mindlace

So we can now detect when someone is paying attention. In the future there will be head-band like devices that people will wear that record when and where they’re paying attention, and the market in which attention-events are bought and sold will form the basis of the global economy.

I would like to see the entire human population be able to ask about, discuss, and vote on things to do.
This implies several preconditions that the entire human population must have:

Adequate nutrition and freedom from toxins
A healty adult human of whole mind is the consequence of a host of material prerequisites. It comes as no surprise […]

I just finished reading an excellent review of the current research on happiness, which led me to this interesting site called reflective happiness. They claim that for $10/mo, they can help you create a plan that will help innoculate you from the effects of stress.
The first month is free, and hey, it’s cheaper than the co-pay […]

You can hold 7 +/- 2 variables, or “chunks” in working memory, and actively think about 4 of them at once.

There is little evidence that we can reliably construct a conscious thought in less than 1/6 second. This means you can have a maximum number of 6 context switches, or cycles, a second.

Using an average human lifespan of 77 years, and an average sleep-time of 8 hours a day, we get approximately 51 years of consciousness. There are 1.609 billion seconds in that time. Multiplying that by the maximum speed of a conscious response gives us 9.654 billion context switches in a human lifetime.

Now that I’m 29, I’ve burned off my spare change, with 3.624 billion context switches out the window. I have only 6.03 billion context switches left before I expire.

Really big numbers are hard to get a feel for, so let’s zoom in closer. One thirty second television commercial consumes 180 cycles.

Afore I come back, most likely. Here are two papers - my term paper for Writing, written to be accessable to the general public, and my term paper for Psychology, written to be accessable to my professor. The first is Media in Mind; the second is The Topology of Semantic Memory. Both have some rough […]