Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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These days, if you have internet speeds that run in the kilobits per second range, accessing most things online is probably painfully slow. But according to new research by biologists from Caltech, human brains run at just a fraction of those speeds – they estimate that we process information at just 10 bits per second. They warn of the “Musk Illusion” that new technology could speed up our thinking and say it won’t happen. Let’s find out.

Paper: https://meisterlab.caltech.edu/documents/30100/Zheng_2024_The_unbearable_slowness_of_being-_Why_do_we_live_at_10_bitss.pdf

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