https://madeddu.xyz/tags/bandwidth/Recent content in Bandwidth on madeddu.xyzHugo -- 0.145.0en-usWed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://madeddu.xyz/posts/cognitive/ten-bits-per-second/Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://madeddu.xyz/posts/cognitive/ten-bits-per-second/<p>Think of a thing. Anything. The rule is that I get to ask you questions — yes/no answers only — and I have twenty of them. Anyone whose childhood happened in the nineties, or not much later, will remember <a href="https://en.akinator.com/">Akinator</a> and its many cousins: officially it came out a few years afterwards, but the idea it stands on is far older than that.</p> <p>What few people notice is that if I play <em>well</em> — which really means, if every question <em>cuts in half whatever is left</em> — twenty answers are enough to find one object in a million. And the reason is embarrassingly simple:</p>