9 ms·

My thoughts exactly. It makes no sense to me that what I'm thinking and perceiving in real-time is the equivalent of 10 bit/s of data.

sigmoid10 2y ago
Has anyone here even read more than the title? The article literally explains that you perceive at a rate of 10^9 bits per second. But after filtering and preprocessing in the outer brain you are only left with about 10 bits per second for conscious processing for things like motor functions. Yes, you can see a Rubic's cube and perceive all sorts of facts about it and the environment at the same time. But try solving it with your hands while someone shows you a bunch of objects and asks you visual comprehension questions at the same time. You might still perceive those other objects, but consciously classifying them verbally is gonna be really difficult. It's no surprise that the feature space that your deeper brain can actively work on is quite limited.
- mystified5016 2y ago
  10 bits per second is effectively nothing. Not even a single cell could operate at 10 bits per second. Every organic system would collapse immediately.
  - sigmoid10 2y ago
    Remember, this is an intermediate encoding of a hidden feature space between perception and planning. What you see at the start and the end of the neural network might be very different. Consider this: Typing at 60 words/minute, 5 characters/word and 8 bits/character gives a gross bit rate of 40 bits/second. With today's compression algorithms, you can easily get 4:1 reduction in data. That leaves you at approximately 10bits/second that are consciously processed in your brain. Probably even less since your brain might be much better at encoding language than even our best models. Even if some of those numbers are off by a certain factor, the number in the paper is certainly in the right ballpark when you consider orders of magnitude.
    - cycomanic 2y ago
      So the argument is that compression is not processing? That's a very weird definition of processing. Also when we do this we can always argue that we get down to 10bit/s, just change the compression ratio.
- kens 2y ago
  > Has anyone here even read more than the title? Since it costs $35.95 to read the article, probably not. Seriously, paywalling of scientific research is obviously wrong.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    >Seriously, paywalling of scientific research is obviously wrong. Agreed! Here you go: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234 https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234
- wbl 2y ago
  What conscious motor processing? My motor functions largely take care of themselves while I daydream when walking or consider where I want to steer while driving.
  - sigmoid10 2y ago
    That's just motor reflexes that don't even enter higher cognitive processing. But daydreaming probably does process at the same rate as normal language, as was explained in the other comment. Try doing algebra in your head while running an obstacle course you've never seen and you'll be much slower at everything.
- gtirloni 2y ago
  You're missing my point. I'm saying that `try solving it with your hands while someone shows you a bunch of objects and asks you visual comprehension questions at the same time` is more than 10 bit/s of data being processed. I'm saying made up "tasks and outcomes" in this study are not a measure of the brain's throughput IN THE INNER LAYERS.
- xattt 2y ago
  Listen to a podcast at double speed. Assuming a normal talking speed of 150 words per minute, 300 words per minute of written word is not 10 bits per second.
  - sigmoid10 2y ago
    Consider normal text compression and you're left with a few bits at best for most of those "fast talkers/listeners." And the human brain is very good at compression.
    - xattt 2y ago
      I feel like this is splitting hairs and moving goalposts. The pro side will always have some sort of explanation why it’s 10 bps or less without a way of actually proving it. This is a frustrating article.
      - sigmoid10 2y ago
        >I feel like this is splitting hairs and moving goalposts. How? The argument remains exactly the same and we're just discussed counterexamples to the statements of people who obviously don't get it.
    - grumple 2y ago
      I can type at a rate faster than 10 bits/ second (about 2 characters / 16 bits! what a slow rate! I'm well above that, at least 24 bits/second!) and you aren't compressing that to less. And that's while also moving my hands in extremely complex ways to perform the task, looking around my office, listening for threats / wife, observing the breeze from my fan, twiddling my toes on the balance board I don't use... It's clickbait/ragebait. Well done to the title writer.
    - ghurtado 2y ago
      > And the human brain is very good at compression Yes, but in order to measure its bitrate accurately you need to tell us whether that compression is gzip, zlib, zip or 7zip. They don't all produce the same results. If we are going to be utterly ridiculous about this conversation, let's at least be complete.
- hathawsh 2y ago
  Another way to put it: try to perform a skill you have never practiced. For example, if you've never played the piano or tried to read sheet music, see how long it takes you to play a few notes correctly. It's complex enough that you'll very likely find yourself limited to around 10 bits per second. You shouldn't count the bits handled by visual processing, basic motor control, and other things you have practiced all your life. If you practice the skill, the skill moves out of your conscious processing and no longer counts toward the 10 bits per second.
  - ordu 2y ago
    > You shouldn't count the bits handled by visual processing, basic motor control, and other things you have practiced all your life. Ok, but how to count bits for your example with piano? It has 80 keys or so, isn't it? Should we take log2(80)=6.32...? Of if you are working with only part of the keyboard, maybe we should take log2(7)? How many bits per seconds of processing it takes to keep my hand on a keyboard in a right way that was shown by a tutor? How to measure it? Does my experience with a guitar makes it easier? How many bits easier?
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    Your argument boils down to “exclude anything faster than 10 bits per second, so then you’re limited to things which are 10 bits per second or less”. It’s extremely unconvincing.
    - hathawsh 2y ago
      That is a remarkably good argument. Well done, I'm convinced that this paper has little substance after all.
- burnte 2y ago
  I did read the summary and see what you saw, but that still leads me to believe the headline of the article is clickbait and that the authors don't understand that action signalling doesn't require the same bandwidth as information processing, but even then it's way more than 10b/s. Look at a backhoe. It has a few levers and a couple pedals. EXTREMELY simple interface. Each lever and pedal is basically 1 bit for engage/disengage, but the operator has to process orders of magnitude more sensory info to operate it properly. You could use an arduino to control a backhoe, but you'd need quite a powerful computer to know what to tell the arduino to do. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Knowing how to use the tool well is always far more complicated than simply knowing how the tool operates.
  - aebtebeten 2y ago
    Here's a simple reaction test: https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime It's 1 bit (discriminate red vs. green) but I doubt many here can manage 100 ms, which is what it would take to implement 10 of those decisions per second.
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      Can the combination of mind and body only process reactive tasks serially, or can it process them with some amount of parallelism? And is 100ms (I struggled to get below 180ms, myself) only the time needed to process, or does that include IO latency? If it includes IO latency, then is there a buffer?
      - 082349872349872 2y ago
        > or can it process them with some amount of parallelism I guess someone with two boxes handy could set them up next to each other and run two copies of this test to see if their reaction time holds up or if it lengthens? EDIT: mine suffers greatly on dual wield: 225 -> 320 ms see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453704
        2y ago
- FartyMcFarter 2y ago
  That still doesn't explain strange sentences in the article such as" > Why does the brain need billions of neurons to process 10 bits/s? Maybe the article is being intentionally disingenuous here? The brain is definitely not processing 10 bits/s, maybe a small part of it is. I'd also say that you can make very complicated problems with only 10 bits of input (e.g. calculating busy-beaver of N), so "processing X bits" where X is a small value is no guarantee that this should be doable with a low amount of processing anyway.
- anticensor 2y ago
  There is something wrong with that calculation: our speech output alone is 40 bits per second.
kijin 2y ago
Send a query to your favorite database. The database preprocesses hundreds of gigabytes of data, map-reduces it, and finally returns a single 32-bit integer, taking exactly 3.2 seconds to do so. Nobody would say that the database can only process 10 bits per second. The query just happened to ask for a very simplified answer.
- scotty79 2y ago
  Everybody would say it outputs 10 bits per second. And when it comes to consciousness simplified answers at 10 bits per second is the best you can get. This article asks why.
  - kijin 2y ago
    It's an interesting question indeed, why the mind produces so little output compared to input. Still, I get the feeling that the apparent bit rate of the conscious output is not the right metric to be measuring. There are so many ways in which the bit rate you're measuring could have been bottle-necked by factors outside of the mind, such as the speed at which you can move your tongue to articulate language, or a cultural expectation that prefers compact answers over chain-of-thought babbles. The mind also leaks a lot of information, both consciously and unconsciously, through side channels such as facial expression, gestures, and even variations in the rate of output itself.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      > It's an interesting question indeed, why the mind produces so little output compared to input. My theory is that consciousness is super complicated and brain has barely enough juice to crank out any of it. Conscious field of vision is about 2% of total field of vision and we observe the world by constantly swiping it with this 2%. This way we reuse both neural circuitry of our brains and also training data that would otherwise necessarily be spread across larger size of neural network if our conscious field of vision was larger. So it short, conscious output is so small because we are dumb and short lived. I also wouldn't say that there's a lot of information in the side channels. Properly compressed it's probably less than engaged conscious output.

sigmoid10 2y ago

Has anyone here even read more than the title? The article literally explains that you perceive at a rate of 10^9 bits per second. But after filtering and preprocessing in the outer brain you are only left with about 10 bits per second for conscious processing for things like motor functions. Yes, you can see a Rubic's cube and perceive all sorts of facts about it and the environment at the same time. But try solving it with your hands while someone shows you a bunch of objects and asks you visual comprehension questions at the same time. You might still perceive those other objects, but consciously classifying them verbally is gonna be really difficult. It's no surprise that the feature space that your deeper brain can actively work on is quite limited.

mystified5016 2y ago
10 bits per second is effectively nothing. Not even a single cell could operate at 10 bits per second. Every organic system would collapse immediately.
- sigmoid10 2y ago
  Remember, this is an intermediate encoding of a hidden feature space between perception and planning. What you see at the start and the end of the neural network might be very different. Consider this: Typing at 60 words/minute, 5 characters/word and 8 bits/character gives a gross bit rate of 40 bits/second. With today's compression algorithms, you can easily get 4:1 reduction in data. That leaves you at approximately 10bits/second that are consciously processed in your brain. Probably even less since your brain might be much better at encoding language than even our best models. Even if some of those numbers are off by a certain factor, the number in the paper is certainly in the right ballpark when you consider orders of magnitude.
  - cycomanic 2y ago
    So the argument is that compression is not processing? That's a very weird definition of processing. Also when we do this we can always argue that we get down to 10bit/s, just change the compression ratio.
kens 2y ago
> Has anyone here even read more than the title? Since it costs $35.95 to read the article, probably not. Seriously, paywalling of scientific research is obviously wrong.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >Seriously, paywalling of scientific research is obviously wrong. Agreed! Here you go: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234 https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234
wbl 2y ago
What conscious motor processing? My motor functions largely take care of themselves while I daydream when walking or consider where I want to steer while driving.
- sigmoid10 2y ago
  That's just motor reflexes that don't even enter higher cognitive processing. But daydreaming probably does process at the same rate as normal language, as was explained in the other comment. Try doing algebra in your head while running an obstacle course you've never seen and you'll be much slower at everything.
gtirloni 2y ago
You're missing my point. I'm saying that `try solving it with your hands while someone shows you a bunch of objects and asks you visual comprehension questions at the same time` is more than 10 bit/s of data being processed. I'm saying made up "tasks and outcomes" in this study are not a measure of the brain's throughput IN THE INNER LAYERS.
xattt 2y ago
Listen to a podcast at double speed. Assuming a normal talking speed of 150 words per minute, 300 words per minute of written word is not 10 bits per second.
- sigmoid10 2y ago
  Consider normal text compression and you're left with a few bits at best for most of those "fast talkers/listeners." And the human brain is very good at compression.
  - xattt 2y ago
    I feel like this is splitting hairs and moving goalposts. The pro side will always have some sort of explanation why it’s 10 bps or less without a way of actually proving it. This is a frustrating article.
    - sigmoid10 2y ago
      >I feel like this is splitting hairs and moving goalposts. How? The argument remains exactly the same and we're just discussed counterexamples to the statements of people who obviously don't get it.
  - grumple 2y ago
    I can type at a rate faster than 10 bits/ second (about 2 characters / 16 bits! what a slow rate! I'm well above that, at least 24 bits/second!) and you aren't compressing that to less. And that's while also moving my hands in extremely complex ways to perform the task, looking around my office, listening for threats / wife, observing the breeze from my fan, twiddling my toes on the balance board I don't use... It's clickbait/ragebait. Well done to the title writer.
  - ghurtado 2y ago
    > And the human brain is very good at compression Yes, but in order to measure its bitrate accurately you need to tell us whether that compression is gzip, zlib, zip or 7zip. They don't all produce the same results. If we are going to be utterly ridiculous about this conversation, let's at least be complete.
hathawsh 2y ago
Another way to put it: try to perform a skill you have never practiced. For example, if you've never played the piano or tried to read sheet music, see how long it takes you to play a few notes correctly. It's complex enough that you'll very likely find yourself limited to around 10 bits per second. You shouldn't count the bits handled by visual processing, basic motor control, and other things you have practiced all your life. If you practice the skill, the skill moves out of your conscious processing and no longer counts toward the 10 bits per second.
- ordu 2y ago
  > You shouldn't count the bits handled by visual processing, basic motor control, and other things you have practiced all your life. Ok, but how to count bits for your example with piano? It has 80 keys or so, isn't it? Should we take log2(80)=6.32...? Of if you are working with only part of the keyboard, maybe we should take log2(7)? How many bits per seconds of processing it takes to keep my hand on a keyboard in a right way that was shown by a tutor? How to measure it? Does my experience with a guitar makes it easier? How many bits easier?
- seanhunter 2y ago
  Your argument boils down to “exclude anything faster than 10 bits per second, so then you’re limited to things which are 10 bits per second or less”. It’s extremely unconvincing.
  - hathawsh 2y ago
    That is a remarkably good argument. Well done, I'm convinced that this paper has little substance after all.
burnte 2y ago
I did read the summary and see what you saw, but that still leads me to believe the headline of the article is clickbait and that the authors don't understand that action signalling doesn't require the same bandwidth as information processing, but even then it's way more than 10b/s. Look at a backhoe. It has a few levers and a couple pedals. EXTREMELY simple interface. Each lever and pedal is basically 1 bit for engage/disengage, but the operator has to process orders of magnitude more sensory info to operate it properly. You could use an arduino to control a backhoe, but you'd need quite a powerful computer to know what to tell the arduino to do. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Knowing how to use the tool well is always far more complicated than simply knowing how the tool operates.
- aebtebeten 2y ago
  Here's a simple reaction test: https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime It's 1 bit (discriminate red vs. green) but I doubt many here can manage 100 ms, which is what it would take to implement 10 of those decisions per second.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Can the combination of mind and body only process reactive tasks serially, or can it process them with some amount of parallelism? And is 100ms (I struggled to get below 180ms, myself) only the time needed to process, or does that include IO latency? If it includes IO latency, then is there a buffer?
    - 082349872349872 2y ago
      > or can it process them with some amount of parallelism I guess someone with two boxes handy could set them up next to each other and run two copies of this test to see if their reaction time holds up or if it lengthens? EDIT: mine suffers greatly on dual wield: 225 -> 320 ms see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453704
      - 2y ago
FartyMcFarter 2y ago
That still doesn't explain strange sentences in the article such as" > Why does the brain need billions of neurons to process 10 bits/s? Maybe the article is being intentionally disingenuous here? The brain is definitely not processing 10 bits/s, maybe a small part of it is. I'd also say that you can make very complicated problems with only 10 bits of input (e.g. calculating busy-beaver of N), so "processing X bits" where X is a small value is no guarantee that this should be doable with a low amount of processing anyway.
anticensor 2y ago
There is something wrong with that calculation: our speech output alone is 40 bits per second.

kijin 2y ago

Send a query to your favorite database. The database preprocesses hundreds of gigabytes of data, map-reduces it, and finally returns a single 32-bit integer, taking exactly 3.2 seconds to do so. Nobody would say that the database can only process 10 bits per second. The query just happened to ask for a very simplified answer.

scotty79 2y ago
Everybody would say it outputs 10 bits per second. And when it comes to consciousness simplified answers at 10 bits per second is the best you can get. This article asks why.
- kijin 2y ago
  It's an interesting question indeed, why the mind produces so little output compared to input. Still, I get the feeling that the apparent bit rate of the conscious output is not the right metric to be measuring. There are so many ways in which the bit rate you're measuring could have been bottle-necked by factors outside of the mind, such as the speed at which you can move your tongue to articulate language, or a cultural expectation that prefers compact answers over chain-of-thought babbles. The mind also leaks a lot of information, both consciously and unconsciously, through side channels such as facial expression, gestures, and even variations in the rate of output itself.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    > It's an interesting question indeed, why the mind produces so little output compared to input. My theory is that consciousness is super complicated and brain has barely enough juice to crank out any of it. Conscious field of vision is about 2% of total field of vision and we observe the world by constantly swiping it with this 2%. This way we reuse both neural circuitry of our brains and also training data that would otherwise necessarily be spread across larger size of neural network if our conscious field of vision was larger. So it short, conscious output is so small because we are dumb and short lived. I also wouldn't say that there's a lot of information in the side channels. Properly compressed it's probably less than engaged conscious output.