the brain has a certain bandwidth of processing capacity

Keyword consciousness the brain has a certain bandwidth of processing capacity. This bandwidth is the speed limit for the traffic of information we can pay conscious attention to at any one time. Well there's a lot of stuff going on below the threshold of our awareness, in order for something to be encoded as part of your experience, you need to have paid conscious attention to it. This bandwith has been estimated at 120 bits per second. In order to understand one person speaking you need to process 60 bits of information per second which means that at 120 bits per second you can barely understand two people talking to you at the same time.

— from Time

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