[ExI] few bits per second (was extropy-chat Digest, Vol 81, Issue 37)
Damien Broderick
thespike at satx.rr.com
Sat Jun 26 21:01:13 UTC 2010
On 6/26/2010 3:41 PM, Keith Henson quoted:
> How Many Bytes in Human Memory?
>
> by Ralph C. Merkle
> The remarkable result of this work was that human beings remembered
> very nearly two bits per second under all the experimental conditions.
> Visual, verbal, musical, or whatever--two bits per second. Continued
> over a lifetime, this rate of memorization would produce somewhat over
> 10^9 bits, or a few hundred megabytes.
A rather different take on all this was offered by the late physicist
Evan Harris Walker. I have serious doubts about his calculations, not to
mention his theories, but here it is in brief:
http://www.newdualism.org/papers/E.H.Walker/Dualism.html
<Without a theory of consciousness that embraces the known
characteristics of consciousness and accounts for these characteristics,
an answer is impossible. There is no theory of consciousness that has
been proposed that even attempts to do this other than the quantum
consciousness theory (QCT) that I have proposed (see Walker, 2000).
This quantum consciousness theory associates consciousness with an
ongoing continuum of quantum mechanical interactions in the brain that
serve as the interface between consciousness and physical
phenomenology.3 At any moment of this consciousness, this quantum
interaction couples a subset of the brain’s synapses. The specific
interaction envisioned takes place by means of quantum mechanical
tunneling that produces successive "state vectors" (or wave functions)
followed, alternately, by successive individual states describing
specific synaptic firing events. The quantum states are the basis for
consciousness, the particular configurations of the synaptic firing
potentialities provide the content of the consciousness.4
Quantum theory tells us that this quantum coupling is a local process.
That is why we are conscious of what is going on in the brain. These
states are defined by the conditions of the brain. The number of
synapses that are so coupled provides a measure of how much information
is carried. This information data rate C≈5´ 10^8 bits/sec.
Quantum theory is mute as to what causes specific synaptic firings to
occur out of these quantum possibilities. The cause cannot be physical
in the conventional sense. Quantum theory itself fails to give any
mechanism describing what causes a specific state of the state vector to
occur. Specific synaptic firings, however, do occur. Quantum mechanics
tells us how to compute the probabilities, and it tells us that these
probabilities are not classical probabilities that arise from an
ignorance of an actual real single state. Quantum theory insists that
the state vector before measurement is the complete physical description
of the system. The cause of specific synaptic firings, therefore, cannot
be physical in any conventional sense.
One state will occur. Because this state selection happens in
association with consciousness, has a range of potentialities that could
happen, and that one specific "course of mental action"5 does happen as
a result of the state vector collapse, this cause (the nonphysical thing
that causes the state selection) satisfies the requirements of a
philosophical definition of "will."6 Will causes the collapse. Details
as to how this state selection can be triggered and as to its structure
are given elsewhere by Walker (1988).
Now, we know how to calculate the Shannon information measure involved
in the state vector going from the potential for any one of the
collection of synapses firing to one specific synapse firing. The amount
of information associated with this will is W» 6´ 10^4 bits/sec as an
ongoing process.>
I await various squeals of rage. Don't shoot the messenger.
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