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Carl Zimmer reports in the NYT:
Picture This? Some Just Can’t.
Certain people, researchers have discovered, can’t summon up mental images — it’s as if their mind’s eye is blind. This month in the journal Cortex, the condition received a name: aphantasia, based on the Greek word phantasia, which Aristotle used to describe the power that presents visual imagery to our minds.
That reminds me of a story I once heard about psychologist Leon Kamin from one of his former grad students. Dr. Kamin, co-author in 1974 with Richard Lewontin and Steven Rose of the influential anti-human sciences screed Not In Our Genes, has extraordinary cognitive skills involving letters and numbers. For example, he can rapidly multiply two numbers of several digits each in his head.
But, the student went on, Dr. Kamin evidently can’t see mental images at all. And he never really believed that other people could, too. According to this professor, his mentor seemed to assume that all this talk about mental imagery was some kind of hoax.
Now I don’t know if this story is true since I have only one source for it, but it was told by a college professor who was reliable in general.
My recollection when hearing about Kamin’s skills from his student is that I thought: I bet the guys who made up the Kabbalah had similar cognitive skills and obsessions.
Darren Aronofsky’s nifty low-budget debut movie Pi, in which Wall Streeters and ultra-Orthodox kabbalists battle over an eccentric math genius, is on this theme:
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Can they dream?
Strange that Kamin, Lewontin and Rose are all Jews though, isn't it? I mean, assuming that being a radically environmentalist loon has 0 heritability.Replies: @anony-mouse
Only of electric sheep.
Strange that Kamin, Lewontin and Rose are all Jews though, isn’t it? I mean, assuming that being a radically environmentalist loon has 0 heritability.
GB Shaw, M Mead, John B Watson, BF Skinner, I Pavlov, W James... but I'm getting too tired to continue.
The aphantasists sound like they have something like an internal blindsight. That is deeply weird, but par for the course when it comes to human brains.
If this were the 60s we’d be giving them cannabis and LSD and seeing what it did to their abilities to visualise. They do seem to be able to visualise involuntarily:
Personally, I’ve always noticed a significant difference in vividness between voluntary and involuntary visualisation, except a few occasions when, on the verge of falling asleep, I’ve been able to intentionally create exceptionally clear visual images. I’d be interested in knowing if that disparity is true of the majority of people.
I tried mushrooms once. I was able to see colors and pictures swirling in my mind as I went to sleep. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences.
I do dream but rarely remember them. There are people in the dream, but I truly don't know if I picture them, as I think about people conceptually.
Maybe the folks who can’t picture things have more, maybe a helluva lot more, available memory so they can easily print in a new system of arbitrary math rules and quickly run through the operations without “effort”.
there’s some good rain man anecdotes in there. para-psychology is only for the mentally limber tho.
Strange that Kamin, Lewontin and Rose are all Jews though, isn't it? I mean, assuming that being a radically environmentalist loon has 0 heritability.Replies: @anony-mouse
Ahem:
GB Shaw, M Mead, John B Watson, BF Skinner, I Pavlov, W James… but I’m getting too tired to continue.
A lot of people can’t imagine an America that’s not an orderly, prosperous first-world country under the rule of law, where criminals fear the police rather than the other way around, where stuff works, and there are plenty of white people to maintain everyone in the style to which they are accustomed.
That’s something that I can’t do.No head for numbers.
RE: Thinking in pictures,
Classic comparison/contrast:
Milton’s Paradise Lost: A verbal landscape, full of imagery that cannot be visualized.Cf, for example, the famous lines:
Dante’s Divine Comedy: A visual landscape with a geometry that can easily be grasped with the mind’s eye and sketched on a page:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28434/28434-h/28434-h.htm#FIG2although Milton was ambiguous about geocentrism and heliocentrism since the question was not definitively settled in his day.It is plain that Milton retained strong inner vision after he went blind - which raises the question whether people like Kamin face a double deficit if they lose their eyesight, or is lack of mental imagery not a deficit at all?
Math offers a way to describe and manipulate things that no one can see, e.g., shapes more complex than ones you can picture in your head (start adding sides to a square and see how many you can get to before you can’t picture it), or structures with more than 3 spacial dimensions, etc.
So do they not visualize text or numbers either? I’m having trouble envisioning how exactly such people think. Is it all done aurally i.e. via internal voice or monologue? Or via internal hunches or feelings? It’s hard to fathom.
No, I don't understand that either (he was a notorious bullshitter), but it makes me very sure that Lacan was a verbal thinker. For such a person, thoughts are not images, nor are they words. They are something, and those somethings interact in a way that has to be compressed into linear speech to become fully conscious, but are not directly accessible as they form and interact.
Nope, I do not visualize text or numbers either, whereas I write for my profession, teach writing, and my math (and directional) skills are well above average. As far as I know, I do not dream, at least not that I know about. There is some involuntary imaging here and there, but very rare (not even once every few years). Recognizing people is a problem (I've even walked past my mother, not recognizing her), especially in a group, even a small one. Changing hair style or so is enough to make even a friend unrecognizible.
On the inside, it (words, numbers) feels (just like the NYT article states) as abstract knowledge that just 'comes to me'.
The Soundtrack to Pi us awesome. Have never seen the movie though.
What am I saying… that describes half the music videos on YouTube.
Somewhat related:
What Universal Human Experiences Are You Missing Without Realizing It?
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/
I took a course from Kamin. Already in the seventies he was way out ahead of the pack in the unabashed way he politicized his classroom. He spent a good long time teaching us about the heroic role he played debunking (he thought) Galton and Terman.
How vivid are people’s images that they see in their head. Because I think I can visualize things in my head, but for instance I’ve never read a book and then seen a film adaptation of the book and said that’s not how I pictured so and so.
Also I remember learning about ekphrasis in college and thinking wow people really can visualize Achilles’s shield from all Homer’s details. I just vaguely picture a shield with different scenes on it.
When I recall scenes from a book, I usually recall the images the words provoked in my mind at that time, not the words that provoked those images. But there are a number of passages that I do clearly recall in a verbal fashion:
"For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma."
- John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
“The unconscious is structured like a language.” – Jacques Lacan.
No, I don’t understand that either (he was a notorious bullshitter), but it makes me very sure that Lacan was a verbal thinker. For such a person, thoughts are not images, nor are they words. They are something, and those somethings interact in a way that has to be compressed into linear speech to become fully conscious, but are not directly accessible as they form and interact.
Who was the famous mathematician who was the opposite of Kamin–he solved equations by turning them into 3 dimensional shapes and manipulating them in his mind until he got the right answer? I think Gleick referenced him in his Chaos book.
Kamin was blacklisted during the McCarthy era
Greek math was basically all geometric, including numbers and basic operations. They were all represented by geometric objects that could be easily seen and drawn. And they got pretty and laid the foundation for formal math as we know it. Of course they didn’t get very far with algebra because of this geometric bent. If you’re forced always to deal with numbers and operations as geometric objects and properties, like the sides of squares, you’ll be limited in how much you can abstract and progress in algebra. Modern math is largely the result of the unification of geometry and algebra via the coordinate system. Incidentally, Newton’s calculus was geometric.
John Derbyshire, in his fascinating book on the history of algebra, describes this development. It is remarkable how little ever was achieved outside of Europe in any branch of mathematics or science.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous
who has died about 5 years ago,
I like better Newton's approach to calculus, than Leibnitz's.
That late mathematician liked to say
"Leibnitz has invented the notations,
with which people, who do not understand calculus,
would teach it to those who will never understand calculus."This is definitely unjust towards Leibnitz, who was great mathematician,
great thinker, and much better person than Newton.
But I like the elitist attitude of that recently deceased mathematician,
his caustic style.
I may have this blindness. What is your mental imagery like?
If I conjure up the Birth of Venus I have a very weak image of a nude standing on a shell in pastel like colors. I know the colors are pastel-like, can’t really see them. I can’t literally see the painting in my mind – it is very sketchy. Until I googled it I forgot there was someone ready to cloak her and cherubs providing a wind. Similarly the Mona Lisa. Dark hair, frame, pose, house in background but all not very detailed. Definitely not picture-like although knowledge of a picture.
Although I probably could recognize a parody or poor copy as not the real thing when comparing to my memory, I do not have a picture in my mind.
Do other people really have visual imagery? I always thought the expression of it was metaphor. Can you see an imagined Daisy. Is it yellow, does it have the impact of seeing a daisy in sunlight?
I think this ability to see mental pictures changes over time.
When I was young, up to around mid-20s, I could see mental pictures like crazy. So vividly in fact that I thought everyone had the same ability.
But as that ability gradually grew weaker, I knew I had something special and then lost it.
I used to read novels like watching a movie because the words instantly turned into vivid images. It was when that ability faded that I can began to appreciate literary qualities for their own sake instead of as mere codes for visuals to be unlocked. Lose some, gain some.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @K., @IA
Some people can envision more detail, but those are the few.
cf Bernard Morin, a blind (but not from birth) geometer.
http://www.ams.org/notices/200210/comm-morin.pdf
I used to work as an illustrator in advertising, drawing storyboards. I usually worked with an art director. Art directors, while they generally can’t draw well, are capable of visualizing. That is, you can describe a visual image to them and get them to agree on it before you actually put it on paper. There may then only be some fine tuning.
At the client end–say, Procter & Gamble–you have people whose mind’s eyes are blind. If you were to describe an image to them, they would have no idea what you were talking about. They have to see it drawn on paper before they can understand. It’s a different kind of mind. I hadn’t been aware that there is a word for it.
It gets even worse.
I meet people that can't visualize what a small change in their own home will look like.
I am in kitchen design. I will have a sketch/CAD drawing of a kitchen when making a proposal to a husband and wife. This is a sketch of the kitchen in their own home. I will often propose something like moving a door or enlarging a window. Invariably one member of the couple understands what I'm proposing immediately. The other member stares at the paper or screen with a blank expression. They have a sketch of their own kitchen with a few modifications and can't figure out what it will look like!Replies: @Seth
Nikola Tesla was able to visualize a machine in his mind, three-dimensionally, to the point that he could run it and detect design flaws.
Tesla: “Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop.
“The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum tube wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.”
http://www.teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/miracle-mind-nikola-tesla
Some like Tolkien just build a entire world with their imagination.
Others who have it are certain intelligence agents who could walk into a room and memorize the whole thing and then tell others where things were located in the room. Same with military scouts(pre digital camera era).
But with the advent of Google along with giving kids ruinous devices like the Ipod there is little need for memory or visualization, those aspects of the human mind will simply atrophy into oblivion, along with cursive writing, manual dexterity, etc.
I will believe it if you can show me some of his drawings.
It’s astounding to me how good Pi was, especially in comparison with how awful Aronofsky’s next movie Requiem for a Dream was. But then The Wrestler was good. I haven’t seen anything else by him.
“Feynman’s younger sister Joan, also a physicist, once said that “[Richard] had a … He once admitted that he saw numbers and equations in different colors.”
Feynman was a great mental calculator. He loved doing integrals in his head.
(1 +x)^alpha = approx =1+alpha*x . See "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman".
Taking cubic roots corresponds to alpha=(1/3).Replies: @International Jew
That’s not quite true. Math becomes a lot more intuitive and interesting when complemented by visual analogies, even when they are not perfect. For example, it’s easier to understand n-dimensional space when you can hold pictures in your head with ease. Imagine a 3D space described by a cube (as in a 3D plot), then imagine a number of these cubes in a row, and voila, a fourth dimension. Want a fifth? Maybe another row of cubes orthogonal the previous row, and then fill the plane with more 3D cubes, and so on.
Mathematicians and physicists (i.e. the kind I like) draw a lot of pictures, even though they don’t always put them in advance textbooks. It’s also why they’re so particular about notations, which can be thought of as minimalist diagrams.
Semi-related topic: read Musicophilia (and other books) by Dr. Oliver Sacks.
http://www.oliversacks.com/
He discusses synesthesia, experienced by 1 in 20 people. Perhaps you have experienced seeing pictures when listening to music, without any pharmacological enhancements.
It is a perceptual condition in which information between the senses is blended or coupled such as hearing colors, or feeling tastes. Synesthesia, in the words of Dr. Sacks, “is an immediate, physiological coupling of two sorts of sensation.” This could be any two sorts of sensation, even smelling mown grass when hearing a certain sound. The most common form of synesthesia is associating specific colors with particular letters and numerals.
Ever notice the way people who perform amazing feats of memory usually say they do it by associating the thing to be remembered with a visual image? Often they say they remember a series of numbers by linking them with physical locations they mentally pass through. Go down the stairs, and there’s a 3, proceed out the door and there’s 7 on the doorstep, etc. They say this by way of imparting their secret to others who wish to learn to memorise things. They don’t seem to realize that the hard part would be for the average person to store all these images in the first place, and that it’s probably their visual imagination that sets them apart from the less mnemonically gifted.
Aldous Huxley said he had problems visualizing things in his mind. He was an idea and word guy.
Ban all eye-dols.
“Is it all done aurally i.e. via internal voice or monologue?”
Yup. Language is auditory. It was later written down.
When you talk to yourself, do you SEE the words? No, you just hear them.
“I may have this blindness. What is your mental imagery like?”
I think this ability to see mental pictures changes over time.
When I was young, up to around mid-20s, I could see mental pictures like crazy. So vividly in fact that I thought everyone had the same ability.
But as that ability gradually grew weaker, I knew I had something special and then lost it.
I used to read novels like watching a movie because the words instantly turned into vivid images. It was when that ability faded that I can began to appreciate literary qualities for their own sake instead of as mere codes for visuals to be unlocked. Lose some, gain some.
Were you able to draw these mental pictures and create a believable illusion?
Feynman was a great mental calculator. He loved doing integrals in his head.Replies: @Immigrant from former USSR, @Jeremiahjohnbalaya, @james wilson
Feynman liked to use what we call Taylor expansion; e.g.
(1 +x)^alpha = approx =1+alpha*x . See “Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman”.
Taking cubic roots corresponds to alpha=(1/3).
For experimental studies of imagery see Kosslyn’s Image and Mind (Oxford, 1986). He returned the study of imagery to psychology based on Shepard’s mental rotation.
From what little I know about Kabbalah and other mystical disciplines, I believe the opposite must be true. You must have an ability to picture certain things very clearly in your mind, and then concentrate on these images for hours and to the exclusion of all external stimuli.
It was only a few years ago that I realized I have a very weak ability to form visual images in my mind. However, my dreams are incredibly rich visually. I dream in color and create fantastically wonderful landscapes, characters, etc. I have considerable native mathematical talent but I’m terrible at mental manipulations of geometric objects. I deal with these using mathematical formalism which is quite a handicap.
Yeah, I always heard those so-called shortcuts and thought, “Wouldn’t it be easier just to memorize the numbers?” I don’t know if verbal mnemonics like HOMES and My Very Educated Mother etc. are really very effective either, but at least I can understand the underlying idea.
OT: the neocons are trying to pull off a color rev in Armenia. Reason: Armenia is an ally of Russia and a member of the Eurasian Union. Not all color rev attempts succeed. The jury is very much still out on the Armenian one.
The old Great Art of Memory–you’d imagine the poem you were memorizing in the palace, and then mentally retrace your steps through the palace to remember the poem. Apparently the bards used to use it.
There's a tree. Next to the tree is a letter, it's a C. The C is lovely...but over there is a TV and it's showing an episode of The Flintstones. That Barney Rubble, what a comedian. Where was I?
I was once in a class where a student claimed not to know what the instructor meant by having a silent conversion with yourself. He seemed like an otherwise normal guy, who apparently didn’t know what it was like to silently talk to yourself. Wiki calls it interpersonal communication, and googling doesn’t seem to find it as a common inability.
At the client end--say, Procter & Gamble--you have people whose mind’s eyes are blind. If you were to describe an image to them, they would have no idea what you were talking about. They have to see it drawn on paper before they can understand. It's a different kind of mind. I hadn't been aware that there is a word for it.Replies: @Mike
Harry,
It gets even worse.
I meet people that can’t visualize what a small change in their own home will look like.
I am in kitchen design. I will have a sketch/CAD drawing of a kitchen when making a proposal to a husband and wife. This is a sketch of the kitchen in their own home. I will often propose something like moving a door or enlarging a window. Invariably one member of the couple understands what I’m proposing immediately. The other member stares at the paper or screen with a blank expression. They have a sketch of their own kitchen with a few modifications and can’t figure out what it will look like!
I, on the other hand, will accept as given whatever arrangement has been dumped in front of me, and work around it.
I can’t imagine not having visual imagery and not being able to conjure different images in the mind. Do you think purely through internal monologues, dialogues, conversations, etc in your head?
So you haven’t read the classic “Generalizing From One Example” essay on LessWrong.com?
You’re in for a treat.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/
It’s interesting you bring up reading, because like you, I, and I imagine most people, have a hazy, dream like, visual movie that plays when reading a book. What happens when these people read? If the words don’t reference images, either images of memories of real objects or of images they make up in their heads, what exactly do they reference? Is it just converted into audio in their heads? If so, what does audio reference? More audio and text?
Are you sure you can’t visualize familiar objects you see often in your head? Presumably the Birth of Venus is not something you look at every day.
So he couldn’t see the elephant in the room
The ultra-Orthodox guy in that scene isn’t demonstrating kabbalah; he’s demonstrating gematria.
Never could do that. Maybe my imagination isn’t built that way.
There’s a tree. Next to the tree is a letter, it’s a C. The C is lovely…but over there is a TV and it’s showing an episode of The Flintstones. That Barney Rubble, what a comedian. Where was I?
An easy way for Sailer to raise money.
http://www.amren.com/news/2015/06/confederate-flag-sales-soar-as-retailers-pull-stock/
Sell Stars and Bars flags now that such are not allowed by main industries.
Sketchy it is. AFAIK most people don’t see a vivid image like it was right there. You conceptualize it, have a vague idea of what it looks like.
Some people can envision more detail, but those are the few.
I should have added that it was Galton who conducted the first surveys on our capacity (or lack of it) for mental imagery.
Von Neumann has always fascinated me. He had no trouble visualizing in his mind, and he was lighting fast at mental arithmetic.
Feynman talked about this:
Feynman was a great mental calculator. He loved doing integrals in his head.Replies: @Immigrant from former USSR, @Jeremiahjohnbalaya, @james wilson
I think it was feynman who described doing short cuts to something like 48^2, via 48^2 = (50-2)x(50-2) = (skipping a few steps) = 2500 – 2*2*50 + 4, so that all you had to memorize was 50^2.
Thus 48 squared is just the square of 4 (1600) plus the square of 8 (64) plus 4x8 doubled (640) = 2,304. Use this method and you can square any two digit number in about 10-15 seconds. If you practice, less than that. This isn't something I read, it's just something I figured out a long time ago.
I have looked at some of the books on the subject but the methodologies tend to be too complicated, as per your example.Replies: @SPMoore8
I’ve known engineers, technicians and mechanics who have the talent, it also gets better with practice. Play with it enough and you can build all sorts of representation models. Most who have it think nothing of it and expect the people they work with to have it too.
Some like Tolkien just build a entire world with their imagination.
Others who have it are certain intelligence agents who could walk into a room and memorize the whole thing and then tell others where things were located in the room. Same with military scouts(pre digital camera era).
But with the advent of Google along with giving kids ruinous devices like the Ipod there is little need for memory or visualization, those aspects of the human mind will simply atrophy into oblivion, along with cursive writing, manual dexterity, etc.
Off topic:
LOL. This is not satire. This is what actually passes for victimhood these days.
http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/2015/06/24/whpride/
Be that as it may, it was the later Greeks — Diophantus in particular — who really first conceived of algebra.
John Derbyshire, in his fascinating book on the history of algebra, describes this development. It is remarkable how little ever was achieved outside of Europe in any branch of mathematics or science.
I remember reading that Jews supposedly did extraordinarily well on so-called verbal IQ, but did distinctly less well than gentile Europeans on visual-spatial tasks. I don’t know how robust that result was. But it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if one considers the narrow sorts of professions in which Jews excelled, and for which they were presumably selected.
Of course, there do exist important areas of knowledge, and of technology in particular, in which visual spatial abilities play a key role. It may be related that there are so very few prominent Jewish inventors, in the usual sense of that term.
(1 +x)^alpha = approx =1+alpha*x . See "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman".
Taking cubic roots corresponds to alpha=(1/3).Replies: @International Jew
Feynman would have known that’s reasonable only for small values of x.
Feynman also knew by heart all the next terms, which constitute
Newton's binomial formula for any alpha, including negative, irrational and even complex:
(1 +x)^alpha =
= 1+alpha*x +
+ (alpha)*(alpha-1)*(x^2)/2! +
+(alpha)*(alpha-1)*(alpha-2)*(x^3)/3! + ... ,
exact series. This series is infinite, if "alpha" is not equal to positive integer, but then it is converging for |x|< 1 only.
If you think I have algebraic style of thinking only (as opposed to geometrical),
here is a curious mathematical problem for your entertainment.
Most textbooks prove 4 theorems about intersections in single points in a triangle
1) of 3 bisectors,
2) of 3 heights,
3) of 3 perpendiculars to mid-points of the sides,
4) and of 3 medians.
But only # 4) is usually proven with the use of similarity of triangles, unique parallels;
in other words, with the use of Euclidean 5-th postulate.
Can you prove # 4) without 5-th postulate ? In other words, is # 4) valid for triangles made of geodesics on the 2D surface of 3D sphere ? Is it valid for the triangles on the Lobachevsky plane ?
Your truly, F.r.
Steve,
This difficulty with spatial relationships is a jewish thing. A jewish colleague, very bright guy, used to ask me in awe to describe what images I could see in my head and how I could manipulate them. He questioned me as if I were a specimen of a phenomenon he had already heard about. I think this jewish deficit is knowledge within certain jewish communities.
It may also partly explain jews’ performance in sports.
It used to be said that jews “didn’t have it in the hands.” The dean of Emory’s school of dentistry took a lot of heat for having commented something to that effect many decades ago. You have to wonder though if there might be some truth to it.
Jews did work with their hands in the pre-modern era in crafts such as diamond cutting and lens crafting. Spinoza was a lens maker.Replies: @Anon
I heard Einstein was very visual.
And some of the most visually masterly directors were Jewish: Eisenstein, von Sternberg, Vertov, Lang, Kubrick, Frankenheimer, Friedkin, Spielberg.Replies: @candid_observer
I've read that Gehry's Disney Hall is supposed to be a masterpiece of acoustics. Well, there it is… design for the ear, not the eye.
I think this ability to see mental pictures changes over time.
When I was young, up to around mid-20s, I could see mental pictures like crazy. So vividly in fact that I thought everyone had the same ability.
But as that ability gradually grew weaker, I knew I had something special and then lost it.
I used to read novels like watching a movie because the words instantly turned into vivid images. It was when that ability faded that I can began to appreciate literary qualities for their own sake instead of as mere codes for visuals to be unlocked. Lose some, gain some.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @K., @IA
Milan Kundera calls it “The Lyric Age” — it generally doesn’t last that long.
Something always stuck in my mind from Nabokov’s novel Look at the Harlequins! The narrator mentions a couple of times in the book that he cannot visualise the act of turning around. He can visualise being faced forward, then turned the other way, but not the act of moving and seeing what’s in between as he turns. It would seem that Nabokov is talking about himself when he says this, and he returns to the subject at least twice in the novel, but refrains from exploring it in detail.
This difficulty with spatial relationships is a jewish thing. A jewish colleague, very bright guy, used to ask me in awe to describe what images I could see in my head and how I could manipulate them. He questioned me as if I were a specimen of a phenomenon he had already heard about. I think this jewish deficit is knowledge within certain jewish communities.
It may also partly explain jews' performance in sports.
It used to be said that jews "didn't have it in the hands." The dean of Emory's school of dentistry took a lot of heat for having commented something to that effect many decades ago. You have to wonder though if there might be some truth to it.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anon, @Reg Cæsar
I don’t think that Jews are particularly bad at sports. They just generally don’t aggressively pursue it from a young age.
Jews did work with their hands in the pre-modern era in crafts such as diamond cutting and lens crafting. Spinoza was a lens maker.
If you want to wow your friends,there are a number of books out there that have compiled all the most common shortcuts of this type. You can do a web search for them.
John Derbyshire, in his fascinating book on the history of algebra, describes this development. It is remarkable how little ever was achieved outside of Europe in any branch of mathematics or science.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous
Right, but I’m talking about the classical Greeks. Diophantus was from Hellenistic Alexandria, which did have some influence from the kind of empirical algebra of the Babylonians, rather than deriving purely from classical Greek formal and geometrical math.
Jews did work with their hands in the pre-modern era in crafts such as diamond cutting and lens crafting. Spinoza was a lens maker.Replies: @Anon
“I don’t think that Jews are particularly bad at sports. They just generally don’t aggressively pursue it from a young age.”
They aren’t very good. In the Middle school I went to, the top three male athletes were asians. Why? They competed with Jews.
Jewish guys really win with wit and meaters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_athletesReplies: @Anonymous
This difficulty with spatial relationships is a jewish thing. A jewish colleague, very bright guy, used to ask me in awe to describe what images I could see in my head and how I could manipulate them. He questioned me as if I were a specimen of a phenomenon he had already heard about. I think this jewish deficit is knowledge within certain jewish communities.
It may also partly explain jews' performance in sports.
It used to be said that jews "didn't have it in the hands." The dean of Emory's school of dentistry took a lot of heat for having commented something to that effect many decades ago. You have to wonder though if there might be some truth to it.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anon, @Reg Cæsar
“This difficulty with spatial relationships is a jewish thing.”
I heard Einstein was very visual.
And some of the most visually masterly directors were Jewish: Eisenstein, von Sternberg, Vertov, Lang, Kubrick, Frankenheimer, Friedkin, Spielberg.
It’s difficult to imagine how someone could have a memory without being able to conjure up mental images. I wonder what Descartes would have said about this.
How do the poor bastards jack off?Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonym
John Derbyshire, in his fascinating book on the history of algebra, describes this development. It is remarkable how little ever was achieved outside of Europe in any branch of mathematics or science.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous
Diophantus was not the first person to conceive of algebra. His book on algebra consists of a series of algebra problems and solutions to those problems, without any general methods or solutions as in modern algebra. This sort of thing existed among the Babylonians and Egyptians.
Middle school anecdotal data aside, Jews are fairly well represented in sports:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_athletes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_athletes
Almost all listed are mixed Gentiles. Therefore, the article actually supports the "middle school anecdotal data."Replies: @LondonBob
I heard Einstein was very visual.
And some of the most visually masterly directors were Jewish: Eisenstein, von Sternberg, Vertov, Lang, Kubrick, Frankenheimer, Friedkin, Spielberg.Replies: @candid_observer
I don’t think that being a good visual director of movies has much to do with the cognitive phenomenon in question.
Likewise, women are as good as men — sometimes better — at certain cognitive tasks that might fit under the rubric of “visual-spatial”. But there are several classes of such tasks, which appear to be very important for, say, navigation of large areas, at which men are about .7 SD better on average. This ability is pretty clearly important for achievement in certain areas of technology and science, as studies have demonstrated.
A typical test item for this ability involves mental rotation of an image.
Quite plausibly, Jews aren’t very good at this, because it figures so little into their success in their particular niche, and therefore they weren’t selected for it. And insofar as there’s a zero sum game in terms of brain area, the selection might diminish their abilities at it.
Einstein, though, is probably a good case of a Jewish scientist who had an unusual amount of this ability, at least relative to other Jewish physicists.
Film-making is very much about mental rotation since the art of editing has to predict how things will look from different angles and how those images will mesh with preceding ones.Replies: @Sean, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
The particular thing that Diophantus added was really the essence of algebra: the concept of, and notation for, an unknown. You can’t find that in the Babylonians.
I don’t see how that achievement in abstraction can be trivialized.
He may not have generalized his methods for solving problems much, but, frankly, neither did anyone else — not the Babylonians, not the Indians, not anyone outside of Europe — until the Italians got hold of the idea of algebra at the end of the Dark Ages, and turned it to real account by solving both the cubic and the quartic.
Can visualize very well. Engineer, late grower. I understand that visuospatial ability is something that needs delayed development. I can imagine and feel how objects might be manipulated or rotated, or their trajectories. It is funny because I can see in my mind’s eye the yellow daisy and yet it is not through the eye. I kind of blank out a bit to do this.
Artistically I have talent but have not had much practice and I find it frustrating if not drawing simple diagrams. I am also pretty manually dexterous.
I used to get annoyed that movies did not have the characters as I pictures them from reading books.
I think there are two kinds to this.
Material visualization and creative visualization.
Some people can visualize very well things they'd seen/inspected or learned about.
Some people can visualize things that don't exist and are creatively imagined.
Re-creating believable illusion requires an innate cognitive ability to comprehend perspective - vanishing points and horizon lines. Some people develop around mid- late teens. Nothing to do with intelligence or hard work. You either have it or you don't.
Diophantus did use some abbreviations for notation, but that is not the essence of algebra, especially when unaccompanied by general methods or solutions. The Babylonians did their algebra in sentences, which was also common in Western algebra until the 16th century
Now of course it would have been better had he also introduced general methods to go along with these abstractions. But I return to my previous point: really no one did such a thing until algebra really got kicked into high gear in Italy with the solutions of the cubic and quartic. The upper bound on all previous results was the solution to quadratic problems -- and how much of "general methods" does that frankly easy result involve? Remarkably too, the others who worked on these quadratic problems before Italians took it over did not themselves even replicate the "notation" of Diophantus -- suggesting that it was hardly a trivial insight that lay behind it. In some ways, a number of these others, including the famous al-Khwarizimi, really took a turn in the wrong direction, by returning to geometric explanations for their results with respect to quadratic problems.Replies: @Anonymous
It gets even worse.
I meet people that can't visualize what a small change in their own home will look like.
I am in kitchen design. I will have a sketch/CAD drawing of a kitchen when making a proposal to a husband and wife. This is a sketch of the kitchen in their own home. I will often propose something like moving a door or enlarging a window. Invariably one member of the couple understands what I'm proposing immediately. The other member stares at the paper or screen with a blank expression. They have a sketch of their own kitchen with a few modifications and can't figure out what it will look like!Replies: @Seth
Similarly some people are able to walk into a room and know exactly how the furniture should be arranged to make better use of space and create efficiencies.
I, on the other hand, will accept as given whatever arrangement has been dumped in front of me, and work around it.
I think this ability to see mental pictures changes over time.
When I was young, up to around mid-20s, I could see mental pictures like crazy. So vividly in fact that I thought everyone had the same ability.
But as that ability gradually grew weaker, I knew I had something special and then lost it.
I used to read novels like watching a movie because the words instantly turned into vivid images. It was when that ability faded that I can began to appreciate literary qualities for their own sake instead of as mere codes for visuals to be unlocked. Lose some, gain some.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @K., @IA
When did it fade? In my case, I started to lose it around mid-adolescence. Although I have no problem forming a crystal clear depiction of a daisy, or the Mona Lisa, or even Les Demoiselles D’Avingnon in my minds-eye the intensity is gone.
--- When life was better: before the Civil War, of after ?
--- Sure, before.
--- But why ?
--- Before the Civil War I had erection.
Around mid 20s.
I guess brain cells just start dying.
Up to early 20s, new brain cells are forming and their birth may heighten mental vividness.
After that, it's all about managing the gradual death of brain cells.
What proportion of folks can “hear” music from memory, without humming or singing it, I mean? I think this ability is not the same as the ability to remember music for the purpose of singing it (or whistling it or whatever). I have a somewhat fickle ability to “hear” music from memory; often I can only hear one part or voice (of say, an orchestral piece) at a time with vague sensations of other voices but then sometimes a much richer perception may kick in and I will “hear” polyphony. I’m no musical genius but I can translate simple written music to imagined auditory form to “hear” it in my mind. I have been informed that some composers (Beethoven is the famed example) can/could “hear” imaginary music in great richness– seems like a nice talent!
Wait, is this supposed to be an unusual ability? I have always been able to have songs that I've previously heard with my ears "play" just in my head, and I thought everyone else could do this as well. I can also "compose" and arrange melodies just in my head (not necessarily good ones, mind you) that I have never previously heard with my ears, and I also thought this was perfectly normal as well.
Beethoven being the exception that proves the rule.
If this were the 60s we'd be giving them cannabis and LSD and seeing what it did to their abilities to visualise. They do seem to be able to visualise involuntarily:Personally, I've always noticed a significant difference in vividness between voluntary and involuntary visualisation, except a few occasions when, on the verge of falling asleep, I've been able to intentionally create exceptionally clear visual images. I'd be interested in knowing if that disparity is true of the majority of people.Replies: @Anonymous
I’m just found the article on aphantasia. It describes me perfectly. Although not in the field, I was a psychology major in college.
I tried mushrooms once. I was able to see colors and pictures swirling in my mind as I went to sleep. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences.
I do dream but rarely remember them. There are people in the dream, but I truly don’t know if I picture them, as I think about people conceptually.
This a question I have recently become fond of asking people. The issue came to my attention when discussing the detective novels of Rex Sout; there is a “reader” that summarizes a lot of detail from the books, about the characters and about the various rooms that are used in the books. My parents both had originally imagined the office of the detective in its mirror image along its main hallway, and a mirror image of the main office -with the seating positions and desks and such reversed – the actual layout (as described in the books) was given as a 2-D top view. I, however, had no mental image at all for anything in these novels.
I do not get individual distinct voices when I read – the voices are my own, with no accent. I would not say that I have a completely blank mind when I read, but that any kind of image or impression are very rare, and more likely to be an adaption of something I have seen somewhere, usually of a landscape view (say, from Tolkien, I do have a feeling of the mountain of Cahadras, or the first view of Lothlorien-but the outlines are more vague, like an impressionist painting)
We then got into a discussion of the amounts of detail – my mother prefers books with very little detail sketched for her – she can’t stand Tolkien; where my father likes writers who put in a lot of detail, so that he can imagine them exactly right, so he loves Tolkien.
What is interesting, is that I was a precocious reader as a child. Personally, I think that the problem comes from being the youngest child and therefore reading all of the books that were for my older siblings; thus picking up a habit of skipping things that I didn’t know or were boring. I am a very fast reader, and I often skim the pages as I am reading, not bothering to finish reading some non-critical details. The books I tend toward are non-fiction, or heavy plot driven stories.
At any rate, reading for me, is just words on a page – as I read, it is like reading out loud, but much faster of course. It could be that I am just more aurally inclined, being also very musical (as well as good with math)… It had never occurred to me to imagine what I was reading in my mind, until now, and I find the absence of images very fascinating. Do other people really see a movie unfolding, with the characters moving? Does the mind fill in all the action that is not specifically written? Or do you get a series of vignettes, only from what is written? Or a series of snapshots as the mind jumps from one scene to the next? Can you hear ambient noise? Music?
I do not like to see movies of books I have read, because the images, characters, and accents from the movie then occasionally show up in my head when I read the book, which I find irritating, especially if it did not agree with the book (ahem, Tolkien).
And at the other extreme (kind of), chimps with their crazy visual memory abilities. Visuo-spatial capabilities used to be more important, in labyrinthical forests with panthers and other big cats. Now it’s just engineers, taxi drivers and competing orienteers who need them.
BTW, here’s a video from Tiomilan (100 kilometers), an annual mass relay orienteering event in Sweden:
Dear I.J. Apparently you did not notice the symbol “approx”.
Feynman also knew by heart all the next terms, which constitute
Newton’s binomial formula for any alpha, including negative, irrational and even complex:
(1 +x)^alpha =
= 1+alpha*x +
+ (alpha)*(alpha-1)*(x^2)/2! +
+(alpha)*(alpha-1)*(alpha-2)*(x^3)/3! + … ,
exact series. This series is infinite, if “alpha” is not equal to positive integer, but then it is converging for |x|< 1 only.
If you think I have algebraic style of thinking only (as opposed to geometrical),
here is a curious mathematical problem for your entertainment.
Most textbooks prove 4 theorems about intersections in single points in a triangle
1) of 3 bisectors,
2) of 3 heights,
3) of 3 perpendiculars to mid-points of the sides,
4) and of 3 medians.
But only # 4) is usually proven with the use of similarity of triangles, unique parallels;
in other words, with the use of Euclidean 5-th postulate.
Can you prove # 4) without 5-th postulate ? In other words, is # 4) valid for triangles made of geodesics on the 2D surface of 3D sphere ? Is it valid for the triangles on the Lobachevsky plane ?
Your truly, F.r.
Following the example of a certain excellent mathematician,
who has died about 5 years ago,
I like better Newton’s approach to calculus, than Leibnitz’s.
That late mathematician liked to say
“Leibnitz has invented the notations,
with which people, who do not understand calculus,
would teach it to those who will never understand calculus.”
This is definitely unjust towards Leibnitz, who was great mathematician,
great thinker, and much better person than Newton.
But I like the elitist attitude of that recently deceased mathematician,
his caustic style.
A journalist in 1870 asks an 80-years old person:
— When life was better: before the Civil War, of after ?
— Sure, before.
— But why ?
— Before the Civil War I had erection.
The Fighter is fantastic as well, especially for its portrayal of a large working class Irish familiy in Boston–I think the titular fighter has 8 sisters or something. These types are so rarely portrayed in film/television you start to forget they exist–not King of Queens pablum but shown with all their sharp edges (tattoos, cursing, drinking, fighting, etc.).
“When did it fade?”
Around mid 20s.
I guess brain cells just start dying.
Up to early 20s, new brain cells are forming and their birth may heighten mental vividness.
After that, it’s all about managing the gradual death of brain cells.
Artistically I have talent but have not had much practice and I find it frustrating if not drawing simple diagrams. I am also pretty manually dexterous.
I used to get annoyed that movies did not have the characters as I pictures them from reading books.Replies: @Anon, @IA
“Can visualize very well.”
I think there are two kinds to this.
Material visualization and creative visualization.
Some people can visualize very well things they’d seen/inspected or learned about.
Some people can visualize things that don’t exist and are creatively imagined.
“A typical test item for this ability involves mental rotation of an image. Quite plausibly, Jews aren’t very good at this, because it figures so little into their success in their particular niche, and therefore they weren’t selected for it.”
Film-making is very much about mental rotation since the art of editing has to predict how things will look from different angles and how those images will mesh with preceding ones.
Filmmaking is primarily about narrative and salesmanship. It's primarily verbal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_athletesReplies: @Anonymous
Middle school anecdotal data aside, Jews are fairly well represented in sports:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_athletes
Almost all listed are mixed Gentiles. Therefore, the article actually supports the “middle school anecdotal data.”
duh! if your verbal ability > spatial ability by a large degree, welcome to the non-visualizers club.
Another thing I like to try on people, is to try to get them to listen and write/type or read and write/type at the same time. Then try to listen and read at the same time. I’ve found I can listen and transcribe what I hear, but I can’t listen and type something else at the same time. This is along the lines of some of the mental tricks Feynman describes in his books, about counting lines in a column as you read them, or counting something in your head (staircase steps while ascending/descending) and trying to talk at the same time. I find the I/O stream model of my brain interestingly limited.
Is there a name for an irrepressible drive toward obnoxious one-upmanship? And how heritable is such a condition?
Feynman was a great mental calculator. He loved doing integrals in his head.Replies: @Immigrant from former USSR, @Jeremiahjohnbalaya, @james wilson
There exist a Feynman video where he explains how he learned how two people of similar talents may function entirely differently. Feynman, to test himself, had learned to count to 48 in a 60 second time frame, then to count words on a page at the same time. His friend said that it couldn’t be done–which in fact the friend could not even after learning the 48-60. But his friend could speak and calculate verbally while counting the 48-60, which Feynman could not begin to do.
BTW, here's a video from Tiomilan (100 kilometers), an annual mass relay orienteering event in Sweden: https://youtu.be/cD0Wgz37_0E?t=11mReplies: @difference maker
Is that so? It might be of relevance that chimps are apparently, absolutely terrible throwers compared to humans with regards to aim
What you call “abbreviations for notation” are what otherwise can be called “abstractions away from particulars”. Not only did Diophantus introduce the concept of an unknown, he also introduced similar consistent notations for powers. In the case of algebra, it’s very hard to make a distinction between syntactical conventions and semantical results; in many ways the very point of algebra, particularly as it took a more modern turn, was to abstract away from any particular thing which a variable or an operation might signify. The permissible syntactical operations pretty much define an algebra.
Now of course it would have been better had he also introduced general methods to go along with these abstractions. But I return to my previous point: really no one did such a thing until algebra really got kicked into high gear in Italy with the solutions of the cubic and quartic. The upper bound on all previous results was the solution to quadratic problems — and how much of “general methods” does that frankly easy result involve? Remarkably too, the others who worked on these quadratic problems before Italians took it over did not themselves even replicate the “notation” of Diophantus — suggesting that it was hardly a trivial insight that lay behind it. In some ways, a number of these others, including the famous al-Khwarizimi, really took a turn in the wrong direction, by returning to geometric explanations for their results with respect to quadratic problems.
“How vivid are people’s images that they see in their head?”
When I recall scenes from a book, I usually recall the images the words provoked in my mind at that time, not the words that provoked those images. But there are a number of passages that I do clearly recall in a verbal fashion:
“For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism – either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.”
– John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Film-making is very much about mental rotation since the art of editing has to predict how things will look from different angles and how those images will mesh with preceding ones.Replies: @Sean, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
A film has to have a good story.
“What proportion of folks can “hear” music from memory, without humming or singing it, I mean?”
Wait, is this supposed to be an unusual ability? I have always been able to have songs that I’ve previously heard with my ears “play” just in my head, and I thought everyone else could do this as well. I can also “compose” and arrange melodies just in my head (not necessarily good ones, mind you) that I have never previously heard with my ears, and I also thought this was perfectly normal as well.
“It’s difficult to imagine how someone could have a memory without being able to conjure up mental images.”
How do the poor bastards jack off?
My input/output channels are extremely limited. 99% of iSteve posts are composed in my office behind closed doors with me wearing earplugs.
This difficulty with spatial relationships is a jewish thing. A jewish colleague, very bright guy, used to ask me in awe to describe what images I could see in my head and how I could manipulate them. He questioned me as if I were a specimen of a phenomenon he had already heard about. I think this jewish deficit is knowledge within certain jewish communities.
It may also partly explain jews' performance in sports.
It used to be said that jews "didn't have it in the hands." The dean of Emory's school of dentistry took a lot of heat for having commented something to that effect many decades ago. You have to wonder though if there might be some truth to it.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anon, @Reg Cæsar
That explains the “architecture” of Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind!
I’ve read that Gehry’s Disney Hall is supposed to be a masterpiece of acoustics. Well, there it is… design for the ear, not the eye.
I want to hear the soundtrack to Disney’s Afantasia. I imagine (sorry) there’d be no visuals.
What am I saying… that describes half the music videos on YouTube.
Why the earplugs in a closed room? Is it noisy where you live? Or does it help you concentrate better?
How do the poor bastards jack off?Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonym
Maybe they have to leer?
Now of course it would have been better had he also introduced general methods to go along with these abstractions. But I return to my previous point: really no one did such a thing until algebra really got kicked into high gear in Italy with the solutions of the cubic and quartic. The upper bound on all previous results was the solution to quadratic problems -- and how much of "general methods" does that frankly easy result involve? Remarkably too, the others who worked on these quadratic problems before Italians took it over did not themselves even replicate the "notation" of Diophantus -- suggesting that it was hardly a trivial insight that lay behind it. In some ways, a number of these others, including the famous al-Khwarizimi, really took a turn in the wrong direction, by returning to geometric explanations for their results with respect to quadratic problems.Replies: @Anonymous
The unknown was called ‘ho arithmos’ i.e. ‘the number’. Diophantus’ notation was a sigma, an abbreviation for the word ‘sauros’, meaning a heap. Notation is important, but it’s not necessarily the same thing as conceiving algebra. Newton’s calculus was geometric, and today we use Leibniz’s notation and do calculus algebraically. However, this doesn’t mean that Newton did not conceive of calculus.
Ho’ Arhythmos is hardly unknown. The sistahz in the straightening salon keep blasting her CDs throughout their end of the strip mall. Ruins the cheap chow mein next door.
http://www.oliversacks.com/
He discusses synesthesia, experienced by 1 in 20 people. Perhaps you have experienced seeing pictures when listening to music, without any pharmacological enhancements.
It is a perceptual condition in which information between the senses is blended or coupled such as hearing colors, or feeling tastes. Synesthesia, in the words of Dr. Sacks, "is an immediate, physiological coupling of two sorts of sensation." This could be any two sorts of sensation, even smelling mown grass when hearing a certain sound. The most common form of synesthesia is associating specific colors with particular letters and numerals.Replies: @Philip Neal
I am not musical, but I recently discovered the remarkable music animations of Stephen Malinowski
https://www.youtube.com/user/smalin/featured
and found that they give the amazing illusion of having that kind of synaesthesia – seeing the structure of a symphony, watching the theme pass from one section of the orchestra to another and so on. Do they work for everyone, I wonder?
In a discussion on his website, Malinowski makes the interesting point that his animations are not all that interesting as pure visual patterns. They do not impress deaf people, or for that matter hearing people who watch them with the sound down: they only work if you are listening to the music they were generated from.
I think this ability to see mental pictures changes over time.
When I was young, up to around mid-20s, I could see mental pictures like crazy. So vividly in fact that I thought everyone had the same ability.
But as that ability gradually grew weaker, I knew I had something special and then lost it.
I used to read novels like watching a movie because the words instantly turned into vivid images. It was when that ability faded that I can began to appreciate literary qualities for their own sake instead of as mere codes for visuals to be unlocked. Lose some, gain some.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @K., @IA
“When I was young, up to around mid-20s, I could see mental pictures like crazy. So vividly in fact that I thought everyone had the same ability.”
Were you able to draw these mental pictures and create a believable illusion?
Artistically I have talent but have not had much practice and I find it frustrating if not drawing simple diagrams. I am also pretty manually dexterous.
I used to get annoyed that movies did not have the characters as I pictures them from reading books.Replies: @Anon, @IA
“I understand that visuospatial ability is something that needs delayed development. I can imagine and feel how objects might be manipulated or rotated, or their trajectories.”
Re-creating believable illusion requires an innate cognitive ability to comprehend perspective – vanishing points and horizon lines. Some people develop around mid- late teens. Nothing to do with intelligence or hard work. You either have it or you don’t.
“Nikola Tesla was able to visualize a machine in his mind, three-dimensionally, to the point that he could run it and detect design flaws.”
I will believe it if you can show me some of his drawings.
As a general matter, jews have difficulty with athleticism and visual-spatial reasoning.
Film-making is very much about mental rotation since the art of editing has to predict how things will look from different angles and how those images will mesh with preceding ones.Replies: @Sean, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
Film-making is very much about mental rotation since the art of editing has to predict how things will look from different angles and how those images will mesh with preceding ones.
Filmmaking is primarily about narrative and salesmanship. It’s primarily verbal.
Film-making is very much about mental rotation since the art of editing has to predict how things will look from different angles and how those images will mesh with preceding ones.Replies: @Sean, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
What about Kubrick? His films were very strong visually, and he was known for being very interested and focused on the visual aspects of movies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_athletes
Almost all listed are mixed Gentiles. Therefore, the article actually supports the "middle school anecdotal data."Replies: @LondonBob
I don’t believe Israel have ever qualified for a major football tournament and all the Jewish lads I grew up with are useless at sports.
How do the poor bastards jack off?Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonym
I was wondering this myself. Or does the horniness turn off once you can’t see a female or a depiction of one?
RE: Thinking in pictures,
Classic comparison/contrast:
Milton's Paradise Lost: A verbal landscape, full of imagery that cannot be visualized.Cf, for example, the famous lines:Dante's Divine Comedy: A visual landscape with a geometry that can easily be grasped with the mind's eye and sketched on a page:
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/images/dante.gifReplies: @Philip Neal
The universe of Paradise Lost can be visualised, for instance
http://unurthed.com/2007/02/17/spragues-paradise-lost-diagrams/
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28434/28434-h/28434-h.htm#FIG2
although Milton was ambiguous about geocentrism and heliocentrism since the question was not definitively settled in his day.
It is plain that Milton retained strong inner vision after he went blind – which raises the question whether people like Kamin face a double deficit if they lose their eyesight, or is lack of mental imagery not a deficit at all?
I believe I have aphantasia, and I can dream. I have actually tried to search for a neurological condition where you cannot image in your brain or minds eye, but was unable to find it until the NYT article last week. This can account for so many deficits – I am horrible at math – cannot image and sustain the images of digits in my mind. I forget people because, I think, I cannot reimage them in my mind, unless they have an outstanding facial feature that would help me remember them. I don’t think this is unusual…but its amazing to have a description and a diagnostic name put to it.
Yes, it really helps in a lot of ways to have a name for things.
I knew a man who could form positive, cheerful short-term memories of pleasant events, but the next morning could only remember the negative, disturbing element of the day before. Unfortunately, there was no name for it in the DSM or elsewhere, so psychiatrists were pretty useless at grasping the problem.
The easiest way to do a square of a two digit number is by the old trinomial expansion: (xy)^2 = x^2 + 2xy + y^2.
Thus 48 squared is just the square of 4 (1600) plus the square of 8 (64) plus 4×8 doubled (640) = 2,304. Use this method and you can square any two digit number in about 10-15 seconds. If you practice, less than that. This isn’t something I read, it’s just something I figured out a long time ago.
I have looked at some of the books on the subject but the methodologies tend to be too complicated, as per your example.
Thus 48 squared is just the square of 4 (1600) plus the square of 8 (64) plus 4x8 doubled (640) = 2,304. Use this method and you can square any two digit number in about 10-15 seconds. If you practice, less than that. This isn't something I read, it's just something I figured out a long time ago.
I have looked at some of the books on the subject but the methodologies tend to be too complicated, as per your example.Replies: @SPMoore8
By the way, that should be (x+y)^2 in the above. Here’s another little trick: The square of x minus two times x -1 will be equal to the square of x-1. Example: 50^2 = 2500. To get the square of 49, double 50 (100), subtract 1, then subtract 99 from 2500 = 2401, which is the square of 49. To get 48^2, be aware that the squares move in a two digit interval, thus, 3^2 = 9, 4^2= 16, 5^2=25, the intervals being 7 and 9; add 11 you have the square of 6. So the square of 48 will be 2500 minus 99+97 or 196, and, at 2304, it is. The problem with this method is that you have to have a solid anchor point, in this case, 2500, but it’s hardly necessary using the first method described. I hope I don’t get in trouble for posting this kind of stuff: If so, my apologies.
I am someone who does not visualize – and I was very happy reading the research and the NYT – I am not alone! I stopped visualizing after a childhood trauma. Some people in the research also report becoming non-visualizing later in life, some claim to be non-visualizing from birth (that could also be from very early childhood trauma, I think, before memory develops).
Nope, I do not visualize text or numbers either, whereas I write for my profession, teach writing, and my math (and directional) skills are well above average. As far as I know, I do not dream, at least not that I know about. There is some involuntary imaging here and there, but very rare (not even once every few years). Recognizing people is a problem (I’ve even walked past my mother, not recognizing her), especially in a group, even a small one. Changing hair style or so is enough to make even a friend unrecognizible.
On the inside, it (words, numbers) feels (just like the NYT article states) as abstract knowledge that just ‘comes to me’.
Hangin’ with KAMIN and he confirms that he can’t see 3-D images in his mind.
I am one of the people who falls into the no visualization category (recently participated in Dr. Zeeman’s survey). I have a great memory for basic data and facts (it is dwindling a bit as I get older). I asked the researchers a similar question…
I think in words, but they do not have sound. I think in thoughts (meta cognition is so hard, especially without shared experience to relate to others). The best analogy is when you learn to read in your head instead of out loud. You just understand the words. That is how I think. I did not realize this was not the norm until into my 30’s.
This type of conversation is how I discovered that I have no visualization (or I guess that I was missing something). I think in thoughts, but they are not auditory. I have difficulty explaining it, as I don’t know how to make it make sense outside of my own head.