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Human thought crawls at 10 bits per second, Caltech study finds (www.techspot.com)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

153 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Thanks to @[email protected] for the links!

Here’s a link to Caltech’s press release: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior

Here’s a link to the actual paper (paywall): https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(24)00808-0

Here’s a link to a preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

(page 2) 50 comments

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 4 months ago (16 children)

We don’t think in “bits” at all because our brain functions nothing like a computer. This entire premise is stupid.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Because it’s a Techspot article, of course they deliberately confuse you as to what “bit” means to get views. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) seems like a good introduction to what “bit” actually means.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Base 2 gives the unit of bits

Which is exactly what bit means.

base 10 gives units of "dits"

Which is not bits, but the equivalent 1 digit at base 10.

I have no idea how you think this changes anything about what a bit is?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (5 children)

The external storage data and shannon are both called bits, exactly because they’re both base 2. That does not mean they’re the same. As the article explains it, a shannon is like a question from 20 questions.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That is a fair criticism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Did you actually read it?
Because it's not:

Base 2 gives the unit of bits

Which is exactly what bit means.

base 10 gives units of “dits”

Which is not bits, but the equivalent 1 digit at base 10.

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