this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
469 points (96.8% liked)

Today I Learned

17019 readers
852 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/2916897

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/science by /u/mvea on 2024-05-15 10:17:06+00:00.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cynar@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Not op, but I have a very weak ability to visualise. The data is more abstracted. A map is a set of spacial connections that define an area. My brain has learnt to pull that from a map. What I can't do is recall the map to figure out additional information. If my brain didn't think it was relevant when I looked at it, the information is likely gone.

There are definitely pros and cons to it. I'm not limited to what I could visualise, when thinking. This lets me dig deeper into more complex ideas and patterns. It also makes other tasks a lot harder. I struggle a lot with faces and appearances.

As for the dogs, I have an abstracted "model" in my mind. The size and breed of the dogs is undefined. There are 2 dog entities in my mind. 1 brown, which is quite generic, the other has pink attached to it, that cross links it with poodles etc.

I can personally push it to a visualisation, but it takes significant mental effort, and the results are unstable.

[–] folkrav@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So you basically visualize maps as graphs? You’re the human equivalent of the A* algorithm!

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's spacially based. It makes more sense in 3D. It's just as compatible with echolocation as visual data. (The soundscape of a room tells you a LOT about your surroundings). I believe it's based within my visual system, just stripped of the superfluous visualisations. Interestingly, I can actually map mathematics into the same structures.

I'm doing a piss poor job of explaining it. Language lacks the nuance to describe it well, and I lack the skill to bend it into shape.

[–] MeThisGuy@feddit.nl 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

next question: how many times would you have to walk a new space (like a house) to remember it?

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

I can remember it fairly quickly. My spacial sense is particularly good. I can easily get a sense of negative space (hidden rooms etc) as well as good predictive skills. My personal problem is when maps get large or don't overlap. It's either mapped well, or not. It can take me a while to join up multiple smaller sub maps in my mind. (Think office or stadium sized spaces).

[–] Today@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

I can remember the layout and draw it, but can't see it in my head. Building layout is very concrete and is easy to know things like 'My office is at the end of the hall on the third floor.' When asked to describe a person I'm limited to very basic descriptions - short/tall, heavy/thin, black/white. My coworkers were making fun of me recently because i described someone as tall, maybe white, possibly red hair.

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not the OP either but my brain seems to work the same way that yours and theirs do. I'd say you did a good job of describing how it works for people like us.

One difference though is that you don't seem to have the visual recall that I do. I don't have a "photographic" memory but I could probably recall the hypothetical map as a visual object and examine it for additional information that I didn't notice the first time.

I can personally push it to a visualisation, but it takes significant mental effort, and the results are unstable.

You may actually be better at this than I am. Describing my results as "unstable" would charitable. I also don't get dog breeds, just amorphous and blurry blobs with rorsarch like colors slapped on them.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

I also don't get dog breeds, just amorphous and blurry blobs with rorsarch like colors slapped on them.

That's akin to what I get. The core structure is there, but it's almost a sense of what should be there. It's akin to seeing things out of the corner of your eye, while overtired. Your brain tells you what it is, and you accept it, it doesn't necessarily match what you are actually 'seeing'.

I 'know' how dogs move, I 'know' their body structure. I can force that down to a single image, but it wants to be so much more. All the senses of 'dogness' compressed into a single entity.