"only a minuscule proportion of the sensory data processed by the unconscious mind (capable of processing approximately 11 million bits per second) is referred to the conscious mind (capable of processing approximately 50 bits per second)."
By that measure, a two-hour movie can be compressed down to 22.5 kilobytes... :-)
>By that measure, a two-hour movie can be compressed down to 22.5 kilobytes... :-)
I can't speak for other's but for myself that sort of compression ratio seems at least possible.
Most of the conscious mind is dealing with a highly compressed stream of symbols (compressed abstracted versions of the actual audio-visual stream), and how they relate to one another in time and space.
More concretely, imagine yourself watching a movie in the theatre:
"That actor's accent is a bit off" "Why do her teeth look so bright?" "I forgot who directed this, hmm was it that Swedish guy.. the guy who directed 'Heaven', wait... was he Swedish? Aargh I wish I could go on IMDB now and check"
".. ugh that kid in the front row's phone is distracting"
"The visual style reminds me of this other movie".
"The music is getting ominous, something bad is about to happen."
"Oh crap the main character is screwed, how he is going to escape this trap?"
"I wonder if my gf is enjoying the movie?"
etc
For each viewer, that seems likely to me. For viewers collectively, there is more information; some viewer's girlfriend is going to be someone who studies trees, and another viewer is going to think some character looks kind of like the President. This effect of viewer diversity might justify the video file being more than a megabyte!
Automated sub-sub conscious processors in the brain are mostly responsible for how little information the higher mind has to deal with. If there is a tree in a movie, the visual cortex will say "It's a tree, what next?". If there is an abstract tree symbol, the visual cortex will say "What is this giant solid color block sitting in the middle of my field of view?" and send it up to your conscious mind for processing, resulting in a more taxing experience for the audience. Of course, if we knew how the brain worked, we could maybe somehow send signals directly to whatever ball of neurons handles abstract concepts...
By that measure, a two-hour movie can be compressed down to 22.5 kilobytes... :-)