Pleasant@Rutgers.arpa (01/11/83)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Saturday, 1 Jan 1983 Volume 5 : Issue 113
Today's Topics:
Season's Greetings and Happy Netmail,
Interesting Reading - Grossberg and Japan,
Computers and People - Human Memory Capacity (4 msgs)
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Date: 19 Dec 1982 1428-PST
From: Zellich at OFFICE-3 (Rich Zellich)
Subject: Season's Greetings and Happy Netmail
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Date: 2 Dec 82 00:57-EDT (Thu)
From: the Golux <coar.umass@UDel-Relay>
Subject: Grossberg and Japan
O lord! Can't we dispense with the arms race before we start the
brain race?
I just read through my copy of Brunner's ``The Shockwave Rider'' for
about the tenth time, and it raised some questions in my mind
(collaterally triggered by a question about the impact of micros).
In the book, the hardware foundation for the net is rarely referred
to, and is either a terminal or the pleasantly ill-defined
'Fedcomps' when it *is* mentioned.
Of people who have read the book, I ask: Does the culture Brunner
portrays seem reasonable (i.e., a viable possible future), or is it
off the wall? How does the burgeoning micro market impact the
development of his society? If you believe his future is possibly
ahead (please stipulate for this question), do you think personal
micros will be `part' of the net, serve as mere terminals, or have
no connection to the net at all? Will their influence deteriorate
as time passes and mainframes get better and more readily
accessible?
(yes, yes - I know I forgot to ask about Naomi!)
For those who have not read the book, I recommend it very highly.
It forms a *very* interesting juxtaposition with Spinrad's ``A World
Between'', as far as the use of computers as a communication medium
goes. (Spinrad's book also rates quite high in my estimation.)
ken
coar.umass@udel-relay
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Date: 21 Dec 1982 08:36 PST
From: DMRussell.PA at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Human Memory Capacity
Yes, there are a LOT of estimates -- anywhere from infinity (yes --
honest-to-God there are some psychologists that believe that memory
capacity is truly infinite!! I don't know what rock they crawled
out from...) to 10^10 bits. I suppose that with a little work,
you might be able to find any number you'd like.
The problem with all of these numbers is that they are complete
artifacts: products of imagination, if you will.
The problem lies in your definition of memory.
How do you measure the number of bits used to encode embryological
development? Count the DNA "bits"? Did you take into account all
of the biochemical interactions between ancestral regions during
development? How do you measure the information content of such
"procedures"? How about the mother-child interactions? Are those
maternal bits, or fetal bits? (Does the mother do an FTP or an RPC
to the fetus?)
Do you count all bits that are consciously recoverable? Or is
DNA/RNA encoding allowable as well?
How many bits are stored in your mental image of a picture? (Do
you use run-length encoding? YIQ or RGB format?) Or do pixellated
images not exist in the head? Do you store mental images at many
resolution levels? How many bits do reflex arcs encode? Do you
consider reflex arcs part of memory?
You see -- you've asked an underdetermined question. The term
"human memory" is too vague, and the number of bits required to
reproduce a specific type of memory is undefined. You may get
numbers back for a response, but I don't think they mean anything.
The question, and answers, are semantically void.
An interesting side question: How do the people who generate those
numbers for human bit capacity actually come up with them? Can we
see the math? Or even better, how can I verify that a "thousand
million bits" (or 10^10, or "infinity", or (100,000 * (number of
bits for a "fact"))) is correct? How do I know that these guys are
just rolling a die, and then using that number for the exponent?
-- Dan Russell --
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Date: 21 Dec 1982 1155-PST
From: Tom Wadlow <TAW at S1-A>
Subject: The storage capacity of humans
HPMs estimate of 10 trillion (1e12) seems a bit low to me. Von
Neumann estimate of 1e15 bits might be a lot closer to the truth.
For a rough estimate, I thought of the following:
Suppose that your memory was simply a video-tape recorder.
How many bits would it take to store your experiences for an
approximate 70 year lifetime. Assuming video resolution to be
approx 300x400x8 (which is roughly a megabit) at 60 frames per
second that's 60 megabits per second. With approx. 2.2e9 seconds in
70 years that would be about 1.3e17 bits per lifetime.
Of course, nobody remembers things at video resolution
constantly, but it is true that some people can reconstruct
arbitrarily complete representations of things they have seen,
purely from memory. In addition, the field of vision of people is
much wider and at a higher resolution than video. And there are the
other senses, which are also storing quite a lot of information in
parallel with sight. And besides information input there is a lot
of storage being chewed up by bookeeping, such as sensory
association (what allows you to connect the smell of roast turkey
with what it looks like and the verbal name) that is going on all
the time. So perhaps a purely visual approximation like this isn't
*too* far off the mark. But if it is, my guess would be that the
number is bigger. --Tom
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Date: 27 Dec 82 10:38:37-EST (Mon)
From: J C Patilla <jcp.jhu@UDel-Relay>
Subject: human memory
Luria described the capacities of his mnemonist as "infinite" but
one must recall that this was a wholly extraordinary individual - he
possessed a "more-than-photographic" memory. Not only did he have
total recall, but he was synesthetic (which is to say that he had
sensory cross-perception - sounds triggered colour perceptions and
flavors and vice-versa). The synesthesia seemed to help him almost
as a trigger for past experience. It was as if all the information
to which he had ever be exposed had been "encrypted", with
sensations acting as keys. He was capable of remembering to the
most minute detail (as if watching a film) events which had happened
10 or 20 years previously. Unfortunately, this did not help him much
in his life at all, and he (the mnemonist) was probably made more
unhappy than happy over the course of his lifetime as a result.
Jody Patilla
jcp.jhu@brl-bmd
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Date: 28 December 1982 09:08-EST
From: "James J. Frimmel,Jr." <KLUDGE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Human memory capacity
I think that some of these estimates fail to account for the visual
image storage capacity of the brain. I have actually <relived>
certain events in my life, in an animated fashion, not as a series
of stills. Assuming that the brain stores images using a pixel
resolution 1000 X 1000, that is a million bits per FRAME. Assuming
no data compression,one such sequence of a minute would amount to at
least 1,000,000 X 60 (sec's) X 10 (frames/sec), or 600,000,000
pixels. A storage capacity of only 10 trillion would only render
about 166 minutes of animated memory. I <know> there is more than
that in my own head.
Some folks theorize that the brain subconsciously records all
events which occur in one's lifetime. This is evidenced by the use
of hypnosis to allow subjects to relive the past, even birth. I can
only conclude that:
A) either the mind is extremely efficient at compressing visual
images, or
B) there is more to the mind than the flesh it resides in.
I personally prefer the latter. Please excuse the large doses of
ignorance in this message.
God bless all,
Jim Frimmel
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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