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pricelessmomentblog · 7 years ago

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How Much Can You Possibly Learn?

How much can the brain store?

We all know how much our computers and phones can store, if only because we occasionally get the pings of messages telling us we’ve taken too many photos or downloaded too many apps or movies and something has to be deleted to store more.

The brain doesn’t seem to be like this. While we do forget things, this seems to be more a matter of decay from disuse than being actively “pushed out” by new knowledge.

On the other hand, the brain is still subject to the same laws of the universe that govern everything else. It can’t possibly store infinite amounts of data, as that would be physically impossible.

So how much can you actually learn?

Some Upper-Bounds on Memory

A good first attack on this kind of problem would be to look at the potential upper bounds of human memory, based on the laws of physics. These will be wildly too high, mostly because the brain is a living organism and not an idealized information storage medium, but they should give some starting points for thinking about it.

The brain is typically 350-450 cubic centimeters. The maximum possible information you can cram into a volume that size is defined by the Bousso bound, which ends up calculating to roughly 10^70 bits of information. However, in order to get this amount of information, your brain would become a black hole… so let’s try to reduce this bound further.

If we look, somewhat more modestly at the amount of information content possible in a volume of water at room temperature equivalent to the brain, we end up with a somewhat more modest 10^25 bits of information. This is one yottabyte of data or 7-8 orders of magnitude more data than the entire Internet.

This, of course is still way too high, since most of the matter in the brain isn’t encoding data but keeping the brain alive and functioning.

We’re still a long way from understanding the exact information carrying capacity of the neurons and synapses in the brain. As such, an estimate of brain information capacity has to use a simplified approximation of how much information these connections can possibly store.

If we ballpark the amount of data that can be stored in the brain as roughly the same order of magnitude as the amount of synapses in the brain, that leaves us with 100 trillion bits or ten terabytes of data—similar to the size of a large hard drive. Even if we imagine that synapses are storing more than one byte of data each (through multiple connections or non-binary connection strengths), we might be able to bump that up to a petabyte, but probably not much more.

By this look, the brain definitely can’t be storing more than a yottabyte of data, and it’s quite unlikely it’s storing more than a petabyte.

Of course, this is still an upper-bound. We know from people who suffer brain injuries, that the knowledge stored in the brain likely has some measure of redundancy. Those synaptic connections are not exclusively used for storing memories either—many are being used for processing, relaying information or may even be spurious, not doing anything at all. This suggests the memory storage of the brain might indeed be a fair bit smaller, but the certainty of this estimate is a lot less than the harder upper bounds mentioned before.

Why Don’t People Ever “Fill Up” Their Brain’s Capacity?

One explanation for why we don’t seem to run out of space to learn new things is that learning may be a lot slower than our mnemonic capacity. That is to say, the actual learning rate of information may be slow enough that we never reach that capacity.

Here’s an analogy: imagine you have a latest-generation harddrive which can store 10TBs of data, but you have to fill it up using a dial-up connection which only downloads at 3 kilobytes per second. It would take over a decade to fill it up, if you were downloading constantly, without rest, and without removing anything you previously downloaded.

Given that it’s likely only a fraction of our waking type is filling up our mental harddrive, and that we suffer from forgetting, it may simply be that we never experience the upper bound of our mental capacity because we learn too slowly.

However, a different explanation might be that, unlike a computer, we don’t store memories that way. Because we store them differently, when we run out of “space” the impact is different.

Vector Encoding, Learning and Forgetting

One of the most popular accounts for how the brain stores information comes from connectionism. This says that the brain uses vector encoding, which means each memory is distributed over many thousands of individual synapses and neurons, rather than there being a neuron which individually stores each atomic concept or memory.

In this view, there is no “grandmother neuron” which specifically points out a memory of your grandmother, but that memory of your grandmother is stored across many different neurons.

Each neuron may be involved in tens of thousands of memories, each contributing a tiny, but necessary, part to the processing that results in thinking of your grandmother, calculus or recognizing the words in this sentence.

What happens when we learn, therefore, is quite unlike storing a file on a computer, where each memory address exclusively and completely stores one piece of data. Instead, we “pile on” data on top of old data. As more and more memories are stored, older memories may get weaker and weaker, as they become harder to activate, since their contribution to the total network of weights is relatively small.

Intuitively, this seems to jive with our own experience of memory. Unlike a computer which remembers things all-or-nothing, human memory seems to fade, and needs to be refreshed or it will become harder and harder to summon up. It may even still exist in our brains, but become unretrievable, until the exact pattern of triggers can summon it up again.

If this is how our memory fills its capacity, it may be that we encounter the limits of our brain’s storage ability all the time.

What Kind of Memories Get Overwritten?

One idea here is also that the memory fading process, where accumulated new memories make older memories harder to find, may depend on the kind of information learned. Information that must be finely discriminated from similar, but different, possibilities, might require more storage than memories which are easy to tell apart.

This might explain the effect of interference on learning new languages. If you learn Spanish, and then learn Portuguese, for instance, you may have difficulty recalling Spanish words when they’re different from Portuguese. Because the languages are quite similar, but sometimes vocabulary is different, you may have difficulty remembering.

A more extreme example of this comes from mnemonics. People who train themselves to memorize vast swaths of information with techniques like the memory palace, have to be careful not to reuse the same areas for mapping information for two sets of things they want to retain in memory. Without care, the connections can get mixed up and old memories may become unretrievable.

By this account, you should be more careful when learning information which is quite similar to something you already know, but has distinct differences in use (say similar languages), rather than fields which are either completely different (chemistry and art history) or complementary (physics and math).

My own experience from learning multiple languages suggests that, if you want to go down that route, you often need to invest time switching between the languages, so the cues for distinguishing vocabulary get reinforced and they don’t mix together.

Should You Worry About Running Out of Space?

Probably not. Even if the brain does have a more limited capacity than an ideal physical medium for storage, and even if we occasionally run into the limits of memory from ideas and concepts that get pushed down, my sense is that running out of memory isn’t a concern for almost anyone.

One reason might be that memory decay happens naturally, interference or not. This might mean that trying to “save” space in your mind, by avoiding learning unnecessary things, may not stop forgetting any less than learning constantly.

Another reason is that many memories are supportive of each other. Learning one thing often connects to another thing. If retrieval, not storage, is the major flaw in our memory hardware, then overinvesting in memory cues more than makes up for trying to save extra space.

For extremely memory-intensive subjects or tasks, it may be possible to reach a saturation point, where new memories can only be created at the expense of old ones. I could imagine, for instance, that there’s an upper bound on how many languages one can learn to mastery, since each may require remembering hundreds of thousands of pieces of linguistic information.

However, it may be that those bounds are reached because natural decay processes, and thus the need to practice previously learned information in order to keep it active, eventually overwhelmns the ability to learn new things. This way, your memory capacity would be hit, not because you suddenly run out of space one day, but because maintaining everything else you’ve learned requires 100% of your time.

If this is the case, though, it is likely far greater than what most of us will ever experience. Polyglots like Alexander Arguelles have proficiency in 50+ languages, albeit through lifelong devotion. If there is a threshold for theoretically-maximal linguistic fluency, it might be well over a hundred, given that Arguelles is still a human being and needs to eat, sleep and do things other than learn languages.

We also can’t discount the possibility of the brain itself to expand its capacity under the pressure to learn more things. London taxicab drivers, who must memorize the city’s infamously complex road system, sights and stops, have larger hippocampuses (a part of the brain involved in forming long-term memories). What’s more, this seems to be caused by their intensive study, rather than being the result of those with larger hippocampuses becoming taxi drivers.

Albert Einstein’s brain supposedly had larger sections related to spatial reasoning and visualization. That could have been a genetic endowment, but it’s also possible it was an outcome of years of strenous thought experiments trying to imagine the warps and curvatures in spacetime. If the learning capacity of the brain is itself plastic, this provides extra weight on the idea that one shouldn’t “save” brain capacity for other things.

As a practical issue, it’s probably unlikely that the storage limits of the human brain should be a concern for everyday learning. However, by understanding how your memory works better, you maximize what you’re able to learn.

How Much Can You Possibly Learn? syndicated from http://ift.tt/2kl7pJj

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pricelessmomentblog · 7 years ago

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The Essential Education: If You Had Ten Years to Learn Anything, What Would You Do?

I can remember years ago having a discussion with someone about the purpose of college. I was arguing that university often doesn’t do a good job of preparing young people for the world of work, and my friend was arguing that I was missing the point. College isn’t about economic preparedness, but about educating people for life. Higher education shouldn’t be subjugated to the needs of the capitalist machinery.

I think this is mostly a fantasy. Like it or not, most people go to school for to improve their economic and social standings. High-minded ideals on the virtues of a broad liberal arts education are mostly lip service.

However, this debate got me thinking. Assuming you were to fulfill that high-minded goal of education, how would you do it?

I find it doubtful that the traditional university curriculum would be the best way to do that. Probably the best way wouldn’t involve an institution at all, but be something you undertook on your own.

What Would Be in Your Ideal Ten-Year Self-Education Quest?

So in this I’d like to engage in a speculative fantasy. If you had ten years, with the ability to support yourself on a modest stipend, how would you give yourself the best self-education in the world?

Admittedly, few people could put in ten years full-time, without working to support themselves. In that sense, this is a purely hypothetical exercise. However, I often find it useful to start with an ideal scenario first, and then make compromises to fit reality, than to start by immediately dismissing things out of practical concerns. Even if a ten year full-time self-education journey weren’t possible for most, perhaps it could be stretched through part-time study or sabbatacals over one’s entire lifetime.

Additionally, I’m going to focus on education purely for the sake of learning. The economic merits of skills and knowledge play no role in their importance. This doesn’t mean you can’t learn economically valuable skills, just that there’s no primacy given to learning accounting over art or finance over philosophy just because the former are more economically valuable.

Specialization, is similarly discountable. I want a broad-based education, deep enough to appreciate the richness of a subject, but not to devote every moment to a single skill just to become competitive in it.

Again, this isn’t to say that those motives aren’t important—they certainly are. But rather that it might be fun to imagine what you would learn if they weren’t important.

Think of this as the educational equivalent to the what-would-you-do-with-a-million-dollars speculation we often engage in to think about what are interests would be if we didn’t have to worry about money.

My Ten-Year Education Plan

Given this freedom to speculate, here’s what my ten year allocation of time would be, with explanations:

1. Three years lived abroad, in different languages and cultures.

The first thing I’d add is the very thing I find conspicuously absent in most liberal arts educations: living in a different culture. Travel, moreso than reading books, is truly a mind-expander. Especially if that travel is done with the intention of immersing in a culture and not spectating it as a tourist.

In my three-year journey, I’d spend two full years in a stable location to maximize language acquisition and deep experiences. Preferrably one year in Europe and one year in Asia. South America or Africa would also be reasonable substitutes, based on your own level of interest. This could hypothetically be one year in Germany and one year in India, or one year in Spain and one year in Japan.

The third year of living abroad would be shorter stays over more regions. The goal here would be to get the breadth of seeing a lot more places to miss the inevitable gaps that occur from a more concentrated exposure to a specific country.

I wouldn’t do these three years in a row, but spread out over the decade. Long-term travel is one of the most exhausting aspects of self-education and one of the most dependent on enthusiasm to successfully execute. Feeling burned out by new sights is the easiest way to kill an immersive experience.

2. One year of philosophy.

I think the best approach here would be to take a number of survey courses, followed by some deep investigation into a few of the classics. Understanding Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is probably a wasted effort if the context is not properly supplied.

Six months covering general courses in metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, logic, etc. would be a good basis for selecting which specific works you want to study in more depth.

I would also spend at least a third of the time focusing on non-Western philosophy. This is often missing in a lot of philosophy curricula because the traditions are often not directly comparable. However, studying Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism and other non-Western sources gives a greater sense of how the format of Western philosophy both assisted its development but also constrained it in subtle ways by accepting certain forms of argument but not others.

3. Six months of religion.

This could be seen as extension of philosophy, but it’s important enough that I think it deserves a separate space. One year here could be spent on all the major world religions. Even if you’re an atheist like me, I think this is hugely important because of the incredible force religion has had in shaping cultures and history.

4. Six months on world history.

Following religious studies, I’d spend six months learning world history. Admittedly this section is shallower than I put for philosophy, mostly because history is often learned indirectly through learning about other subjects (such as science, religion or philosophy). However, six months should be long enough to have a gist of the general history of most areas of the world as well as modest depth into a few key threads of history.

5. Two years on math and hard sciences.

I say two years not because these subjects are necessarily more important than philosophy or religion, but because they’re difficult enough that some minimal investment is necessary to learn anything interesting.

I’d probably focus more on math, since having a good grip of math underlies understanding almost all the other hard sciences. Perhaps a year to master calculus, geometry, statistics and discrete math. Another year spent to get a good foundation in the basics of physics, chemistry, biology and computer science.

6. One year devoted to art.

I’d spend a year split between studying the history of art and practicing creating art itself. Probably a month each spent learning the basics of sculpting, drawing and painting, then three months on a more specialized aspect of artistic development, pulled from whatever interests developed in the initial survey.

For art history, I’d spend time studying art from books, but also traveling to museums and galleries to see the art in person. This phase of the project could probably overlap with the third year of travel.

7. Six months on music.

I’d spend six months to learn a musical instrument. Learn to read musical notation and possibly the basics of composition. I think this could possibly be stretched into a year to encompass more instruments or getting deeper into composing, although that would probably involve scaling back on one of the other categories (perhaps art history).

8. Six months on meditation.

I’d allocate six months to be spent on an introspective journey. This would probably be spread throughout the ten years, although perhaps culminating in 1-3 months of dedicated time to some sort of meditative activity.

The goal here would be to more deeply understand yourself from experience, as opposed to from ideas and theory, as would be covered in the more academic sections on philosophy, religion and biology. I also believe that this pursuit would cultivate many of the characteristics you want such as temperance, discipline, patience and equanimity, which are often unrelated to knowledge.

9. Six months on economics and psychology.

I’m spending a lot less time on these subjects than I’ve devoted to others. In part because I feel that they are a lot less certain than the hard sciences, but also more theoretically constrained than philosophy. With hard sciences you can be more confident in the empirical results. With philosophy, you can be more open to the fact that they are speculative. However, I think there’s a lot of merit in learning the basic, relatively uncontested ideas in both fields.

10. Six months on practical skills.

In six months, I’d want to spend it learning the assortment of practical skills you’d want to be a self-sufficient, highly-functioning individual. Carpentry, metalwork, sewing, home repair, basic electrical work and plumbing, first-aid, simple car maintenance and others. The goal here would be to have a minimal competency in a bunch of occasionally useful simple skills, but also to create the confidence that one could easily learn more specialized aspects of these skills should the need arise.

Evaluating My Ten-Year Plan

In the space of ten years, perhaps from twenty to thirty (or perhaps as a retiree, from fifty-five to sixty-five), you could become decently versed in math, science, philosophy, religion, history, economics, psychology and art. You would know how to paint, sculpt, draw, play an instrument, fix a car, build a chair and write a computer program. You would speak at least three languages, although possibly more depending on how you allocated your travel time.

Even in the span of ten years, a lot would still be missing. There’s no anthropology. No literature or film. No architecture or athletics. However, the foundation would still be solid enough to build almost anything off of that in the future.

How Realistic Is This Plan?

This plan, as per my original conditions, is wildly optimistic. It assumes you can focus exclusively on self-education for a decade, without needing to work, support a family or be tied down to a physical location. It also assumes an unrealistic commitment to the higher ideals of self-education, with incredible commitment over a lengthy period of time.

However difficult, I’ve seen similarly lengthed self-education projects work to some extent. Benny Lewis spent around a decade traveling learning languages. Many in academia have spent a similar amount of time focused on a doctoral path that didn’t necessarily translate into job prospects.

What’s different about this ten-year plan isn’t that it’s impossible, but that it’s so thoroughly unconventional, few people would embrace it as an alternative to the more conformist paths available.

Despite these difficulties, some variant of this plan is how I see my own self-education unfolding, albeit with less long-term structure and certainly not a full-time commitment. I’ve already finished much of the travel requirement, and my exposures to many of the topics haven’t reached what I could do in the time suggested above, but they might reach that in time.

What Would Your Plan Be?

I’ve spelled out my hypothetical ten-year education, now I want to know about yours. Tell me what you would do if you had ten years to devote yourself to learn only the things you feel are important to your betterment as a human being.

What would you add that is missing in my list? What would you remove to make room for it? Where do you think I’ve spent too much time? Too little?

Share your thoughts in the comments!

The Essential Education: If You Had Ten Years to Learn Anything, What Would You Do? syndicated from http://ift.tt/2kl7pJj

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