Thanks to @General_Effort@lemmy.world for the links!
Here’s a link to Caltech’s press release: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior
Here’s a link to the actual paper (paywall): https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(24)00808-0
Here’s a link to a preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234
You say “we don’t think in bits because our brains function nothing like computers”, but bits aren’t strictly related to computers. Bits are about information. And since our brains are machines that process information, bits are also applicable to those processes.
To show this, I chose an analogy. We say that people have 10 fingers, yet our hands have nothing to do with numbers. That’s because the concept of “10” is applicable both to math and topics that math can describe, just like “bits” are applicable both to information theory and topics that information theory can describe.
For the record: I didn’t downvote you, it was a fair question to ask.
I also thought about a better analogy - imagine someone tells you they measured the temperature of a distant star, and you say “that’s stupid, you can’t get a thermometer to a star and read the measurement, you’d die”, just because you don’t know how one could measure it.
Maybe try looking into the topic instead of confidently repeating your wrong assertions? You’re literally pulling a “my hand is not a number!” right now.
Just because you have a limited understanding of a unit, doesn’t mean that unit is only applicable to what you know. Literally the star example I brought up.
