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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]

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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] 1 points 3 months ago

with an assumed entropy of about 5 bits per English word. A 120 wpm typing speed therefore translates to 600 bits per minute, or 10 bits per second. A 160 wpm speaking speed translates to 13 bits/s.

The problem here is that the bits of information needs to be clearly defined, otherwise we are not talking about actually quantifiable information. Normally a bit can only have 2 values, here they are talking about very different types of bits, which AFAIK is not a specific quantity.

the human brain tends to trick itself into perceiving a much higher complexity that it is actually processing

This is of course a thing.