We live in a vibrant and complex world. Every time we gather
information that catches our attention, we rely on our senses – sight, taste,
smell, and touch that tell us what’s happening around us.
What our senses are
capable of is incredible because according to research, our eyes can receive
1MB of information every second that is equivalent to reading an entire
encyclopaedia every minute. We can hear a person whispering from 10 meters. In
less than a second, one whiff takes us back to a memory from childhood. Our
skin contains four million receptors that give us vital information about
temperature, pressure, texture, and pain.
Our senses give us so much information that our brain has
developed ways to respond effectively. It particularly focuses on things that
could harm us, information about things that are important to us, things that
could give us pleasure and reward, or things that are interesting and new but
sometimes, the information that our senses are gathering seem confusing or
incomplete. That’s why our brain draws our memories, past experiences, and
current feelings to guess and fill in the blanks. Most of the time, these
guesses are helpful to us but sometimes mess them up. We do not just get some
information wrong but the sheer amount of information we receive every second
we can only do about 4 bits at one time because our brain is prone to
information overload and misses some important pieces of data.
Everything has its limitation, even our brain so we must
explore ourselves to know its capacity.
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