Friday afternoons should be a time to slope off early and definitely not sat in a room waiting for a Computer scientist to expand on why he believes that the Maximum Human Bandwidth has been reached.
Now i am going to hold my hands up and admit straight off the bat that as soon as i saw H= - Σ p (x) logp (x) on the first slide my brain said 'Pfft...you're on your own with this one' and switched off so the following may be a bit hazy but apparently something called the Limit Bandwidth Of Consciousness has been studied for hundreds of years (obviously passed me by admittedly) which is how the human consciousness has a limit of how much data and information can be processed into your perception, a figure pegged at 41 bits per second.
Now this was not a problem until exactly June 29th 2007 when iPhones were invented and the technology to send such a large amount of data and information through your eyes to your brain which would overwhelm the human consciousness which means we discard much of what our brain deems as not useful as the 41 bits per second is hardwired into the brain and cannot be expanded.
So brain, consciousness and iPhones..got it, is that it? Nope because someone at the back annoying had questions about a direct brain interface which the boffin said was a great question and i agree, if he meant great in the why did he ask that, he was finishing type of way.
The human brain is structurally limited to the 41 bits limit so any direct brain interface is still maximized to 41 bits per second so note to self, don't do that or i risk going insane, check, no need to explain any further, oh, you are going to anyway, brill.
Piping directly to the unconscious..yada yadda... assimilation of data and information...etc etc... our neurons and neuropeptides encoding the data...and so forth... without holographically also creating all the antecedent steps to build that memory...and so on...artificially induced mental illness...no anchor to our consciousness...whatever.
The last thing i heard as i scooted towards the door was 'Any further questions' and a small voice asking about directing machines to communicate with each other from the pre-motor cortex but i was up to my 41 bits limit by then and i didn't want to risk insanity or more importantly, further mind numbing boredom.
Sunday, 17 November 2024
The Human Bandwidth Limit
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5 comments:
a bit funny, and unusually self abasing.
but, nothing new, and the iphone is irrelevant.
all our organs have a purpose and do the same thing:
> every heart does the same thing - move blood
> every lung does the same thing - ingest oxygen into blood
> every kidney does the same thing - filter blood
> etc.
the brain's purpose is two fold: 1.) process incoming data, and 2.) create a mind.
for the most part, all brains are the same, but each mind is a unique collection of processes because we all have different experiences/inputs.
when we are born we are overwhelmed by our senses. but the brain begins creating filters and in short time we recognize people and select things by filtering out obtuse data. long before we can speak, we understand labels for concrete things like food, mom, dad, dog, etc. soon, we understand abstract concepts... and it goes on from there.
when creating a mind, one of the primary functions of the brain is to create processes that filter out data that is deemed irrelevant. our senses receive far more data than we can CONSCIOUSLY process (41 bits or whatever - but we are actually doing a lot processing we are not consciously acknowledging - cerebral cortex and limbic system at work). so, when you look, your eyes see everything they are equipped to see (visible light reflections), but your brain filters out 99.9999999% of the data your eyes send to your brain for conscious processing. by the way, your eyes (lens, nerves, etc. and the rest of your visual system) manipulate the data before it is sent to the brain... this is what magicians utilize to "trick" us. they learn what our brains ignore and use those gaps.
i just took up birding. when taking up a new endeavor it is important to practice a lot because you have to change the filters and processes in your mind. with the exception of a few birds, as little as 5 weeks ago, when i saw a small bird whether it was a sparrow, finch, vireo, warbler, chickadee, or wren my mind registered sparrow. now, i recognize the many species and subspecies and have started to recognize the differences among sparrows: song sparrow, savanna sparrow, black throated sparrow...
the brain versus the mind... who cares about 41 bits
if you care to know more about this fascinating topic read about "paradigms". a really good outdated book is Joel Barker's 1993 book "Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future
at amazon: https://a.co/d/giFf4l8
I’ll pass.
i'm shocked
Shouldn’t be as I called it mind numbingly boring in the post.
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