Human Bottleneck

Bottleneck Blog

What goes on inside The Black Box?

When I first introduce the idea of humans having a very limited input information capacity I often encounter resistance.
Their first response is often a passionate defence of the incredible power of the human mind.

We are in total agreement on this. What goes on inside our mind, our "black box", is incredibly complex sophisticated (and probably ultimately incomprehensible to us.  Would my PC be able to understand itself left to its own devices?).

I am only considering the rate at which new information is introduced into the black box.

Within the box there is a rich world: A lifetime of information trickled in from outside, and incredible processing power feasting on the reservoir of knowledge to continually extract new insights. 
These insights are used in making predictions and planning actions in the external world.

When we attend to the external world we maximise the opportunities to notice differences between our internal predictive model of the world, and our sensations.

                                                                           © Richard Epworth 2009  Updated 2010-May-27 UK Time