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From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.psychology,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <37353@cup.portal.com>
Date: 29 Dec 90 07:23:08 GMT
References: <37034@cup.portal.com>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 49

Fred Sena says:

> I think that measuring the "bandwidth" of transmission can be a
> misleading indicator of the amount of complexity of the
> transmission sequence, or the complexity of the entities performing
> the communication.  For instance, I can say one word to you, but
> the amount of information could be a great amount depending on
> the secondary meanings of the word are relating to the context
> that the word is used and the broader implications of the word.
>  
> Like if I say "nuclear", a whole array of related images are evoked
> in the person that I say it to, such as:
>         bomb
>         war
>         reactor
>         atom
>         family (one of these is not like the others...)
>         Enola Gay
>         Hiroshima
>         Department of Defense
>         Department of Energy
>         radiation...
>  
> Using that kind of thinking, I'm trying to imagine that there must
> be a way to transfer information at a speed greater than the
> bandwidth of the physical layer.
>  
> There is some kind of "pre-understanding" that goes on in a
> conversation between two creatures.  I guess you could compare it
> to an extremely efficient compression algorithm that is
> implemented both of the creatures. Both are aware of the structure
> and assemble and disassemble it in the communication process.
> The difference between the way that computers and humans
> perform compression is that computers do it sequentially, whereas
> people do it "instantaneously".  Anyhow, the bandwidth can be low,
> but the amount of "information transmission" or "understanding".  I
> think can be much higher.

Oh yeah?  Are you telling me you thought of all those associations
instantaneously?  When I hear the word "nuclear", the association
"bomb" pops up near-instantaneously, with "reactor" following a
fraction of a second later.  I'd have to rack my brains for several
seconds before "family" or "Enola Gay" pops up.  Except for the
first one or two associations, everything else on the list occurs to
me at a rate slow enough I could tell you what I'm thinking as I
think it.

[BTW, I got your letter.  I put it in my pile of bills and forgot about
it for a while, but will send it out soon when the bills go out.]