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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]

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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

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 4 months ago (15 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

Bit in this context refers to the [Shannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_(unit)) from information theory. 1 bit of information (that is, 1 shannon) is the amount of information you receive from observing an event with a 50% chance of occurring. 10 bits would be equivalent to the amount of information learned from observing an event with about a 0.1% chance of occurring. So 10 bits in this context is actually not that small of a number.

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

10 shannons, that is, 10 bits, each with 50% probability would be equivalent to the amount of information gained from observing an event with 1/1024 chance of occurring, not 1/10. Thats because this unit gets combined multiplicatively. The wikipedia article mentions that if there are 8 possible events with equal probability, the information content would be 3 shannons.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Right, 1/1024 is 0.0009765625 or about 0.1%.

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