Re: Fwd: We Can Understand Anything, But are Just a Bit Slow

From: Philip Goetz (philgoetz@gmail.com)
Date: Mon May 01 2006 - 20:39:17 MDT


On 4/27/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> Richard Loosemore wrote:
> >
> > Short term memory does not have 7 items in it.
>
> I know. But it makes a convenient magic number.
>
> --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

The new magic number is 5. The "7+-2" figure was an overestimate
because, in those experiments, it is believed, some single chunks were
being counted as multiple items.

I don't believe that short-term memory has a capacity the way that a
cup has a capacity. It is a simplification, but a useful one.



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