5 ms·

As the article mentions, most people know how to tell the difference by sound but if you were to ask them they would say no, it's impossible. That just makes m

As the article mentions, most people know how to tell the difference by sound but if you were to ask them they would say no, it's impossible. That just makes me wonder how many other things there are that people subconsciously learns, without it ever becoming obviously noticeable for them?

abyssin 2y ago
I’d say lots of behavioural cues, for instance related to dominance. Many people feel like they’re behaving freely because they’ve completely internalized the constraints their social position imposes upon them.
mbo 2y ago
I _think_ I can tell whether a car is an ICE / hybrid / electric just by the way their weight shifts around corners. My friends maintain they cannot, but under test conditions, I'm sure they'd be fine.
- YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
  Are you sure it's weight distribution and not conducted engine vibration and gear shift patterns? Seems like it'd be difficult to control for (assuming we're already controlling for engine noise).
  - mbo 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's weight distribution. Like I can tell the difference between a hybrid Camry and a pure ICE Camry based on how it bobs over speed bumps, not just in cornering / acceleration.
xnx 2y ago
Many people can perceive polarized light.
DoctorOetker 2y ago
There are many examples of humans being able to observe a difference, yet deny their capability to discern on the basis of abstract rational knowledge. Another example is frame rates: while its well known that the bandwidth of light sensitive cones on the retina is around 30Hz cycle frequency (and thus ~60Hz framerate), many gamers felt the difference of higher framerates, even though many of the same gamers denied observability of this difference on the basis of knowledge of this basic biological fact. The biological fact is not wrong: if screen pixel projects are at rest on the retina. But when the eye is rotating to follow a depicted object on the screen, then speeds higher than ~60 pixels per second result in motion blur that would be absent when observing a real life object moving at the same angular speeds. The biological fact is still true, but simply not naively applicable in the context of motion blur due to eyeballs rotating while observing a display.
- ajuc 2y ago
  It's more complicated than that, brain cuts out the blurry "in between" frames when you move your eyes. Which means it has to extrapolate the images from before the movement to fill the gaps. There's many weird effects of this hack - for example when you look at something moving very fast (like wheels of passing vehicles) but don't move your eyes - it looks blurry. But when you move your eyes - the frame in your brain "freezes" and you can notice non-blurry details on the fast moving things. There are even ways to force eyes to see stuff from the past (like seconds' hand on a clock moving at different rates depending if you move your eyes). You can't actually say that human eye has a strict fps, so the higher screen fps the less weird interactions with the ugly hacks in our brains.
  - DoctorOetker 2y ago
    when your eyes are motion tracking an object there is no cutting-out going on, that only happens when the brain intentionally decides to track a new object
- Kudos 2y ago
  Your eyes being analog and the 60Hz display being offset from your own cycle frequency would play large roles in that.
smartscience 2y ago
The McGurk effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM is another example, which might be described as people learning to lip read without them being aware that they have done so.
- plorkyeran 2y ago
  Apparently I can't lip read, as I never heard anything other than "baa" even as the video was claiming that I should be hearing something different.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    Yeah, I don't understand what I was supposed to be seeing or hearing in that clip, and they never bothered to explain it. The guy says "Baa" and we see his lips move accordingly. Then we hear him say "Baa" again, but this time he's obviously pronouncing something else, judging by his lip movements. We don't know what he's saying (or at least those of us without lip-reading skills don't), but nothing unusual or tricky seems to be happening. What am I missing?
    - plorkyeran 2y ago
      From making the same motions with my mouth I was able to figure out that the other thing he's saying is "faa", so I'm guessing some people literally hear "faa" even though the audio is "baa"?
      - _kulang 2y ago
        Yep
      - sgerenser 2y ago
        I hear “faa” when the mouth looks like it’s making an “f” sound (and apparently that’s normal). Are you perhaps not a native English speaker?
marmaduke 2y ago
> how many other things there are that people subconsciously learns, without it ever becoming obviously noticeable for them? 95%+? Stuff like how to jiggle keys on a keyring to get the right one for the door you're about to unlock? This only works for your keyring, it's highly kinetic, tactile, initial condition dependent etc, yet yet can usually be done unconsciously IME with the 6 keys on my keyring.
rendaw 2y ago
Poor storytelling in modern cinema.
nico 2y ago
There is a cool veritasium video in which they show we are sensitive to changes in the magnetic field surrounding us We can’t consciously tell, but they can see our brain lighting up when sensing the changes Link to video: https://youtu.be/dg3pza4y2ws?si=-yXtwIu2n4QR_1Wi https://youtu.be/dg3pza4y2ws?si=-yXtwIu2n4QR_1Wi
RicoElectrico 2y ago
AC electricity on painted metal objects can be felt by sweeping fingertips, even though there's no current path. You're absolutely right that people ignore whole lot going on around them in terms of sound, smell etc.
- tomsmeding 2y ago
  I have felt this (?) often. Dragging fingers over a (metal) Mac Mini, some random laptop, a metal keyboard. Presumably this feeling triggers already at low power levels, otherwise I'd probably be dead.
  - themoonisachees 2y ago
    I don't think it's quite the same thing. Laptops in particular often have machined (?) surfaces that feel very weird to the touch, regardless of electricity. HP in particular is a regular offender, though I haven't touched many apple computers.
    - rcxdude 2y ago
      I've experienced it and it's markedly different how a laptop feels when plugged into the wall Vs not: it's because of a relatively high voltage (but also high impedance, so not dangerous, though sometimes painful if it focuses through a small point like a USB cable) hum you tend to see in the ground of most modern power adaptors due to noise reduction capacitors.
    - jaggederest 2y ago
      No, this is a different thing. It's leakage current from ungrounded power supplies (the two-prong apple power brick) and it's extremely noticeable. Couple hundred microamps, feels like licking a 9 volt battery.
  - robocat 2y ago
    Once you can feel it (say 50V) then you can have data problems with anything else plugged in. So often worth fixing even if you don't worry about getting a shock.
goosejuice 2y ago
The woman who can smell Parkinson's comes to mind as a recent example.
plusfour 2y ago
Most of your knowledge is implicit.
neltnerb 2y ago
I remember the first time I noticed that I could guess correctly which fingertip a friend shining a tiny red pen laser was shining it on, just from minuscule temperature differences. That you can feel artificial lighting as heat (the actual light, demonstrated as it was a laser some distance away) at such a low power level (<5mW) was pretty surprising to me.
- antognini 2y ago
  Reminds me of Feynman's trick of guessing which book on a bookshelf a person had handled based on the smell.
dopylitty 2y ago
I noticed if I stare into the forest without focusing on any particular thing my vision starts to shimmer a bit and sometimes there are distinctive little perturbations in my peripheral vision. My mind wants to immediately look directly at the perturbations at an almost instinctive level. If I do look I frequently see a leaf moving in the wind or a bird or squirrel moving around in the tree. By intentionally using this effect rather than actively scanning the forest I find I am much better at finding birds when bird watching or seeing larger animals such as foxes, deer, or snakes moving in the grass. It's amazing how many things our bodies are capable of that we don't know about until we step away from electronics and machinery and just let the body do its thing.

abyssin 2y ago

I’d say lots of behavioural cues, for instance related to dominance. Many people feel like they’re behaving freely because they’ve completely internalized the constraints their social position imposes upon them.

mbo 2y ago

I _think_ I can tell whether a car is an ICE / hybrid / electric just by the way their weight shifts around corners. My friends maintain they cannot, but under test conditions, I'm sure they'd be fine.

YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
Are you sure it's weight distribution and not conducted engine vibration and gear shift patterns? Seems like it'd be difficult to control for (assuming we're already controlling for engine noise).
- mbo 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's weight distribution. Like I can tell the difference between a hybrid Camry and a pure ICE Camry based on how it bobs over speed bumps, not just in cornering / acceleration.

xnx 2y ago

Many people can perceive polarized light.

DoctorOetker 2y ago

There are many examples of humans being able to observe a difference, yet deny their capability to discern on the basis of abstract rational knowledge. Another example is frame rates: while its well known that the bandwidth of light sensitive cones on the retina is around 30Hz cycle frequency (and thus ~60Hz framerate), many gamers felt the difference of higher framerates, even though many of the same gamers denied observability of this difference on the basis of knowledge of this basic biological fact. The biological fact is not wrong: if screen pixel projects are at rest on the retina. But when the eye is rotating to follow a depicted object on the screen, then speeds higher than ~60 pixels per second result in motion blur that would be absent when observing a real life object moving at the same angular speeds. The biological fact is still true, but simply not naively applicable in the context of motion blur due to eyeballs rotating while observing a display.

ajuc 2y ago
It's more complicated than that, brain cuts out the blurry "in between" frames when you move your eyes. Which means it has to extrapolate the images from before the movement to fill the gaps. There's many weird effects of this hack - for example when you look at something moving very fast (like wheels of passing vehicles) but don't move your eyes - it looks blurry. But when you move your eyes - the frame in your brain "freezes" and you can notice non-blurry details on the fast moving things. There are even ways to force eyes to see stuff from the past (like seconds' hand on a clock moving at different rates depending if you move your eyes). You can't actually say that human eye has a strict fps, so the higher screen fps the less weird interactions with the ugly hacks in our brains.
- DoctorOetker 2y ago
  when your eyes are motion tracking an object there is no cutting-out going on, that only happens when the brain intentionally decides to track a new object
Kudos 2y ago
Your eyes being analog and the 60Hz display being offset from your own cycle frequency would play large roles in that.

smartscience 2y ago

The McGurk effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM is another example, which might be described as people learning to lip read without them being aware that they have done so.

plorkyeran 2y ago
Apparently I can't lip read, as I never heard anything other than "baa" even as the video was claiming that I should be hearing something different.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Yeah, I don't understand what I was supposed to be seeing or hearing in that clip, and they never bothered to explain it. The guy says "Baa" and we see his lips move accordingly. Then we hear him say "Baa" again, but this time he's obviously pronouncing something else, judging by his lip movements. We don't know what he's saying (or at least those of us without lip-reading skills don't), but nothing unusual or tricky seems to be happening. What am I missing?
  - plorkyeran 2y ago
    From making the same motions with my mouth I was able to figure out that the other thing he's saying is "faa", so I'm guessing some people literally hear "faa" even though the audio is "baa"?
    - _kulang 2y ago
      Yep
    - sgerenser 2y ago
      I hear “faa” when the mouth looks like it’s making an “f” sound (and apparently that’s normal). Are you perhaps not a native English speaker?

marmaduke 2y ago

> how many other things there are that people subconsciously learns, without it ever becoming obviously noticeable for them? 95%+? Stuff like how to jiggle keys on a keyring to get the right one for the door you're about to unlock? This only works for your keyring, it's highly kinetic, tactile, initial condition dependent etc, yet yet can usually be done unconsciously IME with the 6 keys on my keyring.

rendaw 2y ago

Poor storytelling in modern cinema.

nico 2y ago

There is a cool veritasium video in which they show we are sensitive to changes in the magnetic field surrounding us We can’t consciously tell, but they can see our brain lighting up when sensing the changes Link to video: https://youtu.be/dg3pza4y2ws?si=-yXtwIu2n4QR_1Wi https://youtu.be/dg3pza4y2ws?si=-yXtwIu2n4QR_1Wi

RicoElectrico 2y ago

AC electricity on painted metal objects can be felt by sweeping fingertips, even though there's no current path. You're absolutely right that people ignore whole lot going on around them in terms of sound, smell etc.

tomsmeding 2y ago
I have felt this (?) often. Dragging fingers over a (metal) Mac Mini, some random laptop, a metal keyboard. Presumably this feeling triggers already at low power levels, otherwise I'd probably be dead.
- themoonisachees 2y ago
  I don't think it's quite the same thing. Laptops in particular often have machined (?) surfaces that feel very weird to the touch, regardless of electricity. HP in particular is a regular offender, though I haven't touched many apple computers.
  - rcxdude 2y ago
    I've experienced it and it's markedly different how a laptop feels when plugged into the wall Vs not: it's because of a relatively high voltage (but also high impedance, so not dangerous, though sometimes painful if it focuses through a small point like a USB cable) hum you tend to see in the ground of most modern power adaptors due to noise reduction capacitors.
  - jaggederest 2y ago
    No, this is a different thing. It's leakage current from ungrounded power supplies (the two-prong apple power brick) and it's extremely noticeable. Couple hundred microamps, feels like licking a 9 volt battery.
- robocat 2y ago
  Once you can feel it (say 50V) then you can have data problems with anything else plugged in. So often worth fixing even if you don't worry about getting a shock.

goosejuice 2y ago

The woman who can smell Parkinson's comes to mind as a recent example.

plusfour 2y ago

Most of your knowledge is implicit.

neltnerb 2y ago

I remember the first time I noticed that I could guess correctly which fingertip a friend shining a tiny red pen laser was shining it on, just from minuscule temperature differences. That you can feel artificial lighting as heat (the actual light, demonstrated as it was a laser some distance away) at such a low power level (<5mW) was pretty surprising to me.

antognini 2y ago
Reminds me of Feynman's trick of guessing which book on a bookshelf a person had handled based on the smell.

dopylitty 2y ago

I noticed if I stare into the forest without focusing on any particular thing my vision starts to shimmer a bit and sometimes there are distinctive little perturbations in my peripheral vision. My mind wants to immediately look directly at the perturbations at an almost instinctive level. If I do look I frequently see a leaf moving in the wind or a bird or squirrel moving around in the tree. By intentionally using this effect rather than actively scanning the forest I find I am much better at finding birds when bird watching or seeing larger animals such as foxes, deer, or snakes moving in the grass. It's amazing how many things our bodies are capable of that we don't know about until we step away from electronics and machinery and just let the body do its thing.