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Editor's Pick
Thinking Slowly: The Paradoxical Slowness of Human Behavior
 Caltech researchers have quantified the speed of human thought: a rate of 10 bits per second. However, our bodies' sensory systems gather data about our environments at a rate of a billion bits per second, which is 100 million times faster than our thought processes. This new study raises major new avenues of exploration for neuroscientists, in particular: Why can we only think one thing at a time while our sensory systems process thousands of inputs at once?
A bit is a basic unit of information in computing. A typical Wi-Fi connection, for example, can process 50 million bits per second. In the new study, Zheng applied techniques from the field of information theory to a vast amount of scientific literature on human behaviors such as reading and writing, playing video games, and solving Rubik's Cubes, to calculate that humans think at a speed of 10 bits per second.
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Editor's Note: Another conundrum that the new study raises is: Why does the brain process one thought at a time rather than many in parallel the way our sensory systems do? For example, a chess player envisioning a set of future moves can only explore one possible sequence at a time rather than several at once. The study suggests that this is perhaps due to how our brains evolved.
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WorkThis food looks too good to be real a?? and it is | CNN A perfectly twirled bite of spaghetti hangs off a fork mid-air. Next to it, a bowl of ramen and a katsudon ââ¯freshly cooked eggs and pork cutlet - fall fresh out of the pan. Plates are stacked high with colorful sashimi and elaborate parfaits. It's a feast for the eyes â and the eyes alone. Work
WorkThe Lonely Skepticism of a Bull-Market Skeptic - The New Yorker (No paywall) As investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, and lately for a Trump Presidency, has been driving the stock market to record highs this year, Jeremy Grantham has been having flashbacks. At the end of the nineteen-nineties, the veteran value investorone that looks for undervalued stocksshied away from soaring Internet and technology stocks, believing that their prices had departed from financial reality, and that the market was heading for a crash. Far from thanking him for sounding the alarm, many clients of G.M.O., a Boston-based investment-management firm that Grantham had co-founded, held it responsible for making them miss out on a vertiginous rise in the Nasdaq, which went up by about a hundred and sixty per cent between 1998 and 1999. Some withdrew their money from the company. We started off in a good position, and in two years we lost almost half of our business, Grantham recalled. The clients treated us as if wed done it deliberately. It was a near-catastrophe. WorkWhat a 70-year-old firebreathing lizard reveals about humanity - The Economist (No paywall) TANAKA TOMOYUKI gazed down at the ocean, and the ocean spoke back to him. A star producer at Toho, a Japanese film studio, Tanaka was flying home over the Pacific, pondering a slot that needed to be filled in the release schedule for 1954. He imagined a creature rising from the depths in the wake of an underwater nuclear explosion and wreaking havoc on land. Mankind had created the Bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind, he later recalled.
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WorkWorkIran hiring children to target Israelis abroad: Report Attacks involving teenagers in Scandinavian countries show a concerning trend that highlights how tensions in the Middle East are escalating beyond their borders, and anger regarding the killing of civilians in Gaza has made some individuals more susceptible to recruitment.
WorkWorkWhy Congress May Finally Take on AI in 2025 AI tools rapidly infiltrated peoples lives in 2024, but AI lawmaking in the U.S. moved much more slowly. While dozens of AI-related bills were introduced this Congresseither to fund its research or mitigate its harmsmost got stuck in partisan gridlock or buried under other priorities. In California, a bill aiming to hold AI companies liable for harms easily passed the state legislature, but was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
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WorkWhat was the Golden Age of Antibiotics, and how can we spark a new one? Antibiotic-like remedies date back millennia, with records of moldy bread and medicinal soil being used to treat wounds in ancient Egypt, Greece, and China. We now know they are likely to have contained antibiotic compounds.1 But the modern scientific journey began in the early 20th century. Work'It's pure beauty' - Italy's largest medieval mosaics restored On a hill overlooking the city of Palermo, in Sicily, sits a lesser-known gem of Italian art: the cathedral of Monreale. Built in the 12th century under Norman rule, it boasts Italy's largest Byzantine-style mosaics, second in the world only to those of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. WorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWhy standing on one leg matters Research shows that people's ability to stand on one leg is an indicator of health and that getting better at standing on one leg can add to fitness and potentially lifespan. WorkWorkWorkWorkNASAs Parker Solar Probe Embarks on Record-Breaking Christmas Eve Flyby - Scientific American (No paywall) There are some places in the solar system no human will ever go. The surface of Venus, with its thick atmosphere and crushing pressure, is all but inaccessible. The outer worlds, such as Pluto, are too remote to presently consider for anything but robotic exploration. And the sun, our bright burning ball of hydrogen and helium, is far too hot and tumultuous for astronauts to closely approach. In our place, one intrepid robotic explorer, the Parker Solar Probe, has been performing a series of dramatic swoops toward our star, reaching closer than any spacecraft before to unlock its secrets. Now it is about to perform its final, closest passes, skimming inside the solar atmosphere like never before. WorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWorkThe US sues Walmart over $10 million in fees charged to delivery drivers The retailer is considered to be the leading private sector employer. It launched the “Spark Driver” delivery program in 2018. The gig economy-based delivery service hires independent contractors (drivers) to deliver groceries and other products from Walmart stores to customers’ homes. Drivers in the program can choose when and where they work, similar to jobs like Uber (UBER+2.04%) or Doordash (DASH-0.45%). Workers are paid per delivery and can also earn tips. WorkWorkBank of America was slapped with a consent order over anti-money laundering weaknesses The bank agreed to pay a record $1.3 billion to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency slapped a cease and desist order and a $450 million civil penalty on TD Bank Thursday over its inadequate Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance program. And the Federal Reserve Board imposed a $123.5 million penalty. WorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWorkWorkSriram Krishnan named Trump's senior policy advisor for AI Incoming president Donald Trump has confirmed reports that Sriram Krishnan, until recently a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), will serve as senior policy advisor for AI at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. WorkWork TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 100,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise | Privacy PolicyUnsubscribe (one-click) You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
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