Human thought crawls at 10 bits per second, Caltech study finds

We don’t think in “bits” at all because our brain functions nothing like a computer. This entire premise is stupid.

Bullshit. just reading this and comprehending it, which is thought, far exceeds 10 bits per second.
Speaking which is conveying thought, also far exceed 10 bits per second.

This piece is garbage.

Because it’s a Techspot article, of course they deliberately confuse you as to what “bit” means to get views. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) seems like a good introduction to what “bit” actually means.

ITT: A bunch of people who have never heard of information theory suddenly have very strong feelings about it.

Some parts of the paper are available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896627324008080?via%3Dihub

It doesn't look like these "bits" are binary, but "pieces of information" (which I find a bit misleading):

“Quick, think of a thing… Now I’ll guess that thing by asking you yes/no questions.” The game “Twenty Questions” has been popular for centuries as a thinking challenge. If the questions are properly designed, each will reveal 1 bit of information about the mystery thing. If the guesser wins routinely, this suggests that the thinker can access about million possible items in the few seconds allotted. Therefore, the speed of thinking—with no constraints imposed—corresponds to 20 bits of information over a few seconds: a rate of 10 bits/s or less.

The authors do draw a distinction between the sensory processing and cognition/decision-making, at least:

To reiterate: human behaviors, including motor function, perception, and cognition, operate at a speed limit of 10 bit/s. At the same time, single neurons can transmit information at that same rate or faster. Furthermore, some portions of our brain, such as the peripheral sensory regions, clearly process information dramatically faster.

Here's a link to Caltech's press release: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior

Here's a link to the actual paper (paywall): https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(24)00808-0

Here's a link to a preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

"They also explain why we can only think one thought at a time"

I know a lot of people who would disagree with that

i can agree at some extent why it could be at 10bits/sec.

the brain is known to do some shortcuts when parsing/speed reading but slows down when we try to extract details from written works. it is also more tiring to scrutinize details than to just read articles.

i was surprised that they got the speed measured.

Yet, it takes an enormous amount of processing power to produce a comment such as this one. How much would it take to reason why the experiment was structured as it was?

In fact, the 10 bits per second are needed only in worst-case situations, and most of the time our environment changes at a much more leisurely pace."

Bruh some tech pro is going to read this and interpret this in a terrible fashion but then again humans already change our environment.

I could believe that we take 10 decisions based on pre-learned information per second, but we must be able to ingest new information at a much quicker rate.

I mean: look at an image for a second. Can you only remember 10 things about it?

It's hard to speculate on such a short and undoubtedly watered down, press summary. You'd have to read the paper to get the full nuance.

Crazy how a biological analog lump is capable of even a fraction of what a brain can do.

Caltech article: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior

The full text of the paper costs $35 to read once.

"Look, I made a really exciting controversial discovery! It's really emotional and intriguing! You're missing out! Only smart rich people can read it! Put your money in the basket please :)" Our education system is dead the the populace is too stupid to care.