when a plane is receding from us, it is more likely to contain color variation, which or eyes sees as a line. it is more likely to contain color variation simply because a plane receding from us has more surface area relative to a unit of space in our visual cortex, versus a plane we are viewing at the position of a normal vector. the edges of a 3d object tend to be receding planes, hence we evolved to detect this
Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
51–60 of 174 posts
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#52As a person that has been practicing and studying line drawing for 15+ years, this article seems like its way off the mark. Its just not asking the right questions.
The brain uses all kinds of context sensitive cues to try to link what its looking at to whats its already seen before. If you happen to look at something thats completely new, it doesnt matter if its a line drawing, 3d 4k image or whatever, your brain will be confused. OTOH, when you're looking at something that you've seen before the brain will do all kinds of tricks and cheats to make that thing as real as possible.
Anyone that draws will know you can use plain black and white lines to depict everything from textures, depth, color etc..
Line drawing works because literally anything will work. You could see a distorted, flat black silhouette of one of your family members, and you will instantly know who it is. Its your brain that "makes" things work because its job is to take incomplete information and make it fit an existing mental model.
Line drawings carry so much visual information about objects that its really not that impressive your brain can "figure" out what its looking at. It can do so much more with so much less.
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#53As someone (probably like many here) who graduated from a university which taught computer vision and peripheral neuroscience courses, with such titles as "Computational Neuroscience of Vision", I always felt that trying to understand the human brain as a kind of algorithm was a bit of an artefact of computer scientists as they approach biology. The truth is the visual cortex is vast, and not sufficient to explain th…
Agreed,
There certainly is, in CS, no shortage of engineers cramming square pegs into round holes.
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
ah, someone who paid attention in lecture! (incidentally; there’s a fairly deep literature of historians of science that have carefully documented that we describe ourselves as analogous to the most sophisticated technology of the day: see “to lose one’s temper”, “to blow a gasket”, “i got my wires crossed”, “sorry, cache miss”, … as metaphors and idioms of mental state through the centuries that reflect the cool tec…
> to lose one’s temper Huh, never thought about that one before. Linguistic stuff like this is fun to find; these days I mostly spot it via learning German as a second language, so the artifice in artificial intelligence becomes “Künstliches Intelligenz” where “Kunst” is artist and “Kunststoff” is plastic, and in Middle Low German “kunst” is knowledge and ability. > coined Deliberate choice to exemplify your point, o…
Something I've heard a few times is that computer "logs" refer to ships log books, but log books themselves refer to the actual wooden logs that would be thrown out of the back of ships to help determine their speed.
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#55As someone (probably like many here) who graduated from a university which taught computer vision and peripheral neuroscience courses, with such titles as "Computational Neuroscience of Vision", I always felt that trying to understand the human brain as a kind of algorithm was a bit of an artefact of computer scientists as they approach biology. The truth is the visual cortex is vast, and not sufficient to explain th…
ah, someone who paid attention in lecture! (incidentally; there’s a fairly deep literature of historians of science that have carefully documented that we describe ourselves as analogous to the most sophisticated technology of the day: see “to lose one’s temper”, “to blow a gasket”, “i got my wires crossed”, “sorry, cache miss”, … as metaphors and idioms of mental state through the centuries that reflect the cool tec…
>as metaphors and idioms of mental state through the centuries
after listing a bunch of things from the previous century that barely stretches a bit further back. i would have been impressed if you had come up with a phrase from medieval tech, or roman/greek/egyptian. hell, i'd settle for pioneer days tech to allow for "centuries". otherwise, it just feels like modern day analogies.
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to lose one’s temper Huh, never thought about that one before. Linguistic stuff like this is fun to find; these days I mostly spot it via learning German as a second language, so the artifice in artificial intelligence becomes “Künstliches Intelligenz” where “Kunst” is artist and “Kunststoff” is plastic, and in Middle Low German “kunst” is knowledge and ability. > coined Deliberate choice to exemplify your point, o…
Something I've heard a few times is that computer "logs" refer to ships log books, but log books themselves refer to the actual wooden logs that would be thrown out of the back of ships to help determine their speed.
>wooden logs that would be thrown out of the back of ships to help determine their speed.
see also, knots
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#57The brain's ability to do "shadow removal" is really impressive. You can see it happening in the final example depicted in the article. I think this ability is what was used to explain "the dress". It also comes up in a classic optical illusion [0] where a checkerboard of light and dark gray squares has an object sitting on it and casting a shadow. The shadowed light gray squares are exactly the same shade as the uns…
Hey thanks, this one is new to me. 100% it is impossible to convince myself that those two squares are the same color.
I have a camera looking over my driveway with motion detection that triggers all the time because of the shadow of a tree waving in the wind. My current weekend project is to use FastSAM to detect cars / animals / people in the driveway instead of just looking at a threshold of changed pixels.
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#58As someone (probably like many here) who graduated from a university which taught computer vision and peripheral neuroscience courses, with such titles as "Computational Neuroscience of Vision", I always felt that trying to understand the human brain as a kind of algorithm was a bit of an artefact of computer scientists as they approach biology. The truth is the visual cortex is vast, and not sufficient to explain th…
ah, someone who paid attention in lecture! (incidentally; there’s a fairly deep literature of historians of science that have carefully documented that we describe ourselves as analogous to the most sophisticated technology of the day: see “to lose one’s temper”, “to blow a gasket”, “i got my wires crossed”, “sorry, cache miss”, … as metaphors and idioms of mental state through the centuries that reflect the cool tec…
I think it is more that as technology grows it spreads its terms and contexts to the point of entering pop culture. I'm not sure if the populous uses terms simply becuase they have heard them before in the same context or due to an understanding.
I have to point out that P.G. Wodehouse is often used as an example of this style in recent "literature". I can't even figure out the words to describe the sources of his terms. Wodehouse use terms from anywhere in English language culture (including French I think). The odd part about it is that Wodehouse's writings are so old I find it easy to miss the references.
I don't doubt we do this but do expect that is no different than my love being as deep as the ocean.
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#59As a person that has been practicing and studying line drawing for 15+ years, this article seems like its way off the mark. Its just not asking the right questions. The brain uses all kinds of context sensitive cues to try to link what its looking at to whats its already seen before. If you happen to look at something thats completely new, it doesnt matter if its a line drawing, 3d 4k image or whatever, your brain wi…
The last picture in the article is an interesting counter-example: a line drawing that's constructed in a fairly natural way that is nevertheless almost impossible to interpret. I'm sure there are "line art rules" that picture breaks which are almost second nature to someone who's been in the game for as long as you have; the interesting thing is how that translates to the visual cortex and why those rules work.
Re: Edge detection doesn’t explain line drawing
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
And also the universe itself is often seen through the lens of contemporary technology. Are we living on an island that floats on a giant turtle’s back? Or are the heavens like giant clockworks? Or maybe it’s all a computer simulation? These cosmological speculations are separated by thousands of years, but they are all simply a reflection of what the person finds most awe-inspiring in their everyday life.
The difference is turtles all the way down was literal, but heavenly clockwork and computer program perspectives are clear metaphors.
I first heard Turtles all the way down in spoken story by Kurt Vonnegut. Does anyone else have a source of the story or is that the source?