Technology

68130 readers

3622 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

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

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

156 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

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 90 points 3 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.

load more comments (16 replies)

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 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 3 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 3 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.

load more comments (5 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That is a fair criticism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 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.

load more comments