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One of the most disturbingly creepy things I've realized is when looking at render of a laser scanned environment. The oddly bumpy and uneven gray mass that ev

One of the most disturbingly creepy things I've realized is when looking at render of a laser scanned environment. The oddly bumpy and uneven gray mass that everything show up as. That is actually reality. The filtered colorful smooth version we see is an arbitrary specific wavelength interpretation that our brains developed. We are actually living in that creepy gray horror movie render of the laser scan.

npteljes 1y ago
In a way, you are on the right track, but the conclusion is different. What we live is far from gray, rather it's unfathomably more "colorful" and chaotic. We do see just a bit of it and apply a lot of filters to it, that is true. But it's mostly to dampen the environment, not to enrich it. (Not that we don't enrich it as well.) What I think the most important part is of your comment is how profound is to look at reality with a different lens. Be that a false color image like a laser scan, heatmap, space images, xray, microscope... it can be a really intense experience, just as you describe. Learning about the different filters (biases) that the brain puts on the stimuli is quite mind-boggling as well.
gloomer23 1y ago
If you want to experience a more fun kind of dislocation, try using a grayscale color mapped thermal camera regularly.
Xss3 1y ago
No. We live in a world full of wavelengths. Our brains are giving us a way to see them. The laser scan is further from the truth of reality than vision as it has less information about reality captured & displayed.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  This.
- stronglikedan 1y ago
  > We live in a world full of wavelengths. Our brains are giving us a way to see them. Nitpick, but if we're talking about the world full of wavelengths, our brain gives us many ways to experience them!
  - Xss3 1y ago
    Not sure what nit you're trying to pick. I said see (as in vision, sight, the convo context!), not experience, and a way, not the only way.
- weinzierl 1y ago
  You mean perceive, like an insect bobbing up and down in the corner of a swimming pool?
- Wowfunhappy 1y ago
  Well, but you can't pass through a solid object, right? There's a real "thing" there, it's not just a specific wavelength. I realize "thing" is doing a lot of work in the above sentence, and that everything is all just particles. Still, I think there's something to the idea that form and shape are more real than color.
  - Xss3 1y ago
    How are you defining a solid object with 'no wavelength'? Black would be the perceived colour, or lackthereof, of said object. The laser would see it the same as any colour of cube though. The point is eyes are extracting more information from the image. Visible light interactions with the object exists in reality and capturing that information brings the image closer to reality, not further. It tells you more about the cubes properties. As an extreme example, you might have a space documentary start by showing an image with a few stars, saying "it seems quiet", then showing the same image with a bunch of colourful gasses visible, saying 'but the reality is beyond what our eyes can perceive, in infrared the image is full of detail'. Reality, actual reality and not our perception of it, is made up of every detail, the more of that information you can capture the closer to reality the image.
  - vlovich123 1y ago
    > Well, but you can't pass through a solid object, right? There's a real "thing" there, it's not just a specific wavelength. FWIW the "solid" object you're observing is mostly space and the "you can't pass through a solid object" as far as we know is just a probability not a certainty.
  - mensetmanusman 1y ago
    Not particles, fields
    - widforss 1y ago
      Nobody tells you, but it's fields. It's always fields.
      - 1y ago
HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
There is reality, then there are views/models of reality constructed via various different ways of sensing reality, whether that's a laser-scan depth map, normal human 3-color vision, occasional human 4-color vision, animal UV-sensitive vision, mass detectors, magnetic/electrical field detectors, etc, etc. Why should we regard one extremely arbitrary way of sensing reality as more important or real than any of the others? Why is reflected light important, not absorbed light? Why visible spectrum vs other frequencies? Why human red/green/blue color cone detection (which is no such thing - they are overlapping curves of frequency spectrum sensitivity)? Why focus on light reflection, not sound? Why focus on surface attributes of objects such as "color" rather then regard other attributes such a mass distribution, or anything else as primary?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nkrisc 1y ago
> That is actually reality No, it is just yet another incomplete view of reality. For example, where are the infrared wavelengths in that scan? How can you say "that is reality" if it doesn't include that information? You might argue there are no true views of reality, that all views of reality are only some incomplete interpretation of it. We see only some minimal set of what is necessary for us to see in order to survive with just enough certainty that we haven't gone extinct.
IAmBroom 1y ago
Having worked extensively at several companies in the 1990s trying to bring optical measurement of objects into production environments, I assure you that a lot of that bumpiness turns out to be artifacts of the measurement process. As just one example, there's really no laser-based measuring device in the world, even today, that can rapidly measure a surface near (<1mm) the edge of an object. Something that is trivial to do with ruby-ball touch sensors...
- abc_lisper 1y ago
  Does it mean repeated scans of the same objects show different bumps?
  - Ifkaluva 1y ago
    Follow-up question, can one get rid of the bumps with standard signal filtering techniques, or even averaging different scans together?
photochemsyn 1y ago
To generate a natural-color image of a biological sample using lasers in the human eye's visible light range, you'd need a great many lasers covering the entire frequency range. This generates hundreds of datasets at each particular wavelength (ignoring issues like laser-induced fluorescence, which can be managed with spectral filtering). The trick comes in taking all that data from the hundreds of images generated by different-wavelength lasers and assembling them layer-by-layer into an image the human brain interprets as color, aka colorimetric rendering, onto the three-color-cone system the eye's retina employs plus a bunch of neural processing (there's a complex equation for this mapping of 'hyperspectral cube' data onto an RGB display for human visualization). There's a really strange example - the mantis shrimp - that used to be thought to have rich color vision in a narrow band, but now people think it might be a lot more direct, a kind of color vision without much neural processing involved, with each photoreceptor scanning slighty different wavelengths and directly signalling to the mantis brain, such as it is: Thoen et al. (2014) – "A different form of color vision in mantis shrimp" (Science) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1245824 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1245824
BurningFrog 1y ago
The bumpy grey mass is where the matter is. The colors you see is what kind of light the matter reflects. Both are real!
jerf 1y ago
If you want to go all misanthropic, it is much closer to reality to say that we see only a small slice of what is in fact a world colorful and detailed beyond all human ability to comprehend any but a small slice of it. The "creepy gray horror movie render" is the farthest thing from the truth, not the nearest.
- npteljes 1y ago
  That is not misanthropic at all, as misanthropic is to hate humans or humanity. This is just an acknowledgement of the limitations of it. Agnosticism would be closer to it.
- teddyh 1y ago
  Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HFFr0-ybg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HFFr0-ybg0>
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- citizenpaul 1y ago
  You could argue that the grey blob or an incomprehensible kaleidoscope of overwhelming info are both closer to reality than what we perceive. Anyway my point was that our color perception is arbitrary. Its all just one fact, a lightwave/photon.
  - mvcalder 1y ago
    And there’s only one photon, vibrating like mad, singularly unable to contemplate its own magnificence.
weinzierl 1y ago
What we see doesn't exist and we what exist we cannot see.
agumonkey 1y ago
It goes beyond, your brain will also add an emotional bias on certain patterns depending on how it fit our needs of the time. Anecdotally it's quite "magical" that nature ended up as 80% beautiful landscape (and sometimes the occasional horrendous sight) as if beauty is an emergent property of the biosphere..
mensetmanusman 1y ago
That’s not actually reality. It’s a facet of what form of energy is there.

npteljes 1y ago

In a way, you are on the right track, but the conclusion is different. What we live is far from gray, rather it's unfathomably more "colorful" and chaotic. We do see just a bit of it and apply a lot of filters to it, that is true. But it's mostly to dampen the environment, not to enrich it. (Not that we don't enrich it as well.) What I think the most important part is of your comment is how profound is to look at reality with a different lens. Be that a false color image like a laser scan, heatmap, space images, xray, microscope... it can be a really intense experience, just as you describe. Learning about the different filters (biases) that the brain puts on the stimuli is quite mind-boggling as well.

gloomer23 1y ago

If you want to experience a more fun kind of dislocation, try using a grayscale color mapped thermal camera regularly.

Xss3 1y ago

No. We live in a world full of wavelengths. Our brains are giving us a way to see them. The laser scan is further from the truth of reality than vision as it has less information about reality captured & displayed.

moralestapia 1y ago
This.
stronglikedan 1y ago
> We live in a world full of wavelengths. Our brains are giving us a way to see them. Nitpick, but if we're talking about the world full of wavelengths, our brain gives us many ways to experience them!
- Xss3 1y ago
  Not sure what nit you're trying to pick. I said see (as in vision, sight, the convo context!), not experience, and a way, not the only way.
weinzierl 1y ago
You mean perceive, like an insect bobbing up and down in the corner of a swimming pool?
Wowfunhappy 1y ago
Well, but you can't pass through a solid object, right? There's a real "thing" there, it's not just a specific wavelength. I realize "thing" is doing a lot of work in the above sentence, and that everything is all just particles. Still, I think there's something to the idea that form and shape are more real than color.
- Xss3 1y ago
  How are you defining a solid object with 'no wavelength'? Black would be the perceived colour, or lackthereof, of said object. The laser would see it the same as any colour of cube though. The point is eyes are extracting more information from the image. Visible light interactions with the object exists in reality and capturing that information brings the image closer to reality, not further. It tells you more about the cubes properties. As an extreme example, you might have a space documentary start by showing an image with a few stars, saying "it seems quiet", then showing the same image with a bunch of colourful gasses visible, saying 'but the reality is beyond what our eyes can perceive, in infrared the image is full of detail'. Reality, actual reality and not our perception of it, is made up of every detail, the more of that information you can capture the closer to reality the image.
- vlovich123 1y ago
  > Well, but you can't pass through a solid object, right? There's a real "thing" there, it's not just a specific wavelength. FWIW the "solid" object you're observing is mostly space and the "you can't pass through a solid object" as far as we know is just a probability not a certainty.
- mensetmanusman 1y ago
  Not particles, fields
  - widforss 1y ago
    Nobody tells you, but it's fields. It's always fields.
    - 1y ago

HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago

There is reality, then there are views/models of reality constructed via various different ways of sensing reality, whether that's a laser-scan depth map, normal human 3-color vision, occasional human 4-color vision, animal UV-sensitive vision, mass detectors, magnetic/electrical field detectors, etc, etc. Why should we regard one extremely arbitrary way of sensing reality as more important or real than any of the others? Why is reflected light important, not absorbed light? Why visible spectrum vs other frequencies? Why human red/green/blue color cone detection (which is no such thing - they are overlapping curves of frequency spectrum sensitivity)? Why focus on light reflection, not sound? Why focus on surface attributes of objects such as "color" rather then regard other attributes such a mass distribution, or anything else as primary?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

nkrisc 1y ago

> That is actually reality No, it is just yet another incomplete view of reality. For example, where are the infrared wavelengths in that scan? How can you say "that is reality" if it doesn't include that information? You might argue there are no true views of reality, that all views of reality are only some incomplete interpretation of it. We see only some minimal set of what is necessary for us to see in order to survive with just enough certainty that we haven't gone extinct.

IAmBroom 1y ago

Having worked extensively at several companies in the 1990s trying to bring optical measurement of objects into production environments, I assure you that a lot of that bumpiness turns out to be artifacts of the measurement process. As just one example, there's really no laser-based measuring device in the world, even today, that can rapidly measure a surface near (<1mm) the edge of an object. Something that is trivial to do with ruby-ball touch sensors...

abc_lisper 1y ago
Does it mean repeated scans of the same objects show different bumps?
- Ifkaluva 1y ago
  Follow-up question, can one get rid of the bumps with standard signal filtering techniques, or even averaging different scans together?

photochemsyn 1y ago

To generate a natural-color image of a biological sample using lasers in the human eye's visible light range, you'd need a great many lasers covering the entire frequency range. This generates hundreds of datasets at each particular wavelength (ignoring issues like laser-induced fluorescence, which can be managed with spectral filtering). The trick comes in taking all that data from the hundreds of images generated by different-wavelength lasers and assembling them layer-by-layer into an image the human brain interprets as color, aka colorimetric rendering, onto the three-color-cone system the eye's retina employs plus a bunch of neural processing (there's a complex equation for this mapping of 'hyperspectral cube' data onto an RGB display for human visualization). There's a really strange example - the mantis shrimp - that used to be thought to have rich color vision in a narrow band, but now people think it might be a lot more direct, a kind of color vision without much neural processing involved, with each photoreceptor scanning slighty different wavelengths and directly signalling to the mantis brain, such as it is: Thoen et al. (2014) – "A different form of color vision in mantis shrimp" (Science) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1245824 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1245824

BurningFrog 1y ago

The bumpy grey mass is where the matter is. The colors you see is what kind of light the matter reflects. Both are real!

jerf 1y ago

If you want to go all misanthropic, it is much closer to reality to say that we see only a small slice of what is in fact a world colorful and detailed beyond all human ability to comprehend any but a small slice of it. The "creepy gray horror movie render" is the farthest thing from the truth, not the nearest.

npteljes 1y ago
That is not misanthropic at all, as misanthropic is to hate humans or humanity. This is just an acknowledgement of the limitations of it. Agnosticism would be closer to it.
teddyh 1y ago
Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HFFr0-ybg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HFFr0-ybg0>
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
citizenpaul 1y ago
You could argue that the grey blob or an incomprehensible kaleidoscope of overwhelming info are both closer to reality than what we perceive. Anyway my point was that our color perception is arbitrary. Its all just one fact, a lightwave/photon.
- mvcalder 1y ago
  And there’s only one photon, vibrating like mad, singularly unable to contemplate its own magnificence.

weinzierl 1y ago

What we see doesn't exist and we what exist we cannot see.

agumonkey 1y ago

It goes beyond, your brain will also add an emotional bias on certain patterns depending on how it fit our needs of the time. Anecdotally it's quite "magical" that nature ended up as 80% beautiful landscape (and sometimes the occasional horrendous sight) as if beauty is an emergent property of the biosphere..

mensetmanusman 1y ago

That’s not actually reality. It’s a facet of what form of energy is there.