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Comment by tomohelix | Hacker News Reader

Well you jest but the benefit of a direct interface is how much faster it can be. Typing is slow. Chemical based signals from eyes to brain to muscle are slow. Moving the mouse and keyboard are slow. All those middlemen can be removed and we can speed things up at least 3-4 times.

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The way I use the mouse and keyboard makes this already too fast and I find myself in need to slow down how fast I take information in anyway.

What makes you think people can handle it being 4 times faster? The bottleneck will eventually be your neurotransmitters no?

When playing a musical instrument, humans usually transmit an order of magnitude more information through the instrument than they do when they type on the keyboard. This involves not only a higher tempo, but also the meaningful timing, key velocity / wind instrument blowing intensity, etc. Same applies to e.g. a plane pilot doing a complex maneuver, or even a player of a fast-paced game, computer or not.

Humans definitely can output more than the keyboard currently allows, and likely this can be used somehow beneficially. The output need not be all verbal though.

We need to have this conversation every few years because developers fancy themselves as efficient code monkeys.

The downside is that many develop RSI from a keyboard and mouse.

https://www.slideserve.com/carrington/repetitive-strain-inju...

It’s discussed on HN from time to time:

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=rsi

I really doubt that. Do you type as fast as you can think? As in the moment a line of code formed in your brain it got typed out immediately into the computer? Maybe you can but I don't think the majority of people can do that.

It's usually only those short bursts, usually you spend more time thinking than typing, but maybe for some languages where you write a lot of boilerplate all the time it's different.

Exactly, plus all 3 comments assumed I talked about my input into the computer, while I talked about how much info I can take into my brain from the computer being already too fast, who cares if it takes me 2 seconds to write a sentence I thought about for a minute or instantly, the thinking will always be slower and the reading is fast enough as is.

The issue facing us is on a genetic level, most people are too dumb to even profit from the current input/output speed, let alone making x4 faster.

> Chemical based signals from eyes to brain to muscle are slow

Uh, these are the same types of signals that are happening inside the brain ...

Yes, but I am talking about the parts outside the brain. Eye to brain. Brain to muscle. You can cut those out and since the brain is about 15cm in diameter while there are around 50cm of nerves between your fingers and brain, I think around 3-4x faster by replacing those nerves with near lightspeed communication is not too ambitious.

Have you used any BCI text input methods? I can assure you that typing with a keyboard is much faster and accurate than a "direct interface."

Where did you get 3-4 times?

Just a rough guess from the diameter of the brain and the nerve distance between the brain and your finger muscles.

have you tried these EEG-based tools? They're difficult to pick up.

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