More eBay rambling, and the human factor

From: Mike Ford <mikeford_at_socal.rr.com>
Date: Sat Dec 18 01:27:35 1999

>What I have heard is that the human brain can process between a dozen and
>two dozen "transactions" per second. But ... (sputter, sputter) ... so a 286
>computer is BLAZINGLY fast by comparison ... wait, doesn't the human brain
>process vast amounts of info? The human body is an absolute marvel as a
>chemical plant; all those levels have to require tremendous amounts of
>monitoring and adjustment? I guess I am confused on the issue of scope
>versus speed ... so a brain could be considered to be parallel on a massive
>scale then, whereas is a computer is serial; brain: millions of things done
>slowly, computer one thing done with blinding speed ... am I way off base or
>onto something???

Generally speaking we don't consider the refresh of memory, regulation of
voltages, etc. when ranking the "power" of the computer, just the stuff it
can do that we want it to do. Breathing, heartbeat, etc. are all part of
our autonoumous nerveous system and we don't have to "think" to do those
things.

It isn't so much that our brains are massively parallel, as that some part
of our brain does pattern matching very effectively and in ways we haven't
quite been able to duplicate electronically.

Pinball is a good test of the brains throughput, especially when about 4
extra balls pop out. OVERLOAD and they start getting past the flippers
because we can't track that many reliably.

Anyway I am pretty sure that is a good number, one or two dozen "decisions"
per second.
Received on Sat Dec 18 1999 - 01:27:35 GMT