Visual Intelligence How We Create What We See Donald D. Hoffman

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Visual IntelligenceHow We Create What We
SeeDonald D. Hoffman

• Chapter 1
• A Creative Genius for Vision

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• Ben

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Sarah
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Muneeb
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We do not realize how we interpret the world

• Creative genius
• Visual virtuoso

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Without exception, everything you see you
construct

• Color, shading, texture, motion, shape, visual
  objects, and entire visual scenes.
• For example...

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Magic Eye Books Stereovision

• Parallel-Viewing
• 3D illusions such as the Magic Eye
• Looking through or past the object (a window)
• Vision does not focus directly at image

• Normal Viewing
• Focus on the thing you want to see
• Vision comes to a focused point at the object or
  image

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Hint Elephant
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The Ripple

• 2D surface
• Impossible to view as flat
• Visual system not only fabricates the ripple, it
  endows it with pats
• Illusion works right side up or upside down

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The Magic Square
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The Impossible Triangle
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Wavy Lines
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Difficult to focus?
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(No Transcript)
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Hexagon or a Cube?
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Phenomenal vs. Relational

• Phenomenal Sense
• The way things look to you.
• Hallucinations of pink elephants

• Relational Sense
• What you interact with when you look
• A thing must exist to be seen in the relational
  sense.

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QuestionsFight Club Is Brad Pitt Relational or
Phenomenal

• Is it necessary to classify our vision into
  Relational and Phenomenal?
• Is there truly a difference in what we think we
  see and what we interact with?

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The User-Friendly Icon Interface

• Our vision and the icon metaphor

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The Icon Metaphor

• On the computer screen there are many icons
  representing many different things in the
  computer. These icons allow us to interact with
  the information.

• Similarly, our visual experiences serve as our
  user-friendly icon interface with those things we
  relationally see.

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Is the Icon Metaphor True?

• Is this disk in my hand really the disk I am
  interacting with?
• OR is it merely an icon representation of
  something else that I am really interacting with?
• Is this something that I am interacting with,
  even really in this place?
• OR is this just an icon representation I am using
  to access something in a different location of
  space?
• Just as the icon on this computer screen allows
  me to interact the information of a given file.

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Icon Metaphor Continuation

• Is the disk really a disk when you are not
  perceiving it?
• Is the disk that I perceive, numerically
  identical to the one you perceive?

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Semivision The vision of Animals Adrian
Horridge

• Gold fish have four color receptors
• Honeybees see ultraviolet light
• Flies use visual motion
• Day old chicks can discriminate shapes
• Animals vision serve many different purposes

• Of all the species on earth and throughout time,
  how can we be sure our vision is the correct one?

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To construct is the essence of vision.

• -Don Hoffman

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The fundamental problem of vision

• The image at the eye has countless possible
  interpretations

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How do all children learn to see in the same way?

• The Rules of Universal Vision and Visual
  Processing

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The Rule of Universal Vision

• Innate rules which grant visual mastery and lead
  to consensus in the visual constructions despite
  ambiguity
• Everyone constructs the same vision (with or
  without the same interpretation)
• Part of the childs biology, and allows the child
  to acquire, through visual experiences that might
  vary from one culture to another, the rules of
  visual processing
• Similar to Noam Chomskys innate language
  principles

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The Rule of Visual Processing

• Allows interpretation of what is constructed,
  based on prior experience
• Allow the visually competent child or adult to
  construct specific visual scenes by looking
• Similar to Noam Chomskys rules of universal
  grammar

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The rules are the key