this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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I just skimmed it, but it's starting with a totally nonsensical basis for calculation. For example,
"In fact, the entropy of English is only ∼ 1 bit per character."
Um, so each character is just 0 or 1 meaning there are only two characters in the English language? You can't reduce it like that.
I mean just the headline is nonsensical. 10 bits per second? I mean a second is a really long time. So even if their hypothesis that a single character is a bit we can only consider 10 unique characters in a second? I can read a whole sentence with more than ten words, much less characters, in a second while also retaining what music I was listening to, what color the page was, how hot it was in the room, how itchy my clothes were, and how thirsty I was during that second if I pay attention to all of those things.
This is all nonsense.
Regardless of how you define a "bit", saying 10 in a second when most people easily process hundreds of pieces of information in every perceivable moment, much less every second, is still ridiculous. I was only using characters because that was one of the ridiculous things the article mentioned.
Heck just writing this message I'm processing the words I'm writing, listening to and retaining bits of information in what's on the TV. Being annoyed at the fact that I have the flu and my nose, ears, throat, and several other parts are achy in addition to the headache. Noticing the discomfort of the way my butt is sitting on the couch, but not wanting to move because my wife is also sick and lying in my lap. Keeping myself from shaking my foot, because it is calming, but will annoy said wife. Etc. All of that data is being processed and reevaluated consciously in every moment, all at once. And that's not including the more subconscious stuff that I could pay attention to if I wanted to, like breathing.
Not exactly. I just think trying to apply a single threaded, cyclical processing model on a process that is neither threaded nor executed in measurable cycles is nonsensical. On a very, very abstract level it's similar to taking the concept of dividing a pie between a group of people. If you think in terms of the object that you give to each person needing to be something recognizable as pie, then maybe a 9-inch pie can be divided 20 or 30 times. Bit if you stop thinking about the pie, and start looking at what the pie is made up of, you can divide it so many times that it's unthinkable. I mean, sure there's a limit. At some point there's got to be some three dimensional particle of matter that can no longer be divided, but it just doesn't make sense to use the same scale or call it the same thing.
Anyway, I'm not upset about it. It's just dumb. And thinking about it is valuable because companies are constantly trying to assign a monetary value to a human brain so they can decide when they can replace it with a computer. But we offer much different value, true creativity and randomness, pattern recognition, and true multitasking, versus fast remixing of predefined blocks of information and raw, linear calculation speed. There can be no fair comparison between a brain and a computer and there are different uses for both. And the "intelligence" in modern "AI" is not he same as in human intelligence. And likely will never be with digital computers.