From: Mike Tintner > Well, guys, if the only difference between an image and, say, a symbolic - verbal or mathematical or programming - description is bandwidth, perhaps you'll be able to explain how you see the Cafe Wall illusion from a symbolic description:
Sure! The Cafe Wall illusion is a result of the interaction between an image composed of four parallel horizontal lines dividing the image into five strips with alternating black and white bars with the second and fourth strips slightly offset so as to trick the human eye into believing that the parallel lines aren't and the optimizing algorithms of the human eye. I could go into enough detail to explain exactly how and why the trick works -- the fact that the eye is attempting to interpret a two-dimensional image as a three-dimensional scene -- but I think that I've made my point adequately. > A symbolic description of the above will only describe a set of parallel lines and rectangles - and there will be no illusion. Of course not, the illusion is a result of the image being implemented on the hardware of the human eye and brain. Unless you describe the human eye and brain, you don't get the illusion -- but you can do so easily as I did above and the illusion re-appears. > Or you might try a symbolic description of the Mona Lisa, and explain to me, how I will know from your description that she is smiling. You see if you take that image to pieces - as you must do in forming a symbolic description - there is no smile!: Huh? All I need to do is include the smile in the description. You can both take the image to pieces *AND* describe the whole at the same time. > And perhaps you can explain to me how you will see the final picture on any fully-formed jigsaw puzzle from just the pieces at the very beginning. Take a picture to pieces - and you don't "get" the picture any more. Wrong. Take a child's ten piece puzzle apart and re-arrange all the pieces. It's simple enough that your mind can hold all of it at once and "get" the picture. It's only when you take it to too many pieces . . . > Like I said, we are extremely ignorant about how images work. (I'll explain more another time - but in the meantime, maybe Vlad can explain to us how and where the information that is lost in the above examples, is encoded.). I would be extremely careful about throwing the word "we" around and assuming that everyone is just like you. Why does everyone else has to be ignorant about a subject just because you don't understand it yet? Do you understand general relativity? If not, does that suddenly mean that I don't understand it any more? How about biochemistry, physical chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, simulated annealing, etc.? ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=98558129-0bdb63 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
