Kind: captions
Language: en
[Applause]
Have you ever noticed that people
speaking Spanish sound like they're
talking really fast?
Does this mean they're able to
communicate information faster than
English speakers?
One reason why Spanish sounds so fast is
because more syllables are spoken per
minute than in English. However,
analysis has shown that each Spanish
syllable conveys less information than
each English syllable. So, the
information per minute is almost
identical. But what about written
language? The square format of Chinese
characters appears to fit better into
our central visual field than the
longer, slimmer words of English. This
led linguists to suspect that Chinese
would be read faster than English. But
experiments show that English readers
can perceive 7 to eight letters at once
compared to just 2.6 characters for
Chinese. However, those Chinese
characters are denser in meaning than
the English letters. And so both
languages have basically an identical
reading rate of 380 words equivalent per
minute. This suggests that what limits
the speed of our communication is not
language but our cognitive ability to
process information. But how can you
really quantify information? Well, the
smallest amount of information you can
have is the answer to a yes no question.
Like have you seen the movie Frozen?
Yes. Yes or no? Heads or tails? We can
represent this single outcome with a one
or a zero. One binary digit, it's one
bit of information.
A roll of the dice has six possible
outcomes. So, three bits of information
are required to cover all the options.
To uniquely represent all 26 letters of
the English alphabet requires five bits
of information. But if you include
lowercase, punctuation, special
characters, and numbers, that takes the
total number of symbols to 95. So you
actually need seven bits of information
to encode all these symbols. That was
first done in 1963 as the American
standard code for information
interchange or ASKI for short. Now as
the next closest power of two, computers
adopted 8 bits as the fundamental unit
of computation and they called it the
bite where they intentionally replaced
the I with a Y so that it couldn't
accidentally be confused with a bit. So
how much information does it take to
make you? Well, your entire genetic code
is contained in the sequence of four
molecules represented by the letters T,
A, G, and C in your DNA. Each of these
four options can be encoded by two bits
of information. And multiplying by the 6
billion letters of genetic code in your
genome, and dividing by 8 bits per bite,
that yields 1.5 GB of information. So,
you could fit your entire genetic code
on a single DVD with room to spare. Now,
your body has an estimated 40 trillion
cells in it. and each one contains a
full copy of your DNA. So you actually
contain 60 zetabytes of information.
That's 60 followed by 21 zeros. Just to
put this in perspective, by the year
2020, all of the digital information in
the world is estimated to be equal to 40
zetabytes of information. You could
store all of that on 100 g of DNA. That
is less than you have inside your body.
But now consider this. You share 99.9%
of your genetic information with
everyone else on Earth. Meaning that
less than one part in a thousand is
unique. So the information that makes
you you could be stored in less than a
megabyte. You could put it on one of
these, a floppy disc. In case you don't
know what that is. In contrast, video
can contain a lot of information. To
specify the color of each of 2 million
pixels 30 times a second for this entire
video would require a 100 gigabytes of
information. But you can watch this
video in HD on YouTube with just a
thousandth that amount. Now the reason
you can send such a big video with such
a small file size is because video like
Spanish has a lot of parts that are
redundant.
Hey Michael, you know what I've been
thinking about?
What are you thinking about Derek?
Information. Go on. It's a physical
thing. It's embodied in actual objects.
How's that?
Well, you know, like the words we say,
they're actual vibrations in the air,
right? They're not just concepts. They
are real physical things that you could
measure and detect.
That's true. And they don't go away.
They don't disappear even after they've,
for instance, moved through the air.
Right. After we've said these words,
they have actually interacted with
everything around us. So, you're saying
that technically I could look at the
world and if I knew enough about it and
the position of its particles, I could
trace back and extrapolate all the
information that's ever occurred through
them or at them.
That's right. You could in principle
figure out exactly what we've said here
today.
Whoa.
This episode of Veritasium was inspired
by the book The Information by James
Gleak. And you can actually download
this book for free by going to
audible.com/veritassium.
Or you can pick any other book of your
choosing for a one month free trial.
Audible is a leading provider of
audiobooks with over 150,000 titles in
all areas of literature, including
fiction, non-fiction, and periodicals.
Now, if you've already read the
information, you may want to check out
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Fineman by
Richard Feman. It's my favorite book by
a scientist. It is absolutely hilarious.
You will thank me for downloading it.
So, go check it out. I really want to
thank Audible for supporting me and I
want to thank you for watching.