while the rest is concerned with…

THe 10 bits is just very obviously made-up nonsense. The brain doesn’t operate on anything like a binary system, sensory data is not digitally encoded - it is all continuous data. Even the abstract kind of answers its own question. It says sensory data is something like the order of 10^9 bits per second but the “information throughput” is 10 bits per second. It asks “why do we need billions of neurons to process 10 bits per second?” Well we clearly don’t because that’s clearly not what we do. We process 10^9 bits per second, and we do a bunch of things which aren’t just processing sensory data as well. And on top of that we do things which aren’t measured in the 10 bits per second also.

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

#305

Post by wizzwizz4 »

gf000 wrote: post #294
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see your comparison as relevant. I'm a metre away from a nine-year-old Android 6 phone that can easily go a month on a single charge (while tracking its location!). Your Apple Watch is (a) constantly using its radio, (b) running a fairly high-end graphics chip, and (c) actively probing your body at intervals. Nothing to do with software.

I mentioned two watches with similarly sized batteries.

The phone battery is only about twice the volume of a smartwatch battery.

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

#306

Post by fzeindl »

seanhunter wrote: post #304
fzeindl wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could the 10bits be some sort of instruction-set-address-width? Meaning that while you are solving the rubik‘s cube, your brain has the capacity of switching into one of 2^10=1024 possible next states, which might fire nerve impulses for the body and also come with a new set of 1024 next states? When focusing on the cube about 20 or 30 of the next states could be related to the cube, while the rest is concerned with…

THe 10 bits is just very obviously made-up nonsense. The brain doesn’t operate on anything like a binary system, sensory data is not digitally encoded - it is all continuous data. Even the abstract kind of answers its own question. It says sensory data is something like the order of 10^9 bits per second but the “information throughput” is 10 bits per second. It asks “why do we need billions of neurons to process 10 b…

> sensory data is not digitally encoded - it is all continuous data

That might be correct but as far as I know the brain has circuits that fire periodically with a certain frequency (what brain waves are about). If such frequencies steer some kind of gate than you do have a kind of digital logic with 1 being where the brain waves cross the zero line.

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

#307

Post by vrighter »

ghurtado wrote: post #243
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.

Can you point me to the book that says that "Booleans" are encoded in the human brain just like in a binary computer and they take exactly 1 bit to store? I mean, why not assume error correction, while we are at it, or some kind of compression algorithm that reduces the size further? If that sounds ridiculous to you, you are beginning to get it. Every single brain cell works on electric potential (a continous value).…

"bits of information" doesn't mean 1's and 0's. "bits" is a measure of entropy.

If you send an analog signal over a wire and the receiver on the other end can distinguish between 1024 different voltages reliably, then you sent 10 bits of information. Even though you sent neither a 0 nor a 1, but an analog voltage.

It's about the "information" as an abstract concept, not about how that information is encoded as data sent over some medium. I can send you the same thing thousands of times. I would have sent you lots of data, but 1000 copies of the same thing still only contains as much information as a single copy does.

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

#308

Post by freehorse »

DamonHD wrote: post #299
freehorse wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "it's obviously wrong" comments The article is not even wrong imo, it is non-sense. Eg when we speak we convey much more information than just with the words we say. We communicate "information" using intonation, changing the rate of the speech, body language etc. Statements like "10 bits per seconds" are ridiculous clickbaits, and cognitive scientists should study cognition in more ecologically valid settings if t…

You appreciate that the contrast that is being highlighted in the paper is the missing 8 orders of magnitude? A little bit more than the OOM baseline claim of 10bps highlighted is neither here nor there.

Put a bunch of people in an empty, lacking as much as possible any details, room. Try to minimise an environmental stimulation. Have the people dress as plainly, boring as possible. Think of diddy's white parties, all white. Have people sing and dance and do stuff. Have a person just watch them. Do you think the person will find that this context is understimulating? Do you think that the "perception bandwidth" of them there is gonna fall down, or that people will have the same feeling as looking at an empty wall or some painting for several minutes? I don't think so, and if not then we have to think about where the information is coming from, who produces the processes that encode this information and how they produce them.

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

#309

Post by ckemere »

Definitely a neat article insofar as it summarizes many observations about task related “bandwidth” of human output.

Summarizing other comments - calculating bandwidth in a task-specific way neglects metacognition: the Rubik’s cube solver can rapidly recover if someone shoves them when their blindfold is on; the memory champion can notice a pie being aimed at their face and duck. I think that there’s still something interesting around our inability to multitask conscious behaviors, but the overarching conclusion is flawed.

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

#310

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

082349872349872 wrote: post #226
ssl-3 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a think is not a conscious activity?

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

Depends on expertise. Consider a toddler learning to walk, while eating a snack, carrying a toy and avoiding the cat.

Driving stick is a good example, as shifting gears requires conscious thought at first and becomes mostly automated with experience.

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