Fuck off asshole!
Or why don’t you have a try at figuring out a coherently answerable interpretation of the OP’s question and answering it instead of taking potshots at someone who has actually tried to be helpful.
Guys, guys. Take it outside.
In my mind, when I look at something, it seems as clear and filled with details as a photograph, however it is said that the information that actually gets sent from the retina isn’t all that good. What would the information that gets sent by the retina look like before the brain made sense of it?
I side with njtt in this dispute. You have my axe.
I guess you mean that there’s no such thing as visual “imagery” per se at all?
I’ve seen a photograph adjusted to represent the raw image the retina sends to the brain.
There is a small central area of fine detail, a larger surrounding area that’s pretty blurry, and a moderately sized blind spot.
Isn’t this what the original question was about?
Yep that’s pretty much it! All I wanted to know was what the image looks like that is captured by the eye and projected onto the retina.
njtt, you are free to think that I am weasling my way out of something and am re-phrasing the question but i’m not. I made it pretty clear (I thought) that the little flow diagram I drew was for the purposes of the question only (i.e. not meant to be accurate). The question remains the same as it has always been, there was some confusion over what I was asking, hence rephrasing it using a simply model to make things clearer.
It’s not that the information “isn’t all that good”, but unlike a photograph or video frame, which is a homogeneous “type” of information (i.e. an array of fixed grains or pixels of the same size and spectral range, analogous to a raster graphics image like a bitmap), the “image data” collected by the retina and sent through the various visual cortices is heterogeneous data; some of it is colors (in different spectral ranges), some fine definition (edges and shapes), some intensity, some movement in discrete directions, et cetera. The image quality isn’t consistent across the entire field of vision; you can capture motion at the side peripheries much better than you can above and below, and even directly in front of you, while the image immediately in front of you has better fine detail definition. This is intentional, as the visual cortex isn’t a recording device, but evolved to provide critical sense information to the cognitive part of the brain in evaluating threats/food/whatever and making decisions.
The brain fills in all of the missing or incomplete image using previous data and inference, as well (as mentioned above) inverting the image and stabilizing it from the rapid motion of the eye. You can experience this directly by tilting your head at various rates; you’ll notice that the image first tilts, and then is corrected to appear upright as the brain integrates the image with equilibrioception input from the vestibular system. This function is called the oculovestibular reflex, and it is why the world doesn’t appear like a Paul Greengrass “shakycam” film as you’re walking down the street.
njtt offered a detailed explanation of both how the brain interprets visual information and why the question as posed by the o.p. can’t be answered as is. I’m not sure what your specific behavioral dysfunctionality is, but you need to take your trolling somewhere else.
Stranger
[Moderator Warning]
njtt, as you know insults are not permitted in General Questions. This is an official warning.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
No “official warning” for Koxinga, whose blatant baiting and transparently veiled insults sparked the response?
Stranger
[Moderator Warning]
Stranger On A Train, you also know that insults and accusations of trolling don’t belong in General Questions. This is an official warning.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Patience, I’m reading through the thread. And you know that if you see a problem with another’s post, the correct response is to report it, not insult them.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
[Moderator Notes]
njtt, being knowledgeable about a subject doesn’t excuse the kind of snarkiness you’ve been showing in this thread. If you believe another poster is being “churlish” or insulting, report the post. You’ve been a poster here for a long time. It’s only recently that I’ve noticed you coming out with this degree of snark. You need to dial it back.
Koxinga, the kind of baiting you’ve been doing here is not acceptable either. Don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
So, instead of taking the minimal amount of time it would require to trace back through the chain of quotes and see what would compel a poster who expended the effort to compose multiple posts of extended length and detail content to lash out, you immediately shotgun the last respondent?
I’m well aware that there is a prohibition against acknowledging even the most obvious trolling and baiting behavior. I’m also aware that there is a consistent group of posters who are permitted to consistently offer up their own particularly scented flavor of excrement into even the most objective of discussions with the clear intent of insulting other posters and disrupting discussions without the slightest attempt at effective corrective action on the part of moderators despite the general rule of “Don’t be a jerk.” There was no call or excuse for the responses in this thread by Koxinga which offered no factual or corrective content whatsoever and were purely intended as insults.
Stranger
You’d see a rather smaller area than you’d think. Near the middle just off to the side would be a blind spot. The resolution would drop off as you get to the edges and so would colorization. Even worse, things that you think are red in color would actually appear to be greenish yellow. (Your red cone is actually tuned to yellow-green light and not red as in birds and reptiles). And, as you move from one type of light to another, colors of various objects would constantly be shifting. In incandescent light, your skin would turn more orangish. In florescent light, it would take on a greenish tone.
Staring at my computer screen at the browser where I am typing this and trying not to look elsewhere (it’s not that easy). I can tell you that my vision is very limited. I can read a few lines up and down and a few words around where I type. However, I can’t make out the words in the rest of this text box. Outside the browser window, I can see shapes on my desktop, but can’t make them out. It’s not they look like blobs. It’s that I am aware they’re there, but have no idea what they look like or what color they are. Outside of my computer screen. I can’t really make out much of what is going on.
I see something moving, but can’t make out its shape. It could be a bear looking for some slow moving human being to eat, or it could be my cat moving back into the sunlit spot on the floor.
However, your eye isn’t a camera. You have certain neurons that pick up shapes, faces, and movement. Your eyes are constantly on the move and your brain pieces together the information. You don’t see an actual visual representation. Instead, you get something even better. Someone walks into a room, and certain neurons fire that they recognize a face, your eyes automatically turn for a brief microsecond to examine the face with the middle of the field of vision, and then quickly turn back to what you were previously looking at. If that person is familiar, you’re vision itself becomes infused with emotions. All this is done so quickly that you are not even conscious that it is going on.
And, we haven’t even covered blind sight yet. Your visual processes take place in two areas of your brain. One is the conscious area where you’re busy interpreting shapes. The other is an unconscious area which tries to determine one of three things: Is something that I see something I should run way from, eat, or have sex with?
As I said before, I could see something moving, but couldn’t tell you if it was a bear or a cat, but that was only consciously. Unconsciously, my brain was processing that movement and deciding if it should take such action as make me run away screaming like a coward, or whether it was merely my cat (a good source of protein), or whether it might be Rachel Leigh Cook who is looking for something to eat and is willing to have sex with me. If more processing was needed, my brain would have me look at it for a brief second.
In his book Phantoms on the Brain, V. S. Ramachandran talks about a case of sight blindness. He was asking a woman who was blind what he was holding in his hand. She said to him, of course she couldn’t see it, and grabbed it out of Ramachandran’s hand to identify it.
But, how did she know where it was? She couldn’t see it! It turns out she is sight blind, and she could see it but not consciously. Other sight blind patients are able to negotiate a room full of obstacles without bumping into anything, and even identify which picture of a house is not on fire. (The patients were told there were two pictures of houses in front of them, and which one they’d like to approach. The patients couldn’t “see” the pictures, but always identified the one not on fire as the better one.
You really can’t use the camera analogy. Your eyes have evolved with your brain to be adequate for their job. Since we humans are visual creatures, our eyes are better than most other mammals. Our eyes aren’t merely windows, but use all sorts of tricks to help us interpret what is out there, and our brain, mainly unconsciously processes those images to give us a representation of the world that might not be 100% accurate in fidelity, but is superior in many ways to a mere snapshot.
I issued warnings to the most blatant offenses first. And nothing “compels” anyone to call another poster an “asshole,” nor to accuse them them of trolling, no matter how detailed or knowledgeable their posts have been.
False. You can report the post. You can open a Pit thread. You just can’t insult them in GQ.
If you had reported Koxinga’s posts before you and njtt decided offer your insults, I would have issued him a mod note to knock it off (which is something I regularly do in such cases).
If you have any further comments on my moderation, you are welcome to take them to ATMB.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
So, two posters who provided serious, extensive, researched responses to the question by the o.p. are issued “Official Warning”, while a poster who provided zero content and responded with nothing but snark and thinly-veiled invective rates the same “knock it off” that he gets every time he derails a thread like this?
It is no wonder the signal-to-noise ratio on this board has dropped to barely perceivable proportions.
Stranger
(Quote deletes portions not commenting on)
I think you are misinterpreting the OP’s statement. It seems obvious to me that you are both saying the same thing, except the OP doesn’t know quite the most technically correct way to phrase it, and is unaware of some of the extra details (which is why they asked). “Brain” is just shorthand for ‘whatever neurological processing is involved’. “Vision/final image” seems synonymous with your “conscious visual experience”, which itself is certainly a sort of “terminus”, even if it’s not neatly confined to a specific physical area. “Transmitting information” is not somehow the polar opposite of “transmitting an image”. If someone says they are emailing you a picture, it’s obvious that a physical photograph isn’t being sent through wires, but rather a series of electrons in a pattern that can later be reinterpreted as an image file. So with regards to those issues, I don’t think you are clearing up any actual huge misunderstanding, but rather just refining proper terminology.
It seems the interesting things that have been mentioned that were actually relevant and enlightening include:
- There is not a strict divide between the eye and brain, and the eye itself does some of the processing
- More information is sent to the next step than just hue/saturation/brightness
- The final ‘experience’, besides various ‘single frame’ enhancements, also includes enhancements built up from longer time ranges and ‘stitching’ together multiple images to form a richer larger ‘picture’
- There are all sorts of ‘deficiencies’ (or efficiencies if you look at it a certain way) in the retina, from detail only being available in a focused area, and the existence of the blind spot.
This was a fascinating article in Scientific American on the subject and included simulations of what the eye literally “sees” vs the image the brain creates from the signal. You have to pay to see the full article, but I think it will be a good complement to some of the observations provided in this thread.
Two posters who blatantly violated GQ rules by explicitly insulting another poster or accusing him of trolling got warnings. Giving serious answers does not give anyone a free pass to violate board rules. I don’t know why you think it should.
If I see him doing the same thing again I’ll issue him a warning. If you see him doing the same thing again, PLEASE REPORT THE POST rather than violating board rules.
Once again, if you have any further comments on this, take it to ATMB.
Colibri