Scientists Calculate the Speed of Thought

[jedishrfu]

https://www.technologynetworks.com/...-quantified-the-speed-of-human-thought-394395

Caltech researchers have quantified the speed of human thought: a rate of 10 bits per second. However, our bodies' sensory systems gather data about our environments at a rate of a billion bits per second, which is 100 million times faster than our thought processes. This new study raises major new avenues of exploration for neuroscientists, in particular: Why can we only think one thing at a time while our sensory systems process thousands of inputs at once?

The research was conducted in the laboratory of Markus Meister (PhD '87), the Anne P. and Benjamin F. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences, and it was led by graduate student Jieyu Zheng. A paper describing the study appears in the journal Neuron on December 17.

A bit is a basic unit of information in computing. A typical Wi-Fi connection, for example, can process 50 million bits per second. In the new study, Zheng applied techniques from the field of information theory to a vast amount of scientific literature on human behaviors such as reading and writing, playing video games, and solving Rubik's Cubes, to calculate that humans think at a speed of 10 bits per second.

So there you have it! We humans think at 10 bits per second, slower than a slow-moving locomotive, slower than a 1960s Model 30 teletype, and slower than molasses. It's likely about the same as it takes to print one letter of your name.

A curious question: Is there a correlation between higher IQ and faster thinking? If so, how much?

 

[berkeman]

We humans think at 10 bits per second

I read the quote but not the article (yet). Can you give the cliff notes on how they got to 10b/s? That seems way low to me...

 

[Tom.G]

The research article is at:
https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(24)00808-0

But the paywall will sell you 6hrs. of access for $3.99.
There are author links on that page they may be worth following.

 

[Borg]

I read the quote but not the article (yet). Can you give the cliff notes on how they got to 10b/s? That seems way low to me...

I would think that even when we're asleep, our brains process at a faster rate than that. Maybe their test subjects were comatose.

 

[Hornbein]

They must be using an unusual definition of a bit.

 

[jbriggs444]

This sounds a lot like "how fast can a human type out random letters read from a screen".

Or "how fast can a human translate human speech to another language if we reduce the raw bit rate based on a good compression algorithm".

I can type at about 10 bits per second. But that is with English text. So only about 1 bit per second after compression.

 

[mcastillo356]

So there you have it! We humans think at 10 bits per second, slower than a slow-moving locomotive, slower than a 1960s Model 30 teletype, and slower than molasses. It's likely about the same as it takes to print one letter of your name.

Faster than me!
Love and Peace
Marcos