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From: scw@cepu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: A Quick Question - (nf)
Message-ID: <294@cepu.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Jun-84 15:04:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: cepu.294
Posted: Tue Jun 26 15:04:32 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Jun-84 05:43:14 EDT
References: <3663@fortune.UUCP>
Reply-To: scw@cepu.UUCP (Steve Woods)
Organization: VA Wadsworth Med. Center; LA CA
Lines: 74

In article <3663@fortune.UUCP> rpw3@fortune.UUCP writes:
>Summary:
>
>Human brain store ~1000 gigabytes?? Come on! Humans max out well below
>80 bits/sec, so no more than ~10-30 Gbyte is needed... (so maybe we got
>some spares, huh?)
>
>Discussion:
>
>Actually, quite a bit of work has been done on this by quite a few
>experimental psychologists.  The classic paper on human "bandwidth"
>is, of course,
>
>	G. A. Miller, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:
>	Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information",
>	The Psychological Review, 1956
>
>Miller defines "processing capacity" in terms of "absolute judgments",
>i.e., the ability to[...]ightness only, or linear position only) is
>about 2.6 bits, or correctly picking one of six equally likely choices.
>The highest capacity channel observed was about 3.5 bits (10-15 choices),
>when picking pointer positions off a line. [Hmmm... like interpolating
>between gradations on a meter stick.] The lowest capacity was for
>taste intensities, about 1.9 bits.
>

What a bunch of bullshit! Think about it, how much information has to be
processed to make these decisions?  I can pick a person that I know out
of a crowd almost instantly. How much information was processed to do this?
A whole lot more than 8 bits/sec I'll bet.  I think that someone is(was)
confusing information processing with decision making capibility.  How much
information is processed in how much time by a batter hitting a fast ball?
Could you write  program to do it? (retorical question).

>With multidimensional stimuli (i.e. pitch AND loudness AND duration, etc.),
>channel capacity goes up, but even with 6-8 dimensions the information
>per decision was not more than about 7 bits. By grouping items into
>sequences, the total information increases, although the information
>per item goes down[...]the time.)
>
>Again, 80 b/s is a somewhat excessive upper limit. Try reading and
>REMEMBERING 10 char/sec of random text, continuously! Even so, at 24 hours
>a day (no sleep?), 100 years per life, remembering everything perfectly,
>one needs only about 30 gigabytes of long-term memory. Fits on a couple a
>Betamax cassetees, easy! [Note: 2 bits/Hz, 75% utilization of each scan line,
>a good Reed-Solomon code on top of rate-1/2 Viterbi, gives over 1.5 Gbyte
>per hour of play time ==> ~3.5 six-hour tapes.]
>
>(Actually, this makes the science-fiction ideas about personality/learning
>transfer seem almost attainable, if only...)
>
>In fact, the actual data rate and storage are probably far less. I would
>dare say less than ONE Beta tape! The trick is in coding ("chunking") the
>data. Anybody want to try and Huffman-code a lifetime?
>
>Rob Warnock
>
>UUCP:	{ihnp4,ucbvax!amd70,hpda,harpo,sri-unix,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
>DDD:	(415)595-8444
>USPS:	Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065

The problem here is that people don't remember 'text' they remember information.
The amount of information contained in a human brain is *VERY* much larger than
you would suspect.  How much information is contained in a mental picture
of say, your spouse? Probably several thousand bits of color/spacing of features
/expressions/marks/habits/smells/sizes &tc &tc.  Most people know several tens
thousands of words , how many bits to quantify all of the manifold meanings
encoded in a word (I mean things like implied color, size, weight, actions of
named object)?  Think about it, that Beta tape only holds ~~2 hours of partial
visual/audio input.
-- 
Stephen C. Woods (VA Wadsworth Med Ctr./UCLA Dept. of Neurology)
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