It’s not foolproof, but I can easily transmit a huge amount of information to someone by saying “Titanic prow king of the world scene.” In seven words, which could be fewer if I were really trying, the recipient has a moving image and sound in their head (as long as they’re the right age group- every example I could think of made me feel old).
Well that was transmitting "a pointer" more than anything else, but yes I agree that nature could be doing the same thing. Not hardcode behaviors, but certain chemical reactions to some "pointers" that are totally environment related. Arachnophobia apparently could have a genetic component, so there could be a "spider pointer" somewhere.
> InventWood says Superwood is up to 20 times stronger than regular wood and up to 10 times more resistant to dents, because the natural porous structure of the wood has been collapsed and toughened. That makes it impervious to fungi and insects. It also gets the highest rating in standard fire resistance tests.
Please excuse my technological illiteracy. Isn’t that just a form of compression that might reduce the (uhh) space that the image takes up without actually reducing the information processing?
I don't have a great way to think about the distinction between computation and communication. It seems to me that the "bits/s" measure they're using doesn't even have the right units? That said, information seems fundamental and almost physical, whereas something like "FLOPS" feels tied to a general class of implementations.
Maybe you can imagine that some part of your mind really doesn't need a very high bitrate description of the world. For example, we read novels and play text-based adventure games, and that's sufficient to conjure a rich inner world. And at what rate do we read? Probably not more than a few bits/s, I would guess? Let's see... Google's AI says
> The entropy rate of English is between 0.6 and 1.3 bits per character.
Let's just say 1 bit per character for round numbers.
It also says,
> A typical novel page usually contains around 3,000 characters
so, 3 kbits/page. Divide by 10 bits/s, and you get 300 seconds/page = 5 minutes/page.
This seems too long to me. I think we read faster than that.
And that's ignoring that "a picture is worth a thousand words".
So, if there is a single information bottleneck into the "conscious mind", my guess is that it has a higher bitrate than the quoted 10 bits/s.
You're faster than me, a man with short hair :). Rinse, gel, shampoo, rinse, shampoo, rinse - but the warm water also cleans the mind and soothes the soul, so I'm not in that big of a hurry to end one of the best ways to relax and unwind I have. It usually adds up to 10 minutes.
I have a family member, also male with short hair, who used to take 20-30 minute showers every day, driving others in the house insane - but that was the "I'm a first-year medical student, I just learned how many bugs there are on everything, and how ugly diseases they cause; also, have you heard of SARS?" effect. Other symptoms include going though copious amounts of hand disinfectant. Fortunately that went away over time, as they improved their feeling for actual risks.
I have extremely thick hair, but only use shampoo once every few weeks because too much absolutely ruins my hair texture. Nonetheless, just rinsing my hair thoroughly with warm water and then cold water takes at least 5-6 minutes per shower.
I think the greater point is that hair maintenance varies greatly from person to person, and it is absurd to assume every male only needs 2 minutes or every female needs > 15 minutes. A great example of the stupidity of stereotype and how it leads us away from useful thought.
Because you’re encountering bottle fill stations that don’t have an attached water fountain. Your other options (at first glance) are to complain to your public works department or to keep being annoyed by the problem, neither of which is likely to actually fix the problem.
I wasn’t allowed to play video games as a kid (in the 90s and early 00s). I don’t really care about it, but it has 100% been an occasional barrier to socializing. I don’t have any of the necessary coordination, so I’m not even fun to beat, because I just shoot myself or fall off the road immediately.
There’s definitely parties where people just play smash bros or inside jokes about water levels that I’ve literally missed out on, though I don’t especially care. If I were a more regretful person or one who experienced FOMO more, I could absolutely see feeling it about video games.
I don’t know that it’s 100% analogous to smart phones/social media (particularly because the required skills are probably lower), but kids are prone to social pressure.
being out of the loop of some video games, TV shows or any other entertainment can be awkward at times, for sure. But if you have a good groups of friends, they don't care one bit, and should embrace you for who you are, not for what popular things you have knowledge of.
This is mostly unrelated to the current point, but you’re unquestionably fitter than the average person. I used to dance for about 15 hours a week, and I have no idea what I actually burned calorie-wise, but it was plenty of cardio.
After about a year of dancing, I had a moment where I needed to run after someone about a half kilometer away. It was incredible- I’d never felt so buoyant while running. After I passed the message on, I decided to do a measured run. I ran a six minute mile in my late twenties with zero warm-up after having not run in over a decade. I wasn’t even out of breath, it was fucking easy. Cardio is a life hack.
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