attn: Nick and Eric C
Glen writes:
> But we've been here before, right? What does it mean to "do math"? Is the
> outfielder "doing math" when she catches a fly ball? I mean, we know
> missile interceptors are "doing math" ... maybe. Is a Kalman filter
> executing in the on board computer a "mental image". Can one understand
> quantum mechanics without doing the math? Etc.
Mike McBeath, one of my cogsci professors, wrote this 1995 short Science
ecological psych article on how fielders catch fly balls.
https://redfish.com/papers/McBeath-BaseballCatch.pdf
In Gibsonian and Turvey ecological language: the fielder does not calculate
trajectories or predict where the ball will land; instead, they visually
couple their locomotion to optical information that specifies the event of
interception. By continuously adjusting their movement to maintain a
constant optical acceleration pattern (the Optical Acceleration
Cancellation strategy), they exploit invariants in the optic flow—the
affordance of catching emerges directly from perceiving how the optical
variables change, not from internal computation or prediction.:
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Stephen Guerin
CEO, Founder
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On Fri, Nov 7, 2025 at 10:43 AM glen <[email protected]> wrote:
> I haven't read the New Yorker article. But the category seems hopelessly
> fraught. Even the 2 "objective" measures I'm aware of (pupil response and
> binocular rivalry) are intertwined with the body. I'm reminded of "motor
> imagery", where imagining some physical action causes similar patterns to
> performing that action, and so-called mirror neuron[al activation].
>
> But we've been here before, right? What does it mean to "do math"? Is the
> outfielder "doing math" when she catches a fly ball? I mean, we know
> missile interceptors are "doing math" ... maybe. Is a Kalman filter
> executing in the on board computer a "mental image". Can one understand
> quantum mechanics without doing the math? Etc.
>
> But I'm attracted to the invocation of analysis. My prof, which I managed
> to retain during all 3 of Anal I, II, & III, was a fan of priming. He'd
> *draw* graduate level concepts on the chalkboard before class, then really
> quickly run through all the jargon as if we understood whatever he was
> yappin' about. Then he'd callously erase the art and get on with what we
> were "supposed" to be learning. Dude was an artist. Full stop.
>
>
> On 11/6/25 3:24 PM, Santafe wrote:
> > I see; thanks Nick,
> >
> > I am happy the expected categories fell apart. But there have been
> occasions when I went looking for categories something like these on my own
> too.
> >
> > In college (which I hit about like a bird flying into a window), as
> sophomores we were taught algebra by Mike Aschbacher, one of the great
> algebraists of the just-past generation. A man who never brought notes,
> wrote every proof spontaneously, and could write on a chalkboard at the
> same speed as he talked.
> >
> > A friend and I — both of us just getting pounded into the ground —
> decided that there were geometric thinkers, who exapted visual thinking,
> and algebraic thinkers, who exapted syntactic thinking. Aschbacher being
> the most syntactically superhuman being we had ever encountered. And we
> decided we were both “algebraically impaired”.
> >
> > In contrast, analysis was straightforward, and always seemed to me to
> have a somewhat visual angle to it, and algebraic topology and differential
> geometry were even better. Although I never tried anything hard in those
> fields, like proving things about more than 3 dimensions. So not sure how
> much visual/geometric skill I have beyond the baseline for primates.
> >
> > I have continued to wonder where one should go to characterize
> “elementary” or “primitive” modalities of cognition, and how to take them
> to assemble into the kinds of synthetic things we call “skills”. Marc
> Hauser once gave some very compelling talks along these lines for
> mathematical reasoning. But since he was found fabricating data some years
> later, I don’t know how much of the earlier stuff I should continue to find
> compelling. It might not have been tainted at all; but I am not in the
> field.
> >
> > It’s a nice topic.
> >
> > Eric
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Nov 6, 2025, at 15:59, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I’m sorry for the misprint. The correct term is aphantasia.
> >>
> >> It took 15 minutes with a handful of people at thuam for the
> categories to break down horribly. My prediction was based on no great
> insite. I had divided the world up into picture people and word people
> assume that our word. I claimed no wisdom here, only prejudices I seem to
> be a.-side myself
> >> Sent from my Dumb Phone
> >>
> >> On Nov 6, 2025, at 1:02 PM, Prof David West <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Yes, please, what Eric asked.
> >>
> >> I would expect most people on this list to tend towards the "hyper,"
> not the "apha."
> >>
> >> davew
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Nov 6, 2025, at 10:38 AM, Santafe wrote:
> >>> That’s interesting, Nick (on limited time here, but just for a while)
> >>>
> >>>> On Nov 6, 2025, at 11:19, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Given the work that many of you do, many of you are candidates for
> "aphatasia"
> >>>
> >>> Can you say more about why you expect a correlation? This is not an
> >>> association that would ever have occurred to me.
> >>>
> >>> Eric
> --
> ¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
> ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα
> σώσω.
>
>
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