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I've acquired a new superpower

danielwirtz.com

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Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#371

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> 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.

Conversely, I'm amazed by the amount of things I discover as an adult are not common experiences or skills for people, despite being considered as such. This includes, for example, having an inner voice (which I do), or ability to visualize things in your head (which I don't).

Wrt. the latter, when I learned as an adult that some people actually can conjure up images in their mind on demand[0], and conversely that aphantasia is a thing, it took me few more years to connect that back to some early experiences in childhood - being bored out of my mind by some well-known novels that my parents and teachers found particularly engaging. Specifically, the ones rich in descriptions of scenery. They'd say that's the best part, what makes the story rich and immersive, and that's what imagination is for and those books are good for exercising it. Meanwhile, I'd feel ashamed and wonder what the fuck are they talking about, while skimming to find where the descriptions end so I can resume reading from there. Well, it turns out what they said was true for them, but is not true for people like me, who can't visualize to save their life.

Well, except in dreams. Which makes the whole thing even more fascinating.

> Some recent example of things I shared:

Interesting. I somehow managed to never learn either, so thanks! Ironically, I realize now I've probably seen people do the jacket swing trick hundreds of times, and yet it never registered in my mind as a distinct technique, much less one that I could learn.

EDIT:

One such skill I didn't pick up until my wife taught me, and that I know many (most?) people don't know, is how to correctly pour liquids out of rectangular containers with off-centre openings. Think a milk box, or 5L jug, or fuel canister. Turns out, you shouldn't flip them to give the liquid the shortest path to destination, but the opposite - have it flow alongside the entire top edge of the container. This gives you steadier flow, and you'll spill less. I still find it counterintuitive, but it works.

--

[0] - Fun fact: that makes "undressing someone with your eyes" a literal ability for them too.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#373

Post by topspin »

Imnimo wrote: post #332

I can get the overlap to lock in, but the simmering effect is weak and difficult to pick out. Probably still faster than exhaustive search, but I don't feel like I'm at superpower level. Maybe my brain favors one eye more than the other? I know I have different glasses prescriptions for each eye.

It tried just after waking up, using my phone's screen, and it worked immediately. Not exactly a pleasant thing to do, but it does work as described.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#374

Post by rsktaker »

That's amazing! Within 40 seconds I overlapped the two hard mode images and saw 8 shimmering objects set within a clear picture. It took me a little longer (maybe a minute), but the two impossible mode pictures snapped together and I saw a single shimmering star within an otherwise crystal clear photograph!

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#375

Post by tlhunter »

It blows my mind that every human doesn't know this. I figured it out as a child. The easiest way to prevent this is to have one of the two images be slightly tilted. I can rotate my eyes but it's much harder than crossing them.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#376

Post by Gollapalli »

warner25 wrote: post #348
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 ;)

Totally indulging in this side discussion: I remember thinking in high school and college that fame was the end-all of life, telling people that my goal was to have my own Wikipedia page. I saw it as something like the combination of being a "cool kid" (but for, you know, the whole of society instead of just one's school) and a sort of immortality. Anyway, over the last couple of decades as an adult, besides realizin…

I think the desire for fame isn't an inherently bad thing.

> He was the man most gracious and fair-minded, > Kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.

Those are the last lines of Beowulf. A man who won great fame among his people by slaying monsters and dragons. It's telling that the final line of the poem ends with his most dominant trait, "and keenest to win fame." Wanting fame is not wrong, and is far from shallow. The question is, "fame for what?" Regardless of whether you think Beowulf existed or not, it's telling that for a whole culture that the most important characteristic of a great man in one of their great poemsis "keenness to win fame," almost as a wink, with the bard saying "and if you want to be sung like this hero, you must desire fame just as keenly, and so do great deeds."

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#377

Post by mauvehaus »

K0balt wrote: post #364
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.

Fun fact- when I was a teenager, my friends and I set up a stand in a local mall selling those “magic eye”posters. We made bank for a few months. But, there are actually a lot of people that medically cannot use the technique, or at least for whom it is extremely difficult or less vivid. Severe astigmatism, (obviously) blindness in one or more eyes, and certain attention deficits or fidgety types often have a difficu…

How bad does your astigmatism have to be? I've only ever been able to get one magic eye poster to work for me in my life, and I had no idea astigmatism had any impact until just now! I don't know if mine counts as severe, but this would explain a lot for me.

As it happens, I also can't focus on the images in TFA after crossing my eyes to get the shimmer the author refers to.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#378

Post by nwatson »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #369
soco wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That was me at first. I think the "cross eyed" phrase is a bit ambiguous. What I ended up with (I think) is a focal point not closer than the screen but farther than it. My eyes didn't want to do it at first but then they did. What is weird about it is the focusing and focal point are out of sync --- my brain can do it but the weird feeling is one of "gosh, this thing is a lot closer than it should be" where "should…

That focus-farther-than-the-page works (for most people) as long as the distance between the (center of each of the) two images on the page is smaller than your interpupillary distance. In this case the left eye will see the left image, the right eye the right image, in the overlaid resolved image.

For most people, having the images resolve in front of the plane of the page such that in resolved overlaid image the right eye sees the left image, and the left eye sees the right image, will work ... and it can work even if the images are farther apart than the interpupillary distance.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#379

Post by glxxyz »

OzFreedom wrote: post #359
soco wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Same as in autostereogram, the trick is to look to the distance. Close your eyes and imagine a mountain far away or some distant object, notice how your eyes adjust to see it. Open your eyes and try to look at this imaginary mountain while the image is in front of you. When you see the third Image, treat it as if its a distant 3d object somewhere on the horizon.

When I brought an early autostereogram in to school in the early '90s my high school Physics teacher refused to try it as he thought it sounded impossible. He thought we were all in on it as we 'got it' one after another.
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