To me, this seems like an issue with the definition of ‘chunk of information’. Sure, maybe I can only remember a few at a time, but each chunk has a whole bunch of associations and connected information that I can access fairly easily. As such, my guess is that these chunks actually store a very large number of bits, and that’s why you can’t fit too many of them into short-term memory at once. Of course, you could do even better with better hardware etc., but this seems to just be an instance of the point “humans have finite memory, for every finite number there’s a bigger number, therefore we could make machines with more memory”.
To me, this seems like an issue with the definition of ‘chunk of information’. Sure, maybe I can only remember a few at a time, but each chunk has a whole bunch of associations and connected information that I can access fairly easily. As such, my guess is that these chunks actually store a very large number of bits, and that’s why you can’t fit too many of them into short-term memory at once. Of course, you could do even better with better hardware etc., but this seems to just be an instance of the point “humans have finite memory, for every finite number there’s a bigger number, therefore we could make machines with more memory”.