Xref: utzoo comp.ai:8336 sci.bio:4247 sci.psychology:3999 alt.cyberpunk:5547
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!infinet!sena
From: sena@infinet.UUCP (Fred Sena)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.psychology,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <2753@infinet.UUCP>
Date: 4 Jan 91 18:36:41 GMT
References: <37034@cup.portal.com> <37353@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: sena@infinet.UUCP (Fred Sena)
Organization: Infinet, Inc.  North Andover, MA
Lines: 27

In article <37353@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>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

>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.

Yes, you have a point.  I think that most people would have also thought of
"bomb" immediately as well (I did).

  However, I was just trying to emphasize that there are a variety of
pre-understandings between people that are immediately reconized *before* the
next word follows.  In other words, all of the common understandings that are
transmitted along with a word, which would imply much more information
transmission than is obvious.  I'm trying to show the limitations of our
ability to evaluate information content per unit time, or bandwidth.

	--fred
-- 
--------------------------------------------------
Frederick J. Sena                sena@infinet.UUCP
Memotec Datacom, Inc.  N. Andover, MA