Alan the Atheist

Hi,

Apparently "if a human learnt something new every second, the brain could store all this information for 3million years" - Moodey (preacher). Although the statement obviously depends on how much storage the new thing learnt takes, is it true that the human brain has way to much storage space. How should us evolutionists answer this if it is true?

-RRH-

I've never met anyone who is three million years old that could confirm this. On the other hand, I remember pretty well what happened yesterday, but only remember bit and pieces of what happened when I was fifteen. I took a class in calculus a few years ago, and did pretty well on the exam, but the other day I had to look up the formulas, because I had forgotten them. So I think Moodey is talking out his ass.

Delerium

3,000,000 x 365 x 24 x 60 x 60 = 94.6 trillion bits of info

well more than 1000 times the numer of neurons in the brain.

This claim is hopelessly absurd.

Alan the Atheist

Ok, thanks Delerium

Prince Vegita

But well under the number of synapses, which is probably a more important factor in a normal brain.

It's still an absurd claim though, as what constitutes a "bit" of information?

dettus

I remember with associations. SO I don't think I need to remember every little detail about everything, just how things are related. Sorta like how digital movies get compressed.

So A is similar to B therefor I only need to remember A and if I want to remember B I think of A with some differences. There's no need to remember B independently of A. Just how it's different. This saves space.

posting super fast in between RL

show_no_mercy

Why are you getting scientific information from preachers? Why, I might as well go to my car mechanic for medical advice...

reddish

This has actually a strict definition.

A "bit" of information is the amount of information that reduces the uncertainty (about the state of a certain system) by a factor of two (i.e., knowing the bit would allow you to discard 50% of all possible states the system could be in as impossible).

The system could be as simple as "the result of a coin-flip" or as complex as "the state of the universe".....

For an example from the latter category: suppose I tell you that at this very moment I am wearing either black socks or white socks (50% chance). The information about which one it is conveys precisely 1 bit of information concerning the state of the universe. There are many possible universes where I would be wearing black socks, and _equally_ many where I would be wearing white socks, so giving this information will eliminate 50% of all possible universes.

Hyndis

There's also an issue on how quickly you can recall the information stored in your brain. For stuff I use every day, I can recall it instantly. But if I'm asked something that I learned a decade ago and haven't used since, I'll probably still remember it, but you'll need to give me a few minutes to find that piece of information.

Sometimes its so deeply buried that I might as well not know it anymore, but with some time and effort, I find that I can remember most everything thats happened to me. Of course, most of these memories are extremely mundane and there's no point keeping them around. I think I just end up finding a few bits of information that help describe the situation I'm looking for, then I sort of "connect the dots", linking these various recalled bits together to reconstruct what happened back then.

I haven't a clue how memory works inside brains, but there certainly is some sort of archival process.

atheilicious

Well, a brain doesn't really work in binary, just 0 and 1, so a comparison of bits vs. the number of synapses is meaningless. That said, the possibility of other states between 0 and 1 would increase the brain's raw memory capacity astronomically, if the brain worked like a computer (which it doesn't).