The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers • Hacker News Board

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#41

Post by fxtentacle » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:35 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #26

TheRealSteel wrote: post #13

The second image doesn't have anything else in the image to look at, whereas the first has multiple buildings and plenty of sky space. This article is bollocks. They've worked backwards from a conclusion to find (bad) evidence.

As somebody who dealt with photography and cameras his whole life and took pictures as a professional for movies: this isn’t bollocks. The visual readability of an opaque non-reflective cube is always going to be higher than that of a mirror cube in a non studio environment. This is because your brain needs to do more legwork to figure out the underlying shape when you look at reflective suefaces that are mostly flat…

I fully agree with your observations about good or bad photography being dictated in part by its easy visual readability.

But the article presented here seems unscientific and misleading to me. They say "the brain avoids looking at" and then the "evidence" that they produce is an AI prediction generated by a closed-source (meaning unverifiable) software. It would be correct if they say "3M's prediction ignores glass skyscrapers", but that might just as well be a bug in their algorithm.

As a counter-example, the Keppler skyscrapers in harborfront Singapore are mostly made from glass to fight off the heat, yet they are pleasing to look at and have very interesting reflection patterns. And they are certainly remembered by locals as a great navigation landmark.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#42

Post by fxtentacle » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:41 AM UTC

gfaure wrote: post #4

This seems ridiculous. Based on the output of an automated tool developed by 3M that produces a saliency map based on an image, I'm not sure how we can conclude that people ignore skyscrapers.

I fully agree. The author seems to confuse "this AI predicts" with "the human brain does".

Looking at the quality of image recognition AI, for example the famous guacamole/cat or panda/gun mis-predictions, that's a very far stretch.

https://www.labsix.org/physical-objects-that-fool-neural-net...

I used to work on training a saliency-predicting NN and apart from "color and texture are great" it didn't learn much. So I would bet that taking a picture of the same building with a colorful sunset in your back, so that the sun's colors are reflected on the building but not visible in the sky, would generate a hugely different result.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#43

Post by fxtentacle » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:41 AM UTC

brador wrote: post #23

praptak wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the article makes this claim. It's not about people actually ignoring the skyscrapers, but rather the low-level layers of the brain tagging them as not worth looking at. This sounds plausible - glassy skyscrapers look a lot like the sky, which isn't very interesting to look at.

They strapped people with a headset that tracks their eyes and told them to look at something. The brain will naturally then try to find the special thing the wearer thinks the researchers want them to look at to get a good result. Probably the sky, not the boring buildings.

no. they used a smartphone app that is trying to predict where people would look.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#44

Post by senozhatsky » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:51 AM UTC

flexie wrote: post #40

senozhatsky wrote: post #22

I like glassy buildings. Can stare at them for minutes; the article makes little sense to me. E.g. Hong Kong Harbour skyline, which is quite "glassy". Many people travel to take a look at it. [1] https://www.tripsavvy.com/thmb/SPLQhcPHF_u06LNEFd1qIc4p_3Q=/...

This image shows the opposite of a glassy skyline. The only true glass building, which reflects sky and water, is the one just above the boat. The rest of the buildings are more traditional sky scrapers with mixed cladding.

Maybe. But I can count something like 6 or 7 buildings on that pic which look glassy to me. I'd say there are several glassy (which reflect sky and water) buildings there [1][2].

[1] https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-7263112-panning-time...

[2] https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-27791884-victoria-ha...

Edit: added more links.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#45

Post by mombul » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:02 AM UTC

TheRealSteel wrote: post #13

The second image doesn't have anything else in the image to look at, whereas the first has multiple buildings and plenty of sky space. This article is bollocks. They've worked backwards from a conclusion to find (bad) evidence.

This. Seriously. It compares a picture with a lot of other stuff than the glass building to look at and help our eyes "escape", to a picture where 97% of the space is the building itself. There's nothing else to look at so... yeah... This seems so biased.

/e: words

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#46

Post by ajuc » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:03 AM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #8

ajuc wrote: post #2

Isn't it simply brain looking at the edges of things? If a building doesn't have edges inside it then we look at its silhouette.

The author shows how for more classical buildings with more structure, the eye focus on the structural aspects of the buildings.

> the eye focus on the structural aspects of the buildings

which are mostly edges

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#47

Post by praptak » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

gfaure wrote: post #29

praptak wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the article makes this claim. It's not about people actually ignoring the skyscrapers, but rather the low-level layers of the brain tagging them as not worth looking at. This sounds plausible - glassy skyscrapers look a lot like the sky, which isn't very interesting to look at.

No, this is wrong. In reality there's no link between the claim in the article and the way that the human visual system processes its input. The article is trying to make a leap between the output of some algorithm, and what the human visual system does. Meaningless.

I guess there is no disagreement. The evidence is indeed worthless.

Still the hypothesis is interesting and plausible. Maybe there is a way to test it more rigorously, this time based on actual eye tracking.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#48

Post by amelius » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #26

TheRealSteel wrote: post #13

The second image doesn't have anything else in the image to look at, whereas the first has multiple buildings and plenty of sky space. This article is bollocks. They've worked backwards from a conclusion to find (bad) evidence.

As somebody who dealt with photography and cameras his whole life and took pictures as a professional for movies: this isn’t bollocks. The visual readability of an opaque non-reflective cube is always going to be higher than that of a mirror cube in a non studio environment. This is because your brain needs to do more legwork to figure out the underlying shape when you look at reflective suefaces that are mostly flat…

Ok, but at least they could have gathered a little more evidence.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#49

Post by rb808 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

I love 4 WTC, for some reason its extra-mirrory, really tall with a flat roof, from the street it often looks like it disappears.

https://42floors.com/images/H596cc3895888f38019aee71d9a21247... https://42floors.com/images/H2ace7a05db1517e4a6726532b38d4e6... https://42floors.com/images/Hc03b5fe9133b1ba7b10f11d22531e87...

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#50

Post by aasasd » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:44 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #26

TheRealSteel wrote: post #13

The second image doesn't have anything else in the image to look at, whereas the first has multiple buildings and plenty of sky space. This article is bollocks. They've worked backwards from a conclusion to find (bad) evidence.

As somebody who dealt with photography and cameras his whole life and took pictures as a professional for movies: this isn’t bollocks. The visual readability of an opaque non-reflective cube is always going to be higher than that of a mirror cube in a non studio environment. This is because your brain needs to do more legwork to figure out the underlying shape when you look at reflective suefaces that are mostly flat…

> I am sure they didn’t simulate that

They actually might, after arc-shaped reflective buildings started almost literally melting cars that happened to be parked in the focus of the reflected sunlight, and some constructs had to be built in the line of that sunlight to protect the cars.

https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/london-skyscraper-can-me...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-23930675

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2786723/London-skys...