3 ms·

You'll probably get a chuckle out of the first five-or-so paragraphs of: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/g

by gwillen 12y ago

You'll probably get a chuckle out of the first five-or-so paragraphs of: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ The referenced paper can be found here: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm

defen 12y ago
That is fascinating, thanks.
Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
Wow, the Galton paper is amazing, thank you. To be honest I'm like the scientists that he questioned first... until I read this today, I always thought that the whole "mental imagery" concept was mainly a figure of speech, as when people say they feel butterflies in their stomach, and things like that. I can picture my breakfast table, but it's more of a conceptual sketch than an actual image. I can only focus my thoughts on one thing at a time, and e.g. I know what the colors are but I'm not really "seeing" them in my mind - the fact that people can report a "brightness" value in relation to reality makes me think that my mind really works different from that of those people, for me the brightness question doesn't even make sense. Now I feel handicapped, although I suppose that maybe if I could conjure up these mental images, I wouldn't be so good at symbolic processing. I guess this is why I have always preferred text to diagrams and such... By the way, what I can do is hear music in my mind - and yes, this comes with pitch, volume, timbre, polyphony and everything. In fact if I'm at a place with a constant background noise - as in a plane, or near an air conditioning machine - I sometimes think I'm actually hearing it in reality (although I have learned that I'm not). I wonder if other people also experience this.
- kaoD 12y ago
  > By the way, what I can do is hear music in my mind [...] I wonder if other people also experience this. I remember when I was a kid I told my older brother I could play music in my head just like if I had pressed play in a tape deck. He was really puzzled. I still can do it and it is definitely accurate. I lack perfect pitch recognition but for some reason when I play music in my head it's played in its original pitch. I use this to my advantage to replace perfect pitch: I just play a song with a known pitch in my head and use that imagined pitch as a relative. This works wonders for interval identification too (e.g. the first two notes in The Simpsons are a tritone apart).

by gwillen 12y ago

defen 12y ago

That is fascinating, thanks.

Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago

Wow, the Galton paper is amazing, thank you. To be honest I'm like the scientists that he questioned first... until I read this today, I always thought that the whole "mental imagery" concept was mainly a figure of speech, as when people say they feel butterflies in their stomach, and things like that. I can picture my breakfast table, but it's more of a conceptual sketch than an actual image. I can only focus my thoughts on one thing at a time, and e.g. I know what the colors are but I'm not really "seeing" them in my mind - the fact that people can report a "brightness" value in relation to reality makes me think that my mind really works different from that of those people, for me the brightness question doesn't even make sense. Now I feel handicapped, although I suppose that maybe if I could conjure up these mental images, I wouldn't be so good at symbolic processing. I guess this is why I have always preferred text to diagrams and such... By the way, what I can do is hear music in my mind - and yes, this comes with pitch, volume, timbre, polyphony and everything. In fact if I'm at a place with a constant background noise - as in a plane, or near an air conditioning machine - I sometimes think I'm actually hearing it in reality (although I have learned that I'm not). I wonder if other people also experience this.

kaoD 12y ago
> By the way, what I can do is hear music in my mind [...] I wonder if other people also experience this. I remember when I was a kid I told my older brother I could play music in my head just like if I had pressed play in a tape deck. He was really puzzled. I still can do it and it is definitely accurate. I lack perfect pitch recognition but for some reason when I play music in my head it's played in its original pitch. I use this to my advantage to replace perfect pitch: I just play a song with a known pitch in my head and use that imagined pitch as a relative. This works wonders for interval identification too (e.g. the first two notes in The Simpsons are a tritone apart).