5 ms·
Question in the title -> No. TL/DR: No, we cant. The retina itself can respond to a single photon, but we are not retinas. Instead, the eye filters out this l
by sbaiddn 4y ago
Question in the title -> No.
TL/DR: No, we cant. The retina itself can respond to a single photon, but we are not retinas. Instead, the eye filters out this low light sensitivity lest we go crazy with the resulting visual noise at night.
- high_byte 4y agoNot 1 but 5-9 photons, still less than billions :) pretty amazing
- bitexploder 4y agoIt’s cool our brains have that as a heuristic for whatever reason. Wonder if you could train yourself to see 1-3?
- jvanderbot 4y agoIf you tune up your sensitivity to 1-3 photons, you'll probably find a maddening TV white noise overlaid on your vision.
- rini17 4y agoI do see exactly such a noise in dark rooms, am not unnerved by it at all.
- jvanderbot 4y agoWell that's expected when SNR is low. But in a dark room it's harder to see because SNR is low. I was just saying that I wouldn't want to artificially lower SNR in all environments, but maybe it wouldn't and maybe others do.
- rini17 4y agoI think the noise is suppressed not merely because it's harder to see, but mainly because neural networks tend to hallucinate given such an input. In other words, there's fine tuning between losing weak signals and hallucinations.
- kentiko 4y agoIs there a link with Visual snow syndrome?
- ilyt 4y agoSo that would be yes but our noise filter in brain doesn't let us see it
- sbaiddn 4y agoYou are not a retina. You cant see photons.
- Asraelite 4y agoIs this also acknowledging the more recent study linked in one of the top comments?