8 ms·

Relevant link that I saw on HN earlier this week: someone asks people to sketch bicycles and then renders the sketches. https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio

Relevant link that I saw on HN earlier this week: someone asks people to sketch bicycles and then renders the sketches. https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/ https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/ > Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t. > I collected hundreds of drawings, building up a collection that I think is very precious. There is an incredible diversity of new typologies emerging from these crowd-sourced and technically error-driven drawings. A single designer could not invent so many new bike designs in 100 lifetimes and this is why I look at this collection in such awe.

sneak 4y ago
> how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t The way I try to avoid this is to remind myself that knowing the name of something is not knowing about something, only about the existence of that something. There are lots of things I know the names of, but relatively few things I actually know about. The classic example is asking people to describe the process that causes the phases of the moon. Most (myself included the first time) describe an eclipse, which is wrong.
- jagthebeetle 4y ago
  What a great example! As a recent astronomy enthusiast, I found myself doubting this comment initially ("well, eclipses ARE related"), and this despite the fact that I have a toy tellurion right by my desk. But hearing a particular phrase in the below video helped correct my model. One sanity check is that you can see non-full moons during the day (although I definitely would have just assumed it was still a matter of angles). Related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jip3BbZBpsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jip3BbZBpsM
  - tellurion 4y ago
    Side comment: This is the first time I've seen my preferred username used for its actually meaning. And I've been using it for almost 3 decades. Neat. I was going to use tellurian, which means an inhabitant of the earth, then saw that tellurion was sometimes used as an alternate spelling in an old Webster's dictionary I was looking through, and preferred it. And yes, I did search through a dictionary to find a username.
- grog454 4y ago
  > remind myself that knowing the name of something is not knowing about something You and Feynman both: https://youtu.be/px_4TxC2mXU https://youtu.be/px_4TxC2mXU
  - sneak 4y ago
    It's quite likely that that's where I got it and then just forgot.
    - CTDOCodebases 4y ago
      This happens to me alot. Motivated by curiosity I will make the effort to acquire a piece of knowledge but since I don't have a functional use for such knowledge parts of it slip out of memory.. ..then some time after I will have a functional need for the knowledge I learnt previously but relearning something that is already somewhat familiar isn't that captivating so it ends up being a struggle the second time.
- MrJohz 4y ago
  I was just talking to a friend about moon phases the other day, saying that I'd never really understood why it does what it does, only that vaguely things rotate around each other and this waves hands does things. He explained it like this which really helped: you can choose all sorts of frames of reference when you think about this stuff, so choose one where the sun and earth are stationary compared to each other, and then only the moon is rotating - less stuff to think about! Now you've got the earth spinning very fast in the middle, the sun sitting off to one side, and the moon then goes in a slow circle around the earth. If it's on the opposite side of the earth to the sun, then it's going to be fully lit up, but it's also only going to be visible at night. If it's on the same side as the sun, then the side that's facing us is going to be dark and difficult to see, but it will be in the sky during the day, which is why occasionally the moon is visible in daytime, even though we all know the moon comes out at night. I think that idea of changing your perspective - in this case, literally, by changing the frame of reference - is really helpful when it comes to understanding things that we only know about. Like, I've known about the solar system since I was a kid, I've seen all of the models, I surely made my own as a schoolchild - the knowledge is all there! But for understanding, I needed to find a new perspective. That's probably true of the bike thing as well, thinking about it. Knowledge of a bike is easy: it's two wheels, handlebars, a seat, and pedals. But understanding how a bike is made requires thinking about the frame, and that's just a squashed parallelogram with a stick coming out of it. Once you visualise that, it becomes really obvious how the rest of the bike gets put together, but the frame is necessary for understanding. Otherwise, you just put together the things you know about and then have to draw awkward lines in between to connect them.
  - nuancebydefault 4y ago
    I would explain it like this: take a tennisball and shine a flashlight on it from one side. Make sure you do not see the origin of the light by holding it just right of your shoulder.
  - stouset 4y ago
    > He explained it like this which really helped: you can choose all sorts of frames of reference when you think about this stuff, so choose one where the sun and earth are stationary compared to each other, and then only the moon is rotating - less stuff to think about! Even easier: choose one where the sun and moon are stationary, and place the Earth somewhere near the moon. The side of the moon facing the sun will always be fully brightly lit, and the proportion of that which is seen from the Earth is based on where we place the Earth. Of course the Earth doesn't orbit around the moon, but for the purposes of this model it's irrelevant.
- CTDOCodebases 4y ago
  I 100% agree with your comment however in regards to it's relationship to the parent comment I have to disagree somewhat in the usual nitpicky hackernews fashion: Asking someone to draw "a bicycle" is different to asking them to draw a specific bicycle or a functional bicycle. Also what does it mean to "know something"? If you ask someone to draw a house and they draw a square with an overhanging equilateral triangle centred on top, it's not that they don't know what a house is. That's just a symbol representation of their own personal definition of a house.
  - stouset 4y ago
    The equivalent here would be if you drew that same stick-figure house but put the door adjacent to the roof rather than the floor, or the triangular roof along one side rather than opposite the ground.
- stouset 4y ago
  > The classic example is asking people to describe the process that causes the phases of the moon. Most (myself included the first time) describe an eclipse, which is wrong. To me, a neat consequence of this is that if you know what part of the cycle the moon is in, you know where it will be relative to the sun in the sky (and vice versa).
danijelb 4y ago
Reminds me of how AI image generators draw stuff slightly wrong
sixstringtheory 4y ago
Came here to post this. I would love to see all the same force animations but with these models swapped into them.
Psychlist 4y ago
The trouble with the very first render is that the author is wrong about why the bike wouldn't work. The head tube isn't braced well enough to allow the front brake to be used, and would twist when cornering to a degree that would unsettle most riders. The missing chainstay would only be an issue for powerful cyclists or people standing up to pedal. But the bicycle shown could definitely be built and ridden. Probably more practical than Saul Griffith's plexiglass bicycle (that was also built and ridden). At one stage Klein had a problem with the chainstays separating at the bottom bracket and a number of people rode those bikes after breaking them... almost exactly the "missing chainstay" problem above. I've built some very weird bicycles and broken both those and conventional bicycles. I have at least some idea of what works... I'd be willing to build as many of those renders as someone was willing to pay for.
- taneq 4y ago
  Sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time experimenting! Got any pics of the weird bicycles?
  - Psychlist 4y ago
    https://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/ride/carry/index.html https://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/ride/carry/index.html I didn't collect photos of the real experiments, those were mostly "grab a scrap bike, hack it about, (try to) ride it, bin it and try again. But if you wander the mozbike site there's a few of those. https://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/see/misc/2001/index.html https://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/see/misc/2001/index.html has the "MBB FWD recumbent" that's just a cheap chair welded to a BMX frame :)
    - sriacha 4y ago
      Great album! Have you done any more interesting bike projects more recently?
      - Psychlist 4y ago
        nothing interesting, just repairs and tweaks. I'm building a granny flat instead :)
an_aparallel 4y ago
this was one of the greatest installations i've ever seen in an art gallery. You have no idea what you're looking at until you've passed through all the rooms...seeing a real life "fucked up" bike in the last room...is a little mind blowing haha

sneak 4y ago

> how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t The way I try to avoid this is to remind myself that knowing the name of something is not knowing about something, only about the existence of that something. There are lots of things I know the names of, but relatively few things I actually know about. The classic example is asking people to describe the process that causes the phases of the moon. Most (myself included the first time) describe an eclipse, which is wrong.

jagthebeetle 4y ago
What a great example! As a recent astronomy enthusiast, I found myself doubting this comment initially ("well, eclipses ARE related"), and this despite the fact that I have a toy tellurion right by my desk. But hearing a particular phrase in the below video helped correct my model. One sanity check is that you can see non-full moons during the day (although I definitely would have just assumed it was still a matter of angles). Related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jip3BbZBpsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jip3BbZBpsM
- tellurion 4y ago
  Side comment: This is the first time I've seen my preferred username used for its actually meaning. And I've been using it for almost 3 decades. Neat. I was going to use tellurian, which means an inhabitant of the earth, then saw that tellurion was sometimes used as an alternate spelling in an old Webster's dictionary I was looking through, and preferred it. And yes, I did search through a dictionary to find a username.
grog454 4y ago
> remind myself that knowing the name of something is not knowing about something You and Feynman both: https://youtu.be/px_4TxC2mXU https://youtu.be/px_4TxC2mXU
- sneak 4y ago
  It's quite likely that that's where I got it and then just forgot.
  - CTDOCodebases 4y ago
    This happens to me alot. Motivated by curiosity I will make the effort to acquire a piece of knowledge but since I don't have a functional use for such knowledge parts of it slip out of memory.. ..then some time after I will have a functional need for the knowledge I learnt previously but relearning something that is already somewhat familiar isn't that captivating so it ends up being a struggle the second time.
MrJohz 4y ago
I was just talking to a friend about moon phases the other day, saying that I'd never really understood why it does what it does, only that vaguely things rotate around each other and this waves hands does things. He explained it like this which really helped: you can choose all sorts of frames of reference when you think about this stuff, so choose one where the sun and earth are stationary compared to each other, and then only the moon is rotating - less stuff to think about! Now you've got the earth spinning very fast in the middle, the sun sitting off to one side, and the moon then goes in a slow circle around the earth. If it's on the opposite side of the earth to the sun, then it's going to be fully lit up, but it's also only going to be visible at night. If it's on the same side as the sun, then the side that's facing us is going to be dark and difficult to see, but it will be in the sky during the day, which is why occasionally the moon is visible in daytime, even though we all know the moon comes out at night. I think that idea of changing your perspective - in this case, literally, by changing the frame of reference - is really helpful when it comes to understanding things that we only know about. Like, I've known about the solar system since I was a kid, I've seen all of the models, I surely made my own as a schoolchild - the knowledge is all there! But for understanding, I needed to find a new perspective. That's probably true of the bike thing as well, thinking about it. Knowledge of a bike is easy: it's two wheels, handlebars, a seat, and pedals. But understanding how a bike is made requires thinking about the frame, and that's just a squashed parallelogram with a stick coming out of it. Once you visualise that, it becomes really obvious how the rest of the bike gets put together, but the frame is necessary for understanding. Otherwise, you just put together the things you know about and then have to draw awkward lines in between to connect them.
- nuancebydefault 4y ago
  I would explain it like this: take a tennisball and shine a flashlight on it from one side. Make sure you do not see the origin of the light by holding it just right of your shoulder.
- stouset 4y ago
  > He explained it like this which really helped: you can choose all sorts of frames of reference when you think about this stuff, so choose one where the sun and earth are stationary compared to each other, and then only the moon is rotating - less stuff to think about! Even easier: choose one where the sun and moon are stationary, and place the Earth somewhere near the moon. The side of the moon facing the sun will always be fully brightly lit, and the proportion of that which is seen from the Earth is based on where we place the Earth. Of course the Earth doesn't orbit around the moon, but for the purposes of this model it's irrelevant.
CTDOCodebases 4y ago
I 100% agree with your comment however in regards to it's relationship to the parent comment I have to disagree somewhat in the usual nitpicky hackernews fashion: Asking someone to draw "a bicycle" is different to asking them to draw a specific bicycle or a functional bicycle. Also what does it mean to "know something"? If you ask someone to draw a house and they draw a square with an overhanging equilateral triangle centred on top, it's not that they don't know what a house is. That's just a symbol representation of their own personal definition of a house.
- stouset 4y ago
  The equivalent here would be if you drew that same stick-figure house but put the door adjacent to the roof rather than the floor, or the triangular roof along one side rather than opposite the ground.
stouset 4y ago
> The classic example is asking people to describe the process that causes the phases of the moon. Most (myself included the first time) describe an eclipse, which is wrong. To me, a neat consequence of this is that if you know what part of the cycle the moon is in, you know where it will be relative to the sun in the sky (and vice versa).

danijelb 4y ago

Reminds me of how AI image generators draw stuff slightly wrong

sixstringtheory 4y ago

Came here to post this. I would love to see all the same force animations but with these models swapped into them.

Psychlist 4y ago

The trouble with the very first render is that the author is wrong about why the bike wouldn't work. The head tube isn't braced well enough to allow the front brake to be used, and would twist when cornering to a degree that would unsettle most riders. The missing chainstay would only be an issue for powerful cyclists or people standing up to pedal. But the bicycle shown could definitely be built and ridden. Probably more practical than Saul Griffith's plexiglass bicycle (that was also built and ridden). At one stage Klein had a problem with the chainstays separating at the bottom bracket and a number of people rode those bikes after breaking them... almost exactly the "missing chainstay" problem above. I've built some very weird bicycles and broken both those and conventional bicycles. I have at least some idea of what works... I'd be willing to build as many of those renders as someone was willing to pay for.

taneq 4y ago
Sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time experimenting! Got any pics of the weird bicycles?
- Psychlist 4y ago
  https://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/ride/carry/index.html https://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/ride/carry/index.html I didn't collect photos of the real experiments, those were mostly "grab a scrap bike, hack it about, (try to) ride it, bin it and try again. But if you wander the mozbike site there's a few of those. https://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/see/misc/2001/index.html https://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/see/misc/2001/index.html has the "MBB FWD recumbent" that's just a cheap chair welded to a BMX frame :)
  - sriacha 4y ago
    Great album! Have you done any more interesting bike projects more recently?
    - Psychlist 4y ago
      nothing interesting, just repairs and tweaks. I'm building a granny flat instead :)

an_aparallel 4y ago

this was one of the greatest installations i've ever seen in an art gallery. You have no idea what you're looking at until you've passed through all the rooms...seeing a real life "fucked up" bike in the last room...is a little mind blowing haha