Thanks to @[email protected] 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
There is no other definition of bit that is valid in a scientific context. Bit literally means “binary digit”.
Information theory, using bits, is applied to the workings of the brain all the time.
How do you know there is no other definition of bit that is valid in a scientific context? Are you saying a word can’t have a different meaning in a different field of science?
Because actual neuroscientists understand and use information theory.
Actual neuroscientists define their terms in their papers. Like the one you refuse to read because you’ve already decided it’s wrong.
Actual neuroscientists do not create false definitions for well defined terms. And they absolutely do not need to define basic, unambiguous terminology to be able to use it.
Please define ‘bit’ in neuroscientific terms.
Binary digit, or the minimum additional information needed to distinguish between two different equally likely states/messages/etc.
It’s same usage as information theory, because information theory applies to, and is directly used by, virtually every relevant field of science that touches information in any way.
Brains are not binary. I asked you to define it in neuroscientific terms.
Information is information. Everything can be described in binary terms.
Binary digit is how actual brain scientists understand bit, because that’s what it means.
But “brains aren’t binary” is also flawed. At any given point, a neuron is either firing or not firing. That’s based on a buildup of potentials based on the input of other neurons, but it ultimately either fires or it doesn’t, and that “fire/don’t fire” dichotomy is critical to a bunch of processes. Information may be encoded other ways, eg fire rate, but if you dive down to the core levels, the threshold of whether a neuron hits the action potential is what defines the activity of the brain.
I think what you really mean is brains are not numeric. It’s the “digit” part that is objectionable, not the “binary” part, which as an adjective for “digit” just means a way of encoding a portion of a number.
But in the end it’s a semantic argument that really doesn’t have a lot to do with the thesis.