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

The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

geneticsofdesign.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–66 of 66 posts

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#61

Post by SiempreViernes »

sansnomme wrote: post #6
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.

How does the software work? Seam carving style "energy functions" or neural networks? If it's neural networks how did they train it? Eye tracker?

It seems to be old fashioned image processing using expert created feature extractors and such.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180604223618/http://solutions....

Validation data is eye tracking

http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1006827O/3msm-visual-atte...

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#62

Post by rb808 »

mcv wrote: post #53
rb808 wrote: post #49

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...

I can't help but wonder how much of this is influenced by the lighting and composition of the photo. Both your examples and those in the article. I'm generally not a fan of the all-glass architecture, or even modern architecture in general, and prefer buildings made of stone, and preferably on a human scale, like 19th and early 20th century architecture. After the War, buildings became featureless and soulless, and w…

Yes definitely that second pic is probably not great. One thing I think it does benefit from is being surrounded by other tall buildings, so often you can only see it from very close up and its that view in the first photo that I see nearly every day.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#63

Post by TheRealSteel »

arrrg wrote: post #32
atoav wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think you are talking past each other. What was labelled as “bollocks” here is the scientific evidence.

Absolutely. It may be true that people look less at glass buildings than concrete ones, but the evidence they present is worthless. That doesn't mean it ISN'T true - that would be just as bad a fallacy - it just means this article isn't presenting anything compelling to back up its claim.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#64

Post by auslander »

kolinko wrote: post #35

Should we flag this post? The "science" presented in this article is so bad it deserves being called fake news. Like the commenters mentioned: - the photos are chosen in such a way that it's obvious eyes won't go looking into the buildings - there is no mention of the sample size regarding participants and photos that were shown. looks like cherrypicking

Flagging should be removed from HN, or at least give an option to un-flag. Its a good interesting article.

You stated your opinion in your comment. Why do you need to flag the post?

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#65

Post by hydrox24 »

jrockway wrote: post #17
hydrox24 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dazzle camouflage[0] was used extensively in WWI to make it difficult to see ships because they were so brightly coloured. It's not quite the same principle, but it comes close. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage

The ships were easy to see. What was hard is determining what side you were looking at and what direction they were moving. This made it more difficult to engage them.

Sorry, sloppy phrasing about an often confused topic on my part. You're quite right.

Re: The brain avoids looking at glassy skyscrapers

#66

Post by annsussman »

I'm the author of this article. These are good questions and comments; evolution's preset the way we take in surroundings and brain can't 'fixate' or focus on glassy facades; eye-tracking studies and emulation software used in article, show this. You can read more studies showing this here: https://geneticsofdesign.com/2019/07/07/why-eye-track-boston... And here: https://commonedge.org/game-changing-eye-tracking-studies-re...

And if you're curious about why modern architecture is 'avoidant' here: https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-mod...

LMK if you have questions; always open to discussing.

Post reply on HN