The User Illusion
by Tor Norretranders · first published 1998
3mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2017–2022first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
…ability to help organize society and our own activity on a larger scale, to plan ahead, and etc, and etc, etc.... Edit: Good general discussion of these issues can be found in Tor Norretranders' book The User Illusion. Highly recommended.
on “A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist” ↗…book gave me a lot to think about 25 years ago. Made me aware of limitations of my own consciosness. Has perhaps been superseded by some other book since then, I'd love to hear recommendations. "The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size" by Tor Norretranders
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life?” ↗…when Information Theory was emerging, there were attempts to measure the bandwidth of consciousness. They reckoned about 18 bits per second or less, which sounds very low. Tor Norretranders book, The User Illusion, mentions some of the research: W R Garner and Harold W Lake "The Amount of Information in Absolute Judgements" - Psychological Review 58 (1951) - they attempted to measure people's ability to distinguish…
on “Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second” ↗