5 ms·
Synesthesia helps me find four-leaf clovers (2023)
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- susam 11mo agoI am not a synaesthete and I wonder how other non-synaesthetes perceived the '5 vs 2' diagram. Even though I see all the digits in plain black, the triangle of 2s immediately stood out to me. The author writes: 'For me, four-leaf clovers are a different shape so they stand out in a clover patch very much like this. Unlike letters and numbers, however, I don't get a sense of color, it's more like a sense of movement.' But even as a non-synesthete, I felt a sense of movement in the 2s, as if they were little swans swimming against the bevy of 5s. But I felt no such movement when looking at the photographs of clovers. I could only spot a few four-leaf clovers at a quick glance because the pale markings on them form a rough quadrilateral, so I was essentially spotting those shapes rather than the four leaflets themselves. If this sort of topic interests you, I wrote an article earlier this year about number–colour–phoneme associations: https://susam.net/assoc.html https://susam.net/assoc.html As I mentioned, I do not have synaesthesia, yet the associations between numbers, colours and phonemes are quite strong in my mind due to early exposure to CGA colours and mnemonic systems. For instance, I find it hard to think of the number 1 without thinking of blue or the phonemes /t/ and /d/, or to think of 4 without thinking of red or /r/. I have written more about it in the article linked above.
- Atlas667 11mo agoYes, I am also inclined to believe this is just natural human psyche phenomenon. This very specific topic about clovers is one that I relate to, I've always found 4 leaf clovers faster. But I wouldnt say I have synesthesia. This has developed/manifested itself into looking for things on a computer screen, which I essentially do for a living. I can hold a piece of text in my head and scroll by quickly to search for it much faster than many of my peers. And as a child colors would also have numbers related to them in my mind, and vice versa. Which I attributed to number-coded coloring books.
- p1anecrazy 11mo agoScrolling quickly and having typos jump at me (when I was editing text in the past) and required code fragments (now) is exactly how I experience it. How strong is your visual imagination?
- Atlas667 11mo agoI'd say my visual imagination is pretty strong. I bet we're just good at scanning. Eyes are made for looking and we can use a semi-subconscious level of looking that attracts our eyes to what we want to find. Though I'm sure most everyone is, really. I bet I just wanted to find 4 leaf clovers more than my peers and would focus more.
- RandomBacon 11mo agoI used to read a ton as a kid, and now I can easily spot typos, extra spaces, etc when I glance at a page. If only I proofread my own writing *sigh*.
- efilife 11mo agoI don't have synesthesia as well. The 2s didn't stand out at all to me. I knew they were here and I could find them upon inspection but their locations were totally unknown to me at a glance. I would never have spotted that they form a triangle. Ask me anything
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mrtnmcc 11mo ago>> I have several hundred [four leaf clovers]. I even have a few five-leaf clovers and a couple of sixers! That doesn't fit the ratios in my experience.. I find about 1 five-leaf for every 5 four-leafers. They should have nearly 100 five leafers, not merely "a few". EDIT: I checked and indeed the standard ratio is 4.8 four leaf clovers per five-leaf. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/73279/distribution-of-the-number-of-clover-leaves https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/73279/distributi...
- hatthew 11mo agoI don't think they are uniformly distributed. Anecdotally, in my friend's backyard, the ratios I found were more like 10000 three-leaf 15 four-leaf 7 five-leaf 4 six-leaf 2 seven-leaf I would assume that the ratios in any given area can be quite different than another area.
- jp57 11mo agoI, too, experience some synethesia with letters and numbers (two is green, three is yellow, 4 is blue), but when I look at a field of clover, I don't experience a field of numbers representing the number of leaves on the individual clover stalks. In fact that seems like a weird way of perceiving nature. When I see a bird flying with its two wings outstretched, I'm not experiencing the number 2, and thus I get no sense of green.
- moralestapia 11mo agoRespectfully, I don't think synesthesia is behind OP's purported skill.
- pturing 11mo agoHi, synesthesia researcher here! (1) Here's a few relevant things we know: - Synesthesia is not rare. You probably know someone that has synesthesia, even they haven't mentioned it. - There are many forms of synesthesia. Many documented forms that we know of, and very probably a bunch we haven't documented yet. - There are cases of tasks where we are able to measure enhanced performance of that task by synesthetes. (2) - While some synesthetes do have a single form of synesthesia, it is common for synesthetes to experience multiple forms. We've found cluster groups where subjects with a given form are more likely to have another form within the same cluster. From the other writings on the OP's site, we can see that they report to have at least two forms of Colored Sequence Synesthesia: Grapheme -> Color, and Day of the Week -> Color. Their report of their experience in the linked article sounds like possibly Shape -> Motion. This is a form they could have, and it's plausible that someone already known to be a multiple synesthete might also experience this. It is also plausible that someone with a Shape -> X type of synesthesia would be able use that to spot the odd shape out faster than others. ------ (1) I maintained the online synesthesia battery for a number of years while working in the Eagleman Neuroscience Lab at Baylor College of Medicine (2) Some of these are ones that allowed us to study synesthesia on a larger scale by testing online! Among those, one particularly notable form of test is Stroop Interference. Genuine synesthetes are able to respond much faster and more accurately, and we get a good clear separation between them and controls.
- giantg2 11mo agoInteresting. Another thing I have that I didn't know about. I've found over 500 four leaf clovers as a kid. I still find them without looking as an adult when looking at something else on the ground or tying my shoe, etc. The movement thing isn't exactly like how I would describe it, but pretty close. It's almost like the eye auto focuses on it becuase it's different. Sometimes I would intentionally unfocus my eyes or concentrate on peripheral vision to make them jump out.
- SoftTalker 11mo agoMy mother used to find them all the time. I asked her how she did it and all she could say was that "I just notice them." I can only find them if I'm on my hands and knees searching a clover patch. I can't say how many I've found but I'd certainly guess a single-digit number.
- matsemann 11mo agoSame! Used to stop my bike hard on my way home to pick up one I just noticed in the peripheral of my vision at the edge of the road. No idea how, they just jumped out to me. Then put them between random pages in my moms old encyclopedias to press and preserve them. Got hundreds.
- iansteyn 11mo agoMeta-HN question from a newbie: Can someone help me understand why my 9-day-old submission is suddenly on the front page and says it’s from 3 hours ago? Edit: Solved.
- hamdingers 11mo agoCould be something from the second-chance pool. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
- iansteyn 11mo agoAha, yep this is it. I got an email about it but didn’t notice until just now.
- lawlessone 11mo agoI wonder if humans killing 4+ leaf clovers is enough of issue that they're selected against...
- throwway120385 11mo agoThe plant survives, even if the leaves get damaged. So it's not really selecting against them.
- hamdingers 11mo agoI'd imagine the practice of mowing introduces a lot of noise into that signal.
- sumnole 11mo agoIt helps that the four leaf phenotype can be recessively carried and passed on by normal clovers.
- hamdingers 11mo agoHow strange. I introduced clover to my lawn a few years ago for its nitrogen fixing properties, and since then have spent many idle minutes (probably adding up to hours) searching for four-leaf clovers. I have never found a single one, but easily picked out at least one in each of the pictures in the article in just a few seconds. Thinking this might be a breakthrough I went and snapped a few pictures of clover patches, but alas can't spot any. I suspect I'm getting subconscious hints from the author's framing of the photos.
- zeristor 11mo agoI keep thinking to make a start on a phone app to do this, there’s probably a couple already. Highlighting clove type things that don’t have 120°.
- grvbck 11mo agoThe distribution of four-leaf clovers is not uniform; they tend to cluster in certain areas. Many moons ago when I was a small kid, on my walk to school I had to walk a bit under high voltage power lines. Found tons of four-leaf clovers under there. I have no idea if the magnetic field did anything to help the mutation, or if it was just a coincidence, but I've never found a spot like that again.
- hansonkd 11mo agoI used to find a four leaf clover at least once a week during the summer when i was in the midwest. During the peak of summer, I could find 1-3 every time I took a walk. Since moving to california, I did find some up around the mountains of the bay area (including a 7 leaf clover), but not many elsewhere in town. In southern california I haven't found one yet.
- dylan604 11mo ago> I'm getting subconscious hints from the author's framing of the photos. This is what I attributed my finding them so quickly as well. Unless the author was taking pictures intently to not prominently frame them for use in such an article, the nature of photography will make this a likely result.
- zeristor 11mo agoFascinating. This makes me wonder if there’s a way to set data visualisation to make the most of this for those gifted people. I’m in a minority thinking that perhaps the limiting RGB colour gamut should be made into 4 colours to accommodate those people who can see four colours, tetrachromacy, ~95% of us have a visual impairment.
- zeristor 11mo agoClover can’t be the same species both sides of the Atlantic can it? Is American clover an invader, or a similar species from before tectonic plates drew out the Ocean?
- pessimizer 11mo agoPeople claiming that weird unfalsifiable (or often unmeaningful) inner states give them magical powers has got to stop being respected. Thinking 4 is red doesn't mean that you don't have to count anymore. It's as stupid of a claim as claiming that "hearing colors" allows people to see in the dark. I'm a very, very fast minesweeper ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minesweeper_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minesweeper_(video_game) ) player, and I play in a non-marking style (meaning I just click where mines aren't rather than bothering to mark where mines are.) I realized one day that I subjectively see the spots that I know don't have mines as differently colored than the ones that I know do. That does not mean that I am not doing the calculations in my head, it just means that they are so reflexive that I don't notice them. Because I am trying to clear as fast as I can, I've seen every pattern thousands of times, and my feedback is visual, there's a ghostly sort of visual marking showing the outcome of my calculation. This is similar to how people echolocate and have no idea that they're echolocating: "How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Human Echolocation" https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Echo.htm https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Echo.htm We are not necessarily aware of what we are applying complex logic to, even when it requires delicate timing and swings wildly over tiny differences. I'd go even further and say that we are necessarily less aware of calculations that we are making quickly, because being quick does not allow time for reflection. You've just gotten good at finding 4-leaf clovers because you spend an enormous amount of time looking for 4-leaf clovers.
- tokai 11mo agoSynesthesia is not well understood but it is a falsifiable phenomenon, and the medical consensus is very much that it exists.
- pessimizer 11mo agoCounterpoint: it is not a falsifiable phenomenon, and there is no medical consensus that it exists.
- iansteyn 11mo ago
- thesz 11mo agoA case of Solomon Shereshevsky [1] is very relevant here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky He had synesthesia that made him unable to forget things for most of the life. His memory was so good he was able to recite ten and more (10+) years old dialogues word-for-word, some of those included remembering and reciting long arbitrary numbers. How so? Because almost everything he saw, heard or read was fascinating in its' own unique way. (Shereshevsky had to learn how to forget things at later years of his life, successfully) I do not have synesthesia, yet I've found that if I have any sort of strong feeling - direct, or through association, - about any subject, I remember everything about that subject better. Also, these strong feelings allow me to find analogues relatively easier, enriching my reasoning. Richard Feynman described something like this in his autobiographies: when mathematicians told him to imagine two spheres, he imagined one as orange and the other one as hairy (or something like that). This way he was able to discover non-constructiveness of proofs, as non-constructive proofs have less use in physics. So, in my experience, one can use (or learn to use) rich feelings about many things to make memory better and to find better solutions to problems faster.
- RestartKernel 11mo ago> He had synesthesia that made him unable to forget things for most of the life. Some counterpoints from the Wikipedia article as well: > According to autobiographical diary of Shereshevsky, found by Reed Johnson, he "did not, in fact, have perfect recall". Details of Shereshevsky's biography are different in his own writing from Luria's account. [...] Reynberg recalls that Shereshevsky "could be forgetful", and that he "trained hours a day for his evening performances", because he needed "consciously try to commit something to memory".
- Infernal 11mo agoOh man, my grandmother was like this with finding four leaf clovers. She would just find them constantly, all the time, on command, or maybe while standing around having a conversation. Her description of it was "it's like they're just jumping up and waving at me" which somewhat fits with the author's description of motion. Never heard of anyone else like this though, neat to see others in the comments.
- phyzome 11mo agoI don't think synesthesia is necessarily a good explanation. I am quite good at spotting 4-leaf clovers, but I don't have synesthesia. My eye just "catches" on them. I'm pretty sure it's actually the angle of the leaves that I'm spotting, because almost all of the false positives are situations where leaflets are at a 90° angle to each other. (But I've found 5, 6, and 7 leaf as well.)
- JeremyHerrman 11mo agosame for me, but I've never found a 7 leaf (which is extra annoying as a futurama fan)
- JeremyHerrman 11mo agoI've been able to find four-leaf clovers easily since I was a kid. Like the OP they seem to just "pop out" at me as I quickly scan the ground, but I do not have the same background with synesthesia. Since four and five leaf clovers tend to grow in patches, I transplanted a patch I found and have kept it in a planter on my deck so that anyone who has never found a four leaf clover can find one! I wrote about my lucky clover patch here: https://jherrman.com/four-leaf-clover-patch.html https://jherrman.com/four-leaf-clover-patch.html
- dandersch 11mo ago>It's a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color. So what happens when synesthetes watch a movie that is showing blue colors, but the score that they are hearing at that time is making them see red. Do they perceive that as a dissonance?
- matsemann 11mo agoHave you seen the concept of "impossibly colors"? Maybe like those, where you present one color to one eye and one to the other, and make the brain invent something.
- Kiboneu 11mo agoI don’t see color change but I “hear” them when I scan my eyes over the pictures, and when I listen more closely I can spot more subtle details (including the 5-leaf clovers).