[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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