posted
I was reading wikipedia at work during a lull, and had one of those moments when you read something that you'd know if you'd thought about it, but it never occurred to you to think about it so you didn't.
My moment involved the fact that we don't really see in 3D at all, because if we did, we'd be able to see all the sides of an object simultaneously. We see in 2D+1!
Has anyone else had any of those recently?
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posted
Why do you call this 2D+1 instead of just 2D? We have two separate eyes that both see in two dimensions.
Keep in mind that seeing in 2-D doesn't mean perceiving everything as a flat plane, it means that light only enters our eyes radially, so any point in these two dimensions would be the angular information half of two sets of polar coordinates. It's not 3-D because each or our eyes cannot tell how far away a source of light is, we can only infer that by comparing the slightly different perspectives.
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posted
The +1 was meant to show that the inference was able to be made vice not knowing there was another dimension in front of our faces. Does that make any sense?
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I'll accept that we see in two dimensions plus Depth Perception. Saying it's strictly 2D only covers the operation of an eye, and leaves out the result of having two. So the +1 makes sense to me.
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posted
Actually it's more how our brain interprets the 2D image to "construct" a 3D space.
I've been reading this really interesting book called "Visual Intelligence: How We Construct What We See". It's very interesting.
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Vision is such an interesting phenomenon. It's so hard to describe in abstract language. The truth about it is so much more complicated than the question of how many dimensions we see in. Dimensions are a construct of our language and framing of the phenomenon of objects existing in space.
Our mind interprets electrical (or perhaps combination of electrical and chemical signals) from the eye to infer the existence of certain things in certain places. The signals that come in from the individual rods and cones in the eye have nothing to do with dimensions. The dimensions have everything to do with the brain's interpretation of that information.
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posted
Definitely! What the brain gets is electromagnetic impulses from all the senses. And the brain has these unbelievable magical unthought-of and unplumbed abilities to construct perceptions of reality out of such impulses.
That's what's happening with me and other online people who see no difference in online life and 3space life, online friends and 3space friends. Our brains have learned to build a reality out of these impulses and perceive it directly. I am sad that it doesn't happen right away for everyone.
Pilots have been known to feel their plane's aerodynamic surfaces as extensions of their bodies, and people who use certain tools or implements like say, waldos or even the tennis racket of a player, have gained the perception of the tools as extensions of their bodies. The same thing seems to be happening in those cases. I think it's awesome.
I spent a day once trying to see my visual field as a 2d picture painted onto the surface of my eyeballs. It sort of gave me claustophobia a little.
There's an essay reprinted in "The Mind's I" called "On Having No Head". I forget who it is by but it's very cool. I wonder if it's online somewhere. I'll look for it and come back and link if I find it.
Apparently it's by D.E. Harding and it's still in copyright. Sorry no linky!
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posted
Even with one eye, it's not completely 2D, because even slight motions of the head, will cause paralax shifts, giving you a sense of depth perception.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Wow u all make learning fun. Hatrack should open a internet homeschool section. ( There's no lightbulb/idea gremlin)
Posts: 856 | Registered: Jun 2007
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