this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Why would you think it's stupid to recognize visual patterns?
We're hard wired to be able to recognize human faces and all sorts of meaning behind a single face, from the person's age to their emotional state. We can extend that complex pattern recognition skillset to dog breeds, animals, tree species, fruits, vegetables, paintings, flower types, colors, and all sorts of patterns from the natural world. Even the shape of clouds tell us something about the weather, and the color of a wound can tell us something about how it's healing (or not).
Human-created patterns are easy to memorize, too: letters, numbers, fonts, patterns, fabrics, clothing types, symbols, emojis, warning labels, signs that mean "no smoking" or "emergency exit this way," etc.
So is it that much of a stretch that we can recognize an impressionist painting or an Art Deco building or even specific examples of those, and remember the artist/architect and maybe even things like the year it was created, and where it is physically located? If we're doing that kind of stuff seamlessly with our brains, recognizing a few dozen car models seems trivial in comparison.
Well, not stupid, thats just memetics and a key feature of basically any brains/neural networks, but humans pushed a lot of that into the subconscious levels in favour of simplified info being presented to the conscious thought patterns.
But I can't help it regardless of context not requiring a bit more "technical" info (most is the time useless) that most dont.
A stupid example: "someone was 'hit by a car'/'hit by a Miata'" ... if the convo isnt about how/what/where was broken then the extra info of 'a geometrically lower impact body with probably lower impact force bcs of low weight' is useless from a social pov. Yet I need or wish to know it just to "understand" the info being conveyed (I'm bad at choosing words, but I feel like social interactions without a bit more technical or exact data like that cost me extra energy and it depletes my social batteries quicker).
But everything you said I completely agree with, basically just facts.
Recognise yes, drop it & use it further as an idea is what "I don't want to do as much as possible".
Like numbers you mentioned, most of us can 'understand directly' what 1, 2, or 3 is, but "what" 10 is is already a stretch for most & we just use the idea of 10. Which makes us incredibly more efficient at abstract numbers compared to monkeys which basically have the same brains (just different parts developed differently). But we also lose all the intricate (but useless!) info.
Weird thing about numbers (and such) is that even abstract ideas we tend to perceived them on log scales, just like with more direct external stimuli (such as light, sound, etc and how that gets physically registered and then perceived).