4 ms·

Did you really figure this out in the time since the question was posed? Please say no, so I don't feel so inadequate.

jgrahamc 17y ago
Yes, but I have a strange ability to see certain patterns in data very quickly. I almost instantly saw without thinking that it contained Paul Graham. This ability manifests itself on a daily basis in one useful fashion. I can look at an entire screen of text (say a log file) and almost immediately take the whole thing in and spot something 'odd' or 'interesting' to examine. Drives me nuts watching people using computers though. I can find the button or icon they are slowly searching for in a flash.
- whacked_new 17y ago
  Do you play "spot the difference" puzzles? Are they too easy for you? How about sudoku? Sorry... I'm adding on more questions! Hope they aren't too cumbersome: are normal anagram puzzles all trivial for you? is "where's waldo" equally easy?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
    I don't play puzzles much, but anagrams are usually easy. It doesn't seem to work as well with pictures. I don't know what "where's waldo" is. Words to me often look like what they mean. My favorite example is "eager." It just looks like it's barely restrained, waiting to leap forward: a kind of "visual onomatopoeia" I guess. I used to think everyone was like this when I was a kid, but asking a few people about it soon pointed out that I was just a weirdo :-) I think the reason it's declined with age is that as a child I read constantly - I always had my nose in a book - so words became associated with mental pictures. As an adult I read much less.
    - pmjordan 17y ago
      This sounds a little like Synaesthesia - which is common enough, and wouldn't exactly make you a weirdo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia
      - whacked_new 17y ago
        From his description I doubt it's synaesthesia. Usually it's a crossover in a fundamental perception (taste, smell, etc.), rather than an elaborate sensation "feeling as if it is jumping out." Also, it varies per-individual, suggesting that "eager" could have just as well seemed to, for example, "a monster that eats everything in its path." My feeling is this is just a very strong "coupling" of vocabulary to the emotional centers. Fast activation, in other words. If this is the case, I also suspect it wouldn't correlate very much to anagram-solving ability.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  Really!! Up till now I'm the only one I know who was like that. But mine only works for proofreading -- and it seems to be declining with age :-( I used to be able to glance at a page and immediately get a feeling that "something is wrong." Then when looking more carefully I can see the misspelled words.
  - whacked_new 17y ago
    If possible, please answer the questions I posted alongside your post as well. This is very interesting :-) As an aside, spotting spelling errors is not the same process as solving anagrams. Did you decrypt the anagram in the OP instantly as well? I would consider these two different things.
  - pingswept 17y ago
    That happens to me too. It's actually annoying. If I could dedicate the mental effort I unavoidably spend on background spell- and grammar-checking to something useful, I'd be a freaking genius.
- Angostura 17y ago
  Judge Wapner's on in 15 minutes.
- joshu 17y ago
  I can do this too. I remember once figuring out that dataset was bad just from the way it scrolled by; everyone was baffled. Same issues with watching people do stuff, too.
  - whacked_new 17y ago
    Would you mind looking at the questions I raised for the OP? I heard a story about one of the pioneers in genetics around Watson's time; a woman, forgot her name, who once walked into a room where two researchers (also forgot name) were building a physical model of the double helix. It was at least a couple thousand plastic molecules. She took a look, said that there was one mistake, and turned around and left. After studying the brain for years I still can't tell why this happens.

Yes, but I have a strange ability to see certain patterns in data very quickly. I almost instantly saw without thinking that it contained Paul Graham. This ability manifests itself on a daily basis in one useful fashion. I can look at an entire screen of text (say a log file) and almost immediately take the whole thing in and spot something 'odd' or 'interesting' to examine. Drives me nuts watching people using computers though. I can find the button or icon they are slowly searching for in a flash.

whacked_new 17y ago
Do you play "spot the difference" puzzles? Are they too easy for you? How about sudoku? Sorry... I'm adding on more questions! Hope they aren't too cumbersome: are normal anagram puzzles all trivial for you? is "where's waldo" equally easy?
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  I don't play puzzles much, but anagrams are usually easy. It doesn't seem to work as well with pictures. I don't know what "where's waldo" is. Words to me often look like what they mean. My favorite example is "eager." It just looks like it's barely restrained, waiting to leap forward: a kind of "visual onomatopoeia" I guess. I used to think everyone was like this when I was a kid, but asking a few people about it soon pointed out that I was just a weirdo :-) I think the reason it's declined with age is that as a child I read constantly - I always had my nose in a book - so words became associated with mental pictures. As an adult I read much less.
  - pmjordan 17y ago
    This sounds a little like Synaesthesia - which is common enough, and wouldn't exactly make you a weirdo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia
    - whacked_new 17y ago
      From his description I doubt it's synaesthesia. Usually it's a crossover in a fundamental perception (taste, smell, etc.), rather than an elaborate sensation "feeling as if it is jumping out." Also, it varies per-individual, suggesting that "eager" could have just as well seemed to, for example, "a monster that eats everything in its path." My feeling is this is just a very strong "coupling" of vocabulary to the emotional centers. Fast activation, in other words. If this is the case, I also suspect it wouldn't correlate very much to anagram-solving ability.
HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
Really!! Up till now I'm the only one I know who was like that. But mine only works for proofreading -- and it seems to be declining with age :-( I used to be able to glance at a page and immediately get a feeling that "something is wrong." Then when looking more carefully I can see the misspelled words.
- whacked_new 17y ago
  If possible, please answer the questions I posted alongside your post as well. This is very interesting :-) As an aside, spotting spelling errors is not the same process as solving anagrams. Did you decrypt the anagram in the OP instantly as well? I would consider these two different things.
- pingswept 17y ago
  That happens to me too. It's actually annoying. If I could dedicate the mental effort I unavoidably spend on background spell- and grammar-checking to something useful, I'd be a freaking genius.
Angostura 17y ago
Judge Wapner's on in 15 minutes.
joshu 17y ago
I can do this too. I remember once figuring out that dataset was bad just from the way it scrolled by; everyone was baffled. Same issues with watching people do stuff, too.
- whacked_new 17y ago
  Would you mind looking at the questions I raised for the OP? I heard a story about one of the pioneers in genetics around Watson's time; a woman, forgot her name, who once walked into a room where two researchers (also forgot name) were building a physical model of the double helix. It was at least a couple thousand plastic molecules. She took a look, said that there was one mistake, and turned around and left. After studying the brain for years I still can't tell why this happens.