Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

news.berkeley.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 37 posts

Re: Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

#11

Post by slfnflctd »

gchamonlive wrote: post #5
brmgb wrote: post #3

Is there an expert who could explain what's novel here ? The layman summary seems to imply specialists are surprised that people judge distance differently which seem crazy to me. I mean we have known for decades that vision is the result of a complex process involving different parts of the visual system and that people results on tasks involving mainly vision (and coordination admittedly) vary. What's the surprisin…

Not only that, Kant himself structured the idea of the world outside our field of experience in a critique of pure reason. Since then the idea that our experience is a perfect one and that all our ideas come from our experience has been questioned. This is why when the interviewed said "We assume our perception is a perfect reflection of the physical world around us" it was really strange for me. Only those unaware o…

> Only those unaware of hundreds of years of advance in philosophy assume that

So then, nearly all children, and most of your average working-class people? Seems to me the author was just tailoring the piece for a layperson audience, which is kinda the default writing approach.

Re: Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

#12

Post by nitrogen »

dan_hawkins wrote: post #9
throwaway_kufu wrote: post #7

> “We assume our perception is a perfect reflection of the physical world around us, but this study shows that each of us has a unique visual fingerprint,” I don’t think anyone makes that assumption. I think most people know we don’t actually “see” the physical world, our eyes receive electrical signals from photons and our brain interprets those signals and for lack of a better word we hallucinate the physical world…

Anecdotally I've always perceived that dress as blue/brown from the very beginning and I can't "switch" my vision to perceive it otherwise. It's incomprehensible to me that someone can see it as blue/white or even worse as black/gold :)

I don't want to trigger another thread about this old image, but I will point out that there are significant differences in monitor gamut and gamma across devices. Some cheap laptop LCDs crush blacks and whites significantly if you aren't looking at perpendicular dead center.

It is for this reason that using light blue or light yellow backgrounds to demarcate ads is sinister -- one can A/B test their marker into literal invisibility for many users.

Re: Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

#13

Post by Daub »

The article and its associated paper did not really engage me. Perhaps I am missing something.

However, I was reminded of something that I learned when taking drama lessons as a teenager, and which I have used as a teacher. Our attention of an object (such as another human) oscillates from eye to eye. However, it is biased to one eye. Generally this is the one on the opposite site to our writing norm (i.e. left handed = right eyed). If you really want to hold a scene when being filmed, look unwaveringly out of the eye that is nearest the camera. It will feel unnatural, but look dam cool on the screen. Look carefully... you can see Laurence Olivier and others doing precisely this.

As a teacher I use it in class to hold attention. But it’s best effect is on the screen.

Re: Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

#14

Post by Steve44 »

This clicked with me when I watched The Brain with David Eagleman [1] on BBC a little while ago. I've always know there is a disconnect between reality and what you interpret but the way he described it stuck. Note this is my layman's way of describing how I understand it.

Firstly your eyes are not connected directly to your "brain". You don't see what is in front of you.

Your eyes write a rough scan of elements of what is in front of you to a "frame buffer". Your brain looks at this "frame buffer" and interprets what it thinks you are seeing. At this stage it can fill in blanks and do all sorts of manipulations to make it look smooth and complete.

What can also happen is your brain can write to this "frame buffer", this is indistinguishable from the information the eyes have put there. This is pretty much how psychosis works - those monsters/spiders/people/objects seem as real as if they are there.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06yjrdp

Re: Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

#15

Post by ta1234567890 »

slfnflctd wrote: post #11
gchamonlive wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, Kant himself structured the idea of the world outside our field of experience in a critique of pure reason. Since then the idea that our experience is a perfect one and that all our ideas come from our experience has been questioned. This is why when the interviewed said "We assume our perception is a perfect reflection of the physical world around us" it was really strange for me. Only those unaware o…

> Only those unaware of hundreds of years of advance in philosophy assume that So then, nearly all children, and most of your average working-class people? Seems to me the author was just tailoring the piece for a layperson audience, which is kinda the default writing approach.

I would say even a lot of very educated people, despite maybe having read about these topics, will still feel and act as if what they are perceiving is reality itself.

I'm actually very surprised to see so many comments here dismissing the article as something almost obvious.

Re: Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

#17

Post by vikramkr »

Daub wrote: post #13

The article and its associated paper did not really engage me. Perhaps I am missing something. However, I was reminded of something that I learned when taking drama lessons as a teenager, and which I have used as a teacher. Our attention of an object (such as another human) oscillates from eye to eye. However, it is biased to one eye. Generally this is the one on the opposite site to our writing norm (i.e. left hande…

Do you have a link with a video or a visual explanation? I dont get what looking unwaveringly out of the eye closest to the camera means - what does it mean to look out of one eye?

Re: Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

#19

Post by k__ »

Steve44 wrote: post #14

This clicked with me when I watched The Brain with David Eagleman [1] on BBC a little while ago. I've always know there is a disconnect between reality and what you interpret but the way he described it stuck. Note this is my layman's way of describing how I understand it. Firstly your eyes are not connected directly to your "brain". You don't see what is in front of you. Your eyes write a rough scan of elements of w…

It's also multiple frame buffers. The nerves before the brain already do some interpretation, and the brain an optimized version.

And the brain can rewrite the history it saved if it finds logical errors that came up because of it filling in gaps wrong.

Brains are awesome and scary.

Re: Vision scientists discover why people literally don't see eye to eye

#20

Post by quietbritishjim »

Daub wrote: post #13

The article and its associated paper did not really engage me. Perhaps I am missing something. However, I was reminded of something that I learned when taking drama lessons as a teenager, and which I have used as a teacher. Our attention of an object (such as another human) oscillates from eye to eye. However, it is biased to one eye. Generally this is the one on the opposite site to our writing norm (i.e. left hande…

> Our attention of an object (such as another human) oscillates from eye to eye.

I thought I understood this at first but with a bit more thought I realised I didn't. You can change the angle between your eyes' directions (i.e. you can cross your eyes rather than them always being totally parallel), so when you focus on single object they are both directly pointing at it simultaneously. Even if your attention is oscillating between them, there's no reason why this would be observable to an outside observer (or camera).

Is it possible you're thinking of looking at someone else's eyes? In that case there are really two objects to look at - the other person's two eyes - so your attention does indeed oscilate in a visible way. But it's not which of your eyes (that you're looking out of) that's varying - it's which of their eyes (that you're looking toward) that's varying.

Post reply on HN