I was looking at one of those "separated at birth " websites, and it occurred to me that there ought to be a finite number of facial types-perhaps about 1000?
Anyway, has anyone ever calculated this? And, are the calculations accurate?
I don’t know if OP’s question has a good answer. But there is a closely related question which is interesting. Consider these 24 faces from this project. These are eigenfaces – the 24 most “principal components” of a face database. By blending these 24 faces in different proportions you can approximate any face!
(Nothing special about 24 – use fewer or more eigenfaces, as you like. Also this is just the first Google hit on eigenface; I think this is a very popular project at universities.)
Since there are a finite number of human genetic combinations, there can be only a finite number of human faces, ignoring non-genetic affects.
This might have been worth saying if non-genetic effects played no role, or only a negligible one, in determining what people’s faces look like, which, of course, is not the case. Heck, even affect has an effect on how your face looks.
Yes, but if you’re effecting an affect, you can’t predict how the effect will be affected. Or what verbs will be nouned.