That image is from 1961 and an idealization. Here is an actual trajectory of fixational eye movements. The dots are 2 ms apart. If a midget ganglion cell, with single-cone receptive field, fires at 100 Hz, then every spike reports about a different cone. How can we ever read anything?

Sure, China has invented the future, with innovations like high-speed trains and all-electric traffic. But no-one talks about the Jim Beam Soda Fountain! Dispenses everything from straight Bourbon to 3 different cocktails. Beating Kentucky at its own game...

I learned a lot from reading this book on climate science: "Unsettled?" by Steven E. Koonin. Sure, it comes from a contrarian perspective, but it's quantitative, well-sourced, and nuanced in its critique. Lots of useful pointers to go explore the primary literature.

I've wondered about this too: Here's a few seconds of downhill biking, including my eye movements. How rich is my control of the bike here? Could I execute 1000 (=2^10) different paths over the next second, a million different ones over the next 2 seconds?

Of course the same network can also produce the opposite behavior: synchronized oscillation. See Fig 5.20 of Dayan & Abbott.

Features what we propose is the largest unexplained number in brain science:

Horace Barlow, by all accounts, was thinking about 30 years ahead of his time. Here is a transcript of the opening keynote I gave at a symposium honoring Horace's scientific legacy: markusmeister.com/2024/12/14/h....