The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? · HackerPapers discussions

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — HN submission

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:28 GMT

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? (2024)

4 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — HN submission

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 23:04:56 GMT

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

6 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — HN submission

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 11:32:13 GMT

The Unbearable Slowness of Being

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by tim333

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 22:37:25 GMT

Free access link https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.10234

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by kubasienki

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:45:05 GMT

https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by vok

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:35:27 GMT

There's interesting discussion with the authors here: https://www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by Animats

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:31:36 GMT

Paper on Arxiv (no paywall): [1] No major new results. It's just an observation that, for things for which human processing bandwidth is measurable, it comes about to 10 bits/sec. This may simply reflect the writing rate of long-term memory. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.10234

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by ziddoap

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 17:23:17 GMT

>Seriously, paywalling of scientific research is obviously wrong. Agreed! Here you go: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

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The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by lgas

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:38:32 GMT

Here's the link that link links to, to save people time: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by ziddoap

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:24:24 GMT

It would be a lot less abrasive to say "It's linked elsewhere, but here it is: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234" or some variation, instead of saying "it's here somewhere, go find it".

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by mxfh

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 13:35:41 GMT

Just for playing any sport the accuracy to instruct 100s of muscles to work in a certain way is certainly above that 10bits, Pointing out positions in a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cubic volume seems to possible significantly faster than 1/s. The slower examples listed in the table all have some externalities like a motor/object manipulation feedback loop overhead (speed cubing) and or redundacy and are not optimized for pure information density, so I have no idea why they settled on that average, and not the optimum? Object Recognition and Reading are already at ~50 bits.…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by newswasboring

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 13:14:47 GMT

Found the pre print if you don't have access https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by luka598

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 12:10:31 GMT

arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by sebg

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 12:08:36 GMT

Oops - my bad - here’s the arxiv link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

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The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — mentioned by codethief

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 16:07:11 GMT

I came across this paper through Alphaxiv, presented here on HN earlier, and have also found it quite interesting. On [0] the authors respond to various questions about their paper. [0@]: https://www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2408.10234v1

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — HN submission

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 13:00:20 GMT

The Unbearable Slowness of Being

4 points; 2 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — HN submission

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 05:03:45 GMT

The Unbearable Slowness of Being

4 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — HN submission

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 07:59:04 GMT

The Unbearable Slowness of Being

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? — HN submission

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 17:58:53 GMT

The Unbearable Slowness of Being

4 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.