7 ms·

Musk is wrong that input bandwidth is a limiting factor in intelligence. We don't efficiently use the megapixel our phones show us, let alone the several megapi

Musk is wrong that input bandwidth is a limiting factor in intelligence. We don't efficiently use the megapixel our phones show us, let alone the several megapixels on our laptops. Improving UIs will provide much more bang for the buck for many many decades to come. A neural lace is the equivalent of trying to increase the yield per square inch of the herbs in your window box when you have 100 acres of empty land around you.

erkkie 10y ago
Imagine thinking about something and having it appear on your brain interface HUD vs typing a google search on your phone and reading it from the screen. How is that not a bandwidth problem?
- XorNot 10y ago
  Wrong paradigm: imagine being able to have perfect recall of information you looked at once. Or being able to check point your active memories and recover that state of mind at will.
  - erkkie 10y ago
    If I'd had to guess and theorise, and it's highly likely I'm wrong, making thoughts available semantically for an computer to parse requires more bandwidth than (once command+control is figured out) recalling of information + presenting it. The latter could be directly tied to the visual nerves only perhaps? Still all part of the same paradigm to me though.
  - littledouglas 10y ago
    Wrong paradigm: Imagine your brain has the entire contents of Google. The speed of all machines connected to the network. And the creativity of all other linked minds.
    - gambiting 10y ago
      But it won't, unless Musk somehow figures out how to "write" information to your brain, and right now we can't even fully figure out how the information is stored, much less how to write it back - the way this will most likely work is that you will search something on google by thinking about it, and it will "appear" in your vision by stimulating your visual nerve. You still have to read it and remember it, you won't magically know Kung-Fu Matrix-style by thinking about it.
      - XorNot 10y ago
        That's not substantially better then "easier" technology - i.e. something non-invasive but advanced, like contact lenses with a lightfield display and wireless power. But if you're going to be interfacing with the brain, then there's a lot we can do probabilistically - i.e. deliberately inducing different parts of the memory centers of the brain to promote recall, targeted to the patterns of activation at previous times. Modifying the production of neurotransmitters or being able to deliberately dampen some would also lead to some interesting possibilities.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  Your model of cognition is off. When you are thinking about an orange, you don't have an actual orange-like terabyte structure appear in your brain. You think about individual body reactions you might have to an orange, or you think about specific things you could do with an orange. Which slivers of orangeness appear is highly context dependent. The fact that you have control over your attention... you can direct it to arbitrary things you could do or feel with an orange... that gives you the subjective impression of seeing the whole thing all at once, but that's just a lie your brain tells you. You only actually experience tiny vignettes. You imagine your experience of "orange" is this massive huge bandwidth cognitive experience, but you only really need a handful of neurons to maintain a weak signal signifying orange. A crude drawing of an orange in an app can trigger exactly those same neurons. As long as your mind is busy with other things, you won't even notice the difference. This is why novels work. And it's why comics work. "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud does a great job of showing how abstract representations of things can provide richer experiences than realistic ones. Of course, if you direct your attention to the differences between the crude drawing and a "real" orange, you can interrogate those differences. But the fact that you can explore a rich representation of an orange in your brain doesn't mean that you do when you experience one in daily use.
  - erkkie 10y ago
    I want orange to appear on a google search, what bytes need to be sent over the wire from my brain.
blueprint 10y ago
I think you're saying a few different things. But I do agree with your very first statement about bandwidth vs intelligence. As a matter of fact, intelligence itself is not nearly the limiting factor of human societies. If one cannot control the influence of what has accumulated in one's consciousness from the past they cannot see anything as it really is. People hear what they want to hear. Even given the constant firehose of truth that we are being sent through everything that exists around us, people remain blind through the simple fact that they don't want to know.
Tepix 10y ago
Despite the quite high bandwidth of the human eye, we only use it for serial input. Despite being a massively parallel processing unit, it appears that there are only a few queues for data input. Applying the awesome pattern matching power of the brain to a lot of data simultaneously (in parallel) is not something our brains appear to be capable of. Perhaps it would require too much energy and get too hot?
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  We're not using it efficiently, though. And the whole field of UI / UX actually now moves in completely opposite direction - towards how to make things least efficient and least information-dense, but more and more pretty so that it sells and addicts better. I'd love to see some research into just how much data can humans really process if humans are properly trained and the data is cleverly presented.
- falcolas 10y ago
  > we only use it for serial input. Consciously. Unconsciously, your mind is always looking for threats - big movements - in the periphery of your view. It's a co-processor which runs through a lot of data in order to direct your conscious mind. > Perhaps it would require too much energy I think that the problem of energy could be overcome. I think that instead of getting too hot, it would simply produce too much waste, and since the waste evacuation system for your brain only really operates when you sleep (at least, last I heard), this would be the main limiting factor.

erkkie 10y ago

Imagine thinking about something and having it appear on your brain interface HUD vs typing a google search on your phone and reading it from the screen. How is that not a bandwidth problem?

XorNot 10y ago
Wrong paradigm: imagine being able to have perfect recall of information you looked at once. Or being able to check point your active memories and recover that state of mind at will.
- erkkie 10y ago
  If I'd had to guess and theorise, and it's highly likely I'm wrong, making thoughts available semantically for an computer to parse requires more bandwidth than (once command+control is figured out) recalling of information + presenting it. The latter could be directly tied to the visual nerves only perhaps? Still all part of the same paradigm to me though.
- littledouglas 10y ago
  Wrong paradigm: Imagine your brain has the entire contents of Google. The speed of all machines connected to the network. And the creativity of all other linked minds.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    But it won't, unless Musk somehow figures out how to "write" information to your brain, and right now we can't even fully figure out how the information is stored, much less how to write it back - the way this will most likely work is that you will search something on google by thinking about it, and it will "appear" in your vision by stimulating your visual nerve. You still have to read it and remember it, you won't magically know Kung-Fu Matrix-style by thinking about it.
    - XorNot 10y ago
      That's not substantially better then "easier" technology - i.e. something non-invasive but advanced, like contact lenses with a lightfield display and wireless power. But if you're going to be interfacing with the brain, then there's a lot we can do probabilistically - i.e. deliberately inducing different parts of the memory centers of the brain to promote recall, targeted to the patterns of activation at previous times. Modifying the production of neurotransmitters or being able to deliberately dampen some would also lead to some interesting possibilities.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
Your model of cognition is off. When you are thinking about an orange, you don't have an actual orange-like terabyte structure appear in your brain. You think about individual body reactions you might have to an orange, or you think about specific things you could do with an orange. Which slivers of orangeness appear is highly context dependent. The fact that you have control over your attention... you can direct it to arbitrary things you could do or feel with an orange... that gives you the subjective impression of seeing the whole thing all at once, but that's just a lie your brain tells you. You only actually experience tiny vignettes. You imagine your experience of "orange" is this massive huge bandwidth cognitive experience, but you only really need a handful of neurons to maintain a weak signal signifying orange. A crude drawing of an orange in an app can trigger exactly those same neurons. As long as your mind is busy with other things, you won't even notice the difference. This is why novels work. And it's why comics work. "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud does a great job of showing how abstract representations of things can provide richer experiences than realistic ones. Of course, if you direct your attention to the differences between the crude drawing and a "real" orange, you can interrogate those differences. But the fact that you can explore a rich representation of an orange in your brain doesn't mean that you do when you experience one in daily use.
- erkkie 10y ago
  I want orange to appear on a google search, what bytes need to be sent over the wire from my brain.

blueprint 10y ago

I think you're saying a few different things. But I do agree with your very first statement about bandwidth vs intelligence. As a matter of fact, intelligence itself is not nearly the limiting factor of human societies. If one cannot control the influence of what has accumulated in one's consciousness from the past they cannot see anything as it really is. People hear what they want to hear. Even given the constant firehose of truth that we are being sent through everything that exists around us, people remain blind through the simple fact that they don't want to know.

Tepix 10y ago

Despite the quite high bandwidth of the human eye, we only use it for serial input. Despite being a massively parallel processing unit, it appears that there are only a few queues for data input. Applying the awesome pattern matching power of the brain to a lot of data simultaneously (in parallel) is not something our brains appear to be capable of. Perhaps it would require too much energy and get too hot?

TeMPOraL 10y ago
We're not using it efficiently, though. And the whole field of UI / UX actually now moves in completely opposite direction - towards how to make things least efficient and least information-dense, but more and more pretty so that it sells and addicts better. I'd love to see some research into just how much data can humans really process if humans are properly trained and the data is cleverly presented.
falcolas 10y ago
> we only use it for serial input. Consciously. Unconsciously, your mind is always looking for threats - big movements - in the periphery of your view. It's a co-processor which runs through a lot of data in order to direct your conscious mind. > Perhaps it would require too much energy I think that the problem of energy could be overcome. I think that instead of getting too hot, it would simply produce too much waste, and since the waste evacuation system for your brain only really operates when you sleep (at least, last I heard), this would be the main limiting factor.