Zheng and Meister (2024) have made a significant observation about human behavior: the throughput for most behaviors averages about 10 bits per second (or a little over 1,000 possibilities per second), which is comparable to the information transfer rate of a cochlear implant (Baranauskas 2014). This average value is based on values as low as 1 bit per second for visually guided reaching (Tehovnik et al. 2013) to 40 bits per second for playing a musical instrument or giving a speech (Tehovnik and Chen 2015). Zheng and Meister correctly note that the central nervous system of humans (based on the number of synapses in the neocortex or cerebellum) is designed to transfer 10^14 bits per second (Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024), which is many orders of magnitude more than the transfer rate for behavioral executions. What can explain this paradox (Zheng and Meister 2024)? We believe an understanding comes from Kahneman’s thinking fast (Kahneman 2012), which arms an individual with a plethora of ‘autonomic’ responses (much like regulating the heart rate or the vestibuloocular reflex); this minimizes the amount of neural real estate dedicated to a response. The 10^14 bits per second of computational power of the neocortex and cerebellum is dedicated not to response execution but instead to automating responses (through learning, Hebb 1949, 1968), so that someone like Einstein can produce ‘E = mc^2’, which can be written on a black board using a transfer rate of 10 bits per second. Someone needs to estimate how many bits of knowledge Einstein’s relationship represents, by quantifying Einstein's labor using information theory. This quantification would need to be done by a physicist who has access to all of Einstein’s notebooks (also see Footnote 1).

Footnote 1: We know that Stephen Hawking operated with one cheek muscle that could communicate at 0.1 bits per second (our estimate based on the number of words generated per minute using a correction for redundancy, Reed and Durlach 1998). An output ceiling at ~ 10 bits/sec (the paradox, Zheng and Meister 2024) might not be a limiting factor in organisms: it would be instructive to show that despite Hawking's low transfer rate via the motor neurons (since he had motor neuron disease) that he was still able to perform as a physicist well into his 70's. If output does not limit one's intellectual caliber, then you might find that the number of significant insights generated by Hawking did not change over time (since insight may be more related to cumulative knowledge—and this is where genetics and neocortical/cerebellar connectivity at 10^14 bits per second may come in, Zheng and Meister 2024).