The Limits of Vision
I have ridden motorcycles for around 40 of my 44 years. And as it looks like I can no longer do that, I have moved back to bicycles. And so Micheal Cains post was a welcome read, as were the comments. And in those comments were many regulars (Chris, North, Dragonfrog and Glyph especially) talked about both cyclists and drivers not paying attention to others around them, especially pedestrians. I was reminded of a video that I saw on a motorcycling forum years ago.
Test Your Awareness: Do The Test
People look for what they are told to look for, which is generally things that will hurt them.
Change blindness. Here’s my favorite version. More on the subject written by the same brilliant person.
Some awesome gifs used in some of the experiments are here (scroll down to “Change Blindness”).Report
I’ve seen this in a number of contexts and it never ceases to amaze.Report
It really is amazing. You can even know the change is coming and miss it.Report
This was a big deal in my undergrad CS classes on AI. One of the (many) challenges with computer AI is that we’re trying to make computers work the way we THINK we do, instead of the way we actually do.Report
Actually making the computer think the way we do is going to be difficult, because they don’t have a body to reference (a good deal of our heuristics are tied into bodily awareness — should I do this? no it doesn’t feel right…).
Having seen AI’s displays of temper, we may be closer than you think…Report
Wow. When they did the rewind I was skeptical, so I watched it from the beginning. Wow.Report
A question for those who know….
Is this the same thing as what some people mean by hypnosis?Report
It’s more like what magicians and pickpockets do, they direct your attention away from something, which is surprisingly easy to do, and often depends on quirks of vision and mental processing (like saccades).
http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_neuroscienceofmagic?currentPage=allReport
Our bike trail system uses these (IMO) goofy little versions of traffic signs – maybe 1/3 scale to the regular ones. I guess the reasoning is bicycles are smaller than cars so they get smaller signs.
I rode here for years before I realized those signs existed, and I’d been blowing through them without even knowing they were there. The day I finally noticed them I was finally not looking for traffic signs because I was walking along a bike trail – traffic signs follow a pattern of shapes, colours, placement and size that I was scanning for when I rode. It turned out that the signs being so much smaller led to my filtering them into the same ‘disregard’ category as parking signs and bus stop signs and whatnot.Report