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The problem is that while everything you see on your (2D) monitor is effectively 2D our brain is good at taking 3D cues (shadows, perspective, parallax etc...)

by simias 8y ago

The problem is that while everything you see on your (2D) monitor is effectively 2D our brain is good at taking 3D cues (shadows, perspective, parallax etc...) to reconstitute 3D "data" from it. For instance look at 3D rotating cube on your monitor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E10zYKln3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E10zYKln3g Even though there's no shading, a bad resolution and zero context anchoring it in a familiar setting you immediately see it as a 3D object when effectively that's just 3 2D quadrilaterals changing colors and shape. We really need very little to be able to extrapolate depth information from a very limited 2D-only display. If you did that with 4D cues in 3D space (say in VR or something) I think it wouldn't work. It'd just look like a 3D object changing shape, not a projection of a higher dimension (the same way an hypothetical 2D being would see 3 quadrilaterals changing shape in the above video, not a solid 3D object that would be an abstract concept to them, not a familiar reality). Could we teach our brain to "think in 4D" and interpret these cues differently? To a certain extent probably, maybe if you spent hours and hours and hours in a VR simulation with 4D objects you'd start getting a feel for it. I doubt you'd ever get as good as with 3D objects since we've been exposed to these literally every waking moment since birth, but maybe I underestimate the plasticity of our brain. That actually leads me to an other question: is 3D somewhat hardcoded in our brains or is it purely learned? If we were mad scientists and took a baby brain into a 4D "plato's cave" style simulation, could it grow into being able to perceive 4D as intuitively and effectively as we do with 3D space? Also unrelated question: does anybody have a baby I could borrow?

scrollaway 8y ago
> Could we teach our brain to "think in 4D" and interpret these cues differently? To a certain extent probably, maybe if you spent hours and hours and hours in a VR simulation with 4D objects you'd starting getting a feel for it. I doubt you'd ever get as good as with 3D objects since we've been exposed to these literally every waking moment since we're born.* Good lord! Has anyone tried? This reminds me of the backwards bicycle video on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0). I... really want to try what you're suggesting.
- ianai 8y ago
  Yes mathematicians have tried to visualize 4d for quite some time. I remember hearing about one who famously spent much time to developing a notion of 4d. It’s possible to represent n+1-d scenes into n-d scenes.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- weaksauce 8y ago
  That was a fascinating video. I wonder if the clicking in the brain is similar to the eye crossing effect of those 3d from noisy pictures.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  In the YouTube video he says: "So here's why I did. It was a personal challenge. I stayed out here in this driveway and I practiced about 5 minutes every day. ... after 8 month it happened ... in two weeks he (the son) did something that took me 8 months to do". Well, if you were serious about learning a skill you wouldn't just do one 5 minute session per day for eight months. A more appropriate training regime would be way more intensive than one 5 minute session per day. Are we to believe he limited his son to one 5 minute session a day? Do children really learn languages quicker than adults? By age 3, children will probably have words for almost everything. Babies might even say mama and dada by 6 months of age. Children have several language learning advantages over adults: complete immersion; it is imperative they learn; effectively unlimited time; no responsibilities. But, it takes them years to learn their native language to basic competency. Compare: an English speaker can learn Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, or Swedish to General Professional Proficiency in Speaking and Reading in 600 hours carried out over 24 weeks (25hrs per week). Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, or Arabic will take 2200 hours over 88 weeks (25hrs per week).[1] Is it easier for a child? Yeah probably, they don't even have to look after themselves. If I could live as a child in a foreign language house in a foreign language city, with only two tasks: learn to speak and read the language to basic competency, and learn to ride a backwards bicycle, I'm firmly of the believe I could out pace the 95th percentile of children at both tasks. As an aside, he says his son is the closest person to him genetically, but aren't his parents both equally as close to him genetically as his son? 1. http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...
fossuser 8y ago
For your question about 3D being hard coded or learned, I think I remember reading that it’s learned. This is an old philosophy debate about wheather if I blind person could suddenly see if they’d understand that a sphere is round just by looking at it. When some people that had had cataracts for 50 years were treated they not only couldn’t tell that a sphere was round, they couldn’t understand shadows or depth of field/distance. They thought shadows on people were black splotches and when something was moving away that it was actually getting smaller. I suspect visual input gets trained on our neural network like anything else, though we do have some specialized hardware for it.
- pgrad3 8y ago
  The article describing blind people getting vision again: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/people-cured-blindness-see/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/tech/elements...
  - fossuser 8y ago
    Yeah this is the one I was thinking about! Thanks for finding/linking.
pooyak 8y ago
Here is one version of 4D that our brain understands and can easily map from 4D back to 3D, and that's when the 4th dimension is time (or motion): http://www.dyscario.com/arts-and-culture/sculptures-in-motion-by-peter-jansen.html http://www.dyscario.com/arts-and-culture/sculptures-in-motio...
- undersuit 8y ago
  I like that. It would be very interesting to have something that would use real life resolution human models and an option to control the time step.

by simias 8y ago

scrollaway 8y ago

> Could we teach our brain to "think in 4D" and interpret these cues differently? To a certain extent probably, maybe if you spent hours and hours and hours in a VR simulation with 4D objects you'd starting getting a feel for it. I doubt you'd ever get as good as with 3D objects since we've been exposed to these literally every waking moment since we're born.* Good lord! Has anyone tried? This reminds me of the backwards bicycle video on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0). I... really want to try what you're suggesting.

ianai 8y ago
Yes mathematicians have tried to visualize 4d for quite some time. I remember hearing about one who famously spent much time to developing a notion of 4d. It’s possible to represent n+1-d scenes into n-d scenes.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
weaksauce 8y ago
That was a fascinating video. I wonder if the clicking in the brain is similar to the eye crossing effect of those 3d from noisy pictures.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
In the YouTube video he says: "So here's why I did. It was a personal challenge. I stayed out here in this driveway and I practiced about 5 minutes every day. ... after 8 month it happened ... in two weeks he (the son) did something that took me 8 months to do". Well, if you were serious about learning a skill you wouldn't just do one 5 minute session per day for eight months. A more appropriate training regime would be way more intensive than one 5 minute session per day. Are we to believe he limited his son to one 5 minute session a day? Do children really learn languages quicker than adults? By age 3, children will probably have words for almost everything. Babies might even say mama and dada by 6 months of age. Children have several language learning advantages over adults: complete immersion; it is imperative they learn; effectively unlimited time; no responsibilities. But, it takes them years to learn their native language to basic competency. Compare: an English speaker can learn Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, or Swedish to General Professional Proficiency in Speaking and Reading in 600 hours carried out over 24 weeks (25hrs per week). Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, or Arabic will take 2200 hours over 88 weeks (25hrs per week).[1] Is it easier for a child? Yeah probably, they don't even have to look after themselves. If I could live as a child in a foreign language house in a foreign language city, with only two tasks: learn to speak and read the language to basic competency, and learn to ride a backwards bicycle, I'm firmly of the believe I could out pace the 95th percentile of children at both tasks. As an aside, he says his son is the closest person to him genetically, but aren't his parents both equally as close to him genetically as his son? 1. http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...

fossuser 8y ago

For your question about 3D being hard coded or learned, I think I remember reading that it’s learned. This is an old philosophy debate about wheather if I blind person could suddenly see if they’d understand that a sphere is round just by looking at it. When some people that had had cataracts for 50 years were treated they not only couldn’t tell that a sphere was round, they couldn’t understand shadows or depth of field/distance. They thought shadows on people were black splotches and when something was moving away that it was actually getting smaller. I suspect visual input gets trained on our neural network like anything else, though we do have some specialized hardware for it.

pgrad3 8y ago
The article describing blind people getting vision again: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/people-cured-blindness-see/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/tech/elements...
- fossuser 8y ago
  Yeah this is the one I was thinking about! Thanks for finding/linking.

pooyak 8y ago

Here is one version of 4D that our brain understands and can easily map from 4D back to 3D, and that's when the 4th dimension is time (or motion): http://www.dyscario.com/arts-and-culture/sculptures-in-motion-by-peter-jansen.html http://www.dyscario.com/arts-and-culture/sculptures-in-motio...

undersuit 8y ago
I like that. It would be very interesting to have something that would use real life resolution human models and an option to control the time step.