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I've acquired a new superpower

danielwirtz.com

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Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#271

Post by hgomersall »

redcobra762 wrote: post #252
lenkite wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failed to perform the technique despite multiple retries, but didn't have any issues spotting differences the normal way for all except the impossible mode - which just felt like it would be tedious. My usual method is just to brute-force linear scan from left to right, top-to-bottom. May not be elegant, but it works.

...except as you say, it didn't work. The "eye-cross" trick gave the answer on the impossible one in ~10 seconds.

The impossible one was quite tricky, but I did find I was able to relax into the image and take my time. Probably took about 10 seconds.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#272

Post by jvm___ »

klondike_klive wrote: post #219
duxup wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Probably my peak fame right there. My son and I always make jokes about everyone's 5 minutes of fame. Some random person on the jumbotron at a sporting event "Yup, there's his moment, it's over now." At least yours got you something ;)

One of my dad's sayings when somebody in a film delivered a line and then disappeared was "6 months rehearsal for that."

I envision happy families watching the end credits for Dad's name as Third Assistant Caterer on a big budget film.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#273

Post by Pxtl »

theginger wrote: post #263

Is the technique to this exactly the same as the technique to view a 3d stereogram image? I was able to get a 3rd image to be clearly visible in the middle doing this, on the 2nd image I could definitely seem some spots appear that lead me straight to 3 of them but didn't work for me on the other 2 images.

The left-right full-image stereograms... but those are less common than the pattern-based "magic eye" stereograms. Those are the reverse of this - in the linked image and the left-right full-image stereograms, they're done by crossing your eyes to a point closer to your eyes than the original image.

The pattern-based "magic eye" stereograms are done by looking through the image to focus on a point deeper into the screen further from your eyes.

The latter I think are less painful because they use the more natural depth-perception distances of your eyes instead of using what feels like more unnatural positions, but that might be my bias because I'm a bit farsighted. Maybe they're just more common because they're visually inscrutable at first and so you get the "reveal" of the 3D contour from a single large image instead of two already-visible small ones.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#274

Post by OJFord »

thayne wrote: post #259
smusamashah wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a way to help yourself. Put the pair of images in front of your eyes. Bring your finger between your face and the image. Now look at your finger. Move your finger back and forth. While doing this, notice that at a particular distance, the images in background will perfectly overlap each other. That's your moment. Pull out your finger and look at that image. --- Should take lot less tries to learn doing it wi…

I tried, this, and I can get it to overlap in the background, but as soon as I take my finger away, I lose it.

You may have a very slightly 'lazy eye' (I do) - it can be a lot less extreme (not at all noticeable to others) than the pointing-completely-different-directions that people imagine, and iirc is highly correlated with astigmatism.

Optician used to tell me to work the muscle by following my finger to my nose, trying to maintain a single image. At a certain point it will snap into two - the 'lazy' eye has given up and drifted slightly - the goal is to get the finger as close as possible. Obviously if you get very close or all the way, that's 'cross-eyed', but I just can't do it.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#275

Post by xamuel »

amingilani wrote: post #266

I'm frequently surprised by the amount of seemingly ordinary skills I picked up as a bored child that other people didn't. This was an obvious way to solve those "spot the difference" pictures in magazines. I wonder what skills other people picked up that I didn't. Some recent example of things I shared: + When your belt buckle hangs a little loosely on the front of your pants. You can hook the buckle's prong onto th…

Ear rumbling: https://www.reddit.com/r/earrumblersassemble/

Eye shaking: https://old.reddit.com/r/Eyeshakers/

Some of us are born with small frenula of the tongue (or we undergo tongue-tie surgery as kids) and can thus perform Khecari mudra without the traditional self-mutilation used by yoga-masters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khecar%C4%AB_mudr%C4%81 This can be useful for cleaning tonsil stones or post-nasal drip, but of course you must do so discretely since people would consider that absolutely disgusting

If you want to read out loud for long stretches of time and you hate taking breaks to catch your breath: you can read out loud while inhaling too! (It feels and sounds super weird though so this isn't very useful in practice.)

And here's a party trick related to OP's super power. Pick a distant object and cross your eyes so as to see it double, preferably with the two doubles distant from each other (i.e., cross your eyes significantly). Then, alternately switch between staring at the left double, and the right double. If you do it right, it will look like your eyes are moving in a bizarre alien way.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#276

Post by Pxtl »

haswell wrote: post #167
Fnoord wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it did was hurt my eyes. I'll opt out of playing, superpower be damned.

I think the key is not "going cross-eyed" as much as it is relaxing your focus until the images merge. If you intentionally cross your eyes, it hurts. If you de-focus/relax your eyes until the images merge, it doesn't hurt.

That's more for traditional "magic eye" pattern stereograms where you want to relax your eyes to look off into the middle distance behind the subject instead of intensely focusing on something unnaturally close to your face.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#277

Post by hgomersall »

soco wrote: post #65
Workaccount2 wrote: post #43

At a local bar they had a game machine, and if you got a high score on any of the games, your tab for the evening was free. One of the games was a "spot the differences" between two pictures with an ever decreasing timer for each round. Using this trick I was able to easily surpass the high score, and garner a crowd watching me perform this mind numbing feat. Probably my peak fame right there.

I can't overlap the images to save my life - they get like halfway there and that's it...

When it works you get what seems like 3 images with the middle one showing the differences; you can then relax and peruse the middle image at will. I guess all the practice with SIRDS as a child probably helps.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#279

Post by tobr »

graypegg wrote: post #145
tobr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking in! I’m frequently baffled by how unaware most people seem to be about the absolute basics of how their eyes work. Like, people don’t even seem to be aware of how their stereo perception is largely made from two images, or any of the implications that has. I actively think about the two images maybe dozens of times per day.

Chill out, that's a bit of hyperbole isn't it? This is just a trick for doing a spot the difference puzzle. It's not exactly a daily task most people are thinking about. Most people at least understand that stereographic vision has something to do with 3D perception because we've all closed 1 eye before.

It’s a useful way to compare visual things, which comes up in all kinds of contexts other than these puzzles.
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