The Nature of Humans 4. Incomplete History
This essay examines if human knowledge of history is incomplete and so causing humans to engage in a self- deception about their knowledge of the world.
This analysis compares the total world population, the number of things that could be sensed by a human being, the number of people that each human could meet and communicate with, the potential amount of data that could be communicated and human sensory input speeds.
The results per day from this analysis are then compared to establish a percentage of recorded history to the sensed information potential.
The Total World Population.
This in 2014 was 7,095,217,980 (July 2013 est.)
Source: CIA World Factbook 2014
The Number of Things Sensed by a Human Being.
The human being spends approx. 70 years, 25,550 days, processing approx. 850,000,000,000,000 bits of information every 5 milliseconds by sight.
Source: The Creation of Thought Article 137
This allows for a human being to process approx.73,489,236,790,606,653,620,352 bits of information in a day over all its senses.
= A single text character in an alphabet is 1 byte so this information intake is equivalent to
= 67,359,520,431,353,486,361 pages of plain text per day.
= 337,106,590,782,599,328,534 218 page books
= 118,538,138,987,582 CD's
= 17,122,992,174,454 DVD's
= 293,956,9471,624 Blu Ray Discs
Source: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chspace.htm
The Number of People that a Human Being could Meet and Communicate with.
The total number of people that a human being could meet per day is approx. 15 per day.
Source: By Daily Mail Published: 00:07, 11 February 2013
Source: CIA World Factbook 2014
Source: Royal Mail data, PwC analysis
Source: The Telegraph May 2009
Source: BARB viewing summary 2015
Source: The Independent April 2013
Source: How much do Humans Communicate in the UK Article 124
The Potential Amount of Communications.
The total number of communications per head of population in the UK in 2015 is approx. 300 per day.
Source: By Daily Mail Published: 00:07, 11 February 2013
Source: CIA World Factbook 2014
Source: Royal Mail data, PwC analysis
Source: The Telegraph May 2009
Source: BARB viewing summary 2015
Source: The Independent April 2013
Source: How much do Humans Communicate in the UK Article 124
Human Sensory Input Speeds
Humans sensory input speeds for various communications are
180 to 300 words per minute for reading and comprehension.
Source: Ziefle, M (December 1998). "Effects of display resolution on visual performance.". Human factors 40 (4): 554–68. PMID 9974229.
100 to 160 words per minute for speech and listening.
Sources:
Williams, J. R. (1998). Guidelines for the use of multimedia in instruction, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 42nd Annual Meeting, 1447–1451
Wong, Linda (2014). Essential Study Skills. Cengage Learning. ISBN 1285965620.
Allowing 1 page of text to have 250 words.
Source: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=608972
This allows for 1 page of information, 1200 characters per page, 1200 bytes of data per minute.
Conclusions
The world population is very large.
The number of things sensed by a human being is very large.
The number of people that a human being could meet and communicate with each day is very small.
The potential amount of communications per day is very small.
One human could potentially sense and communicate 330,701,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits of information in a day. This is equivalent to 293,721,997,834 petabytes or 330,702 zetabytes per day.
The amount of historical data generated in 2012 was 2.8 zetabytes of data. This is 2,486,900 petabytes of data in a year or 6813 petabytes per day.
Source: http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/just-how-much-data-is-out-there.html
This equates to only 0.000002 % of the potential information being sensed each day as history.
Humans can only engage with 15 people per day approx.0.0000002% of the world population so this reduces their knowledge of history.
Humans can sense, take in, 1 page of information, 1200 characters per page, 1200 bytes of data per minute. Allowing for 300 communications per day. This allows for a maximum data level; assuming only a daytime use; of 8 hours, 480 minutes; 480 x 1200 bytes, 576,000 bytes , 0.000000000576 petabytes of information per working day.
This equates to only 0.00000000000000000019% of the potential information being sensed each day as history.
Therefore human knowledge of daily history is incomplete due to their inability to record all their sensory input, communicate it, interact with enough people, and sense, take in, information.
Humans are engaging in a self-deception about their knowledge of the world.
Ian K Whittaker
Websites:
https://sites.google.com/site/architecturearticles
Email: iankwhittaker@gmail.com
26/05/2015
14/10/2020
752 words over 2 pages