how many THINGS can one person see?

[nokhor]

the question i am asking is kinda hard to explain for me, so it may go through convoluted loops to say exactly what i mean. there has to be an upper limit to the amount of distinct things that a person can see and i want to know what that number is. i can't visualize a million. i don't think anybody can. i visualize many many separate objects, as many as i can, and then i just tack the noun 'million' on the amount i can visualize. but the total amount i can visualize is nowhere near that. it is probably in the thousands if not hundreds. and by visualization i mean a still image like a photograph or a capture frame. i don't mean like a sweeping panoramic view or a motion picture where the objects i am contemplating fade out of view at one edge of the viewing area as similar objects pop into view at the other end of the viewing area. but there has to be a specific number or range of numbers that is the upper limit of how many distinct things a human being can visualize, and i want to know what that number is. i have no idea what discipline that would fall under, or how to even begin searching for it. which is why i posted it here. sorry i couldn't be more concise.

[Togakure]

hey mon, quit bogartin' dat ... thingie ma jig [as the PG-13 monitor zeros in overhead] !! Keep a cool head an' pass it on, pass it on ... . Plenty of time for doz babylon musings of yers now ... . Lemme get it da right mindspace firs m8, or I canna relay it.

[fffffffffffffff-fff-ff-f ... ... ... ACHHHHHH-ACH-ACCHHHH]

ahhh ... sh*t mon :dizzy2: ... back atcha laterz I tink ... [clonk]

zzzzzzzz ... [dream-visualizes millions and millions of Doritos]

[Togakure]

Some friends of mine who practice meditation (Zen and Sufism) focus on one thing, visualizing one thing, and in turn are supposedly, with much practice, able to perceive many things. My very limited understanding is that focusing on a single thing quiets the mind and enables it to--eventually--perceive the nature of reality: everything.

Personally I don't think there is a specific number that applies to all humans. I think it would be different depending on the perceptive abilities of each individual. And the phenomenon I described above suggests that it is quite a bit more complex in yet a different way.

I am curious--why are you pondering this?

[Byzantine Prince]

I think it's obvious that he's on drugs. No sane person would think about this kind of thing. ~;)

Seriously though I think it all depends on your brain. I heard about this guy who's vision was so concentrated that he could see every single detail on everything he was starring at. He was born this way i think, it's not like he did something to bring this to himself. It's not quite the same thing but it's similar. The point is the mind can be very infinite in it's powers. Hopefully one day we'll get to experience that somehow.

[Ironside]

The numbers of things you can see without define it as many (or start to count) is between 5-7. Most animals are in that number and very few animals can see more (usually 8).

On the question of how many things you can visualize, I've got no idea, but I suspect that it varies alot, when considering that training have a quite big effect.


I heard about this guy who's vision was so concentrated that he could see every single detail on everything he was starring at. He was born this way i think, it's not like he did something to bring this to himself. It's not quite the same thing but it's similar. The point is the mind can be very infinite in it's powers. Hopefully one day we'll get to experience that somehow.

Do you know why that condition is rare? The brain has problems handling it, as a big part of handling the information is to remove the irrelevant parts. The brain gets too much information and cannot simply handle the input in a good way. So it's not something to strive for, unless you got extreme control of it (like shifting, into different modes).

[Beirut]

Ah, my kind of thinking. And if you don't mind, I'l take it a step further.

I had this thought a while back (and it's very possible I was not stoned at the time); how many time periods can a person see at once.

Allow me to explain. You are always seeing the thing you are looking at as it was in the past, given the distance divided by the speed of light. If you look at the moon, you see it as it was about two seconds ago, if you look at the sun (ouch!), you see it as it was about eight minutes ago. If you look at the chick across the street, you see her as she was about 1/50,000 of a second ago.

Now, how many pasts can you see and understand at once? I was walking down the street having this thought, thinking that I was seeing a hundred different objects in a hundred different variations of the past. I'm seeing the leaf on the tree as it was in a past that is different from the sidwalk under my feet, and that past is different from the building down the road. You see what I'm getting at.

Then I talked to some some, and now I'm seeing these same hundred different past variations while talking to someone and knowing that given the speed of light and the speed of sound, what I heard was not truly in sync with what I saw. His words were 1/5000 of a second in the past (let's say) but he, as I was seeing him, was 1/5,000,000 of a second in the past. And then add in the time it takes for my brain to absorb what he was saying.... it was like I was stuck in a temporal soup. I swear I nearly fell down while thinking about it. :dizzy2: "Plop!"

Anyone else ever have a "moment of clarity" like this?

[Togakure]

Hehe .. very entertaining ~:). No it's been quite a long time since I've had such a moment--I don't have any connections up here so I've been not high and dry for a very long time now. Dammit! :embarassed:

[English assassin]

I heard about this guy who's vision was so concentrated that he could see every single detail on everything he was starring at. He was born this way i think, it's not like he did something to bring this to himself. It's not quite the same thing but it's similar. The point is the mind can be very infinite in it's powers.

This isn't quite the same thing either, fellow space cadets, but if you haven't already read it may I recommend "Funes the Memorious" by Jorge Luis Borges? Its a short story about a man who can never forget anything. Needless to say he finds this an intolerable burden.


Anyone else ever have a "moment of clarity" like this?

Not really, but I did get very confused as a kid when I realised the brain never perceives the world directly as it is, but only through sense data, and that the data could easily be inaccurate or misinterpreted. Which incidentally, Beruit may give us an answer to your qu, namely that you only ever perceive one moment of time, which is the arrival of all that sense data at your eyeballs. You might then attribute thwe origins of that data to events taking place at different times but that is a different matter going on inside your skull.

But the trouble with saying this is a psychologist is going to swing by and tell us that the brain's perception of time is pretty freaky stuff anyway.

Oh, and while we are wigging out, how can you tell that a second today lasts as long as a second did yesterday? That one really bugs me.

[Sjakihata]

Just count to one while looking at your watch.

[Togakure]

If you would perceive the nature of reality people, you must STOP THINKING! Achieve this and all of your questions will be answered.

http://truthisone.org/docs/insights/mind-is-the-obstacle.htm

[KukriKhan]

Memory. The tool we use to percieve the very, very, very recent past (sometimes known as 'the here and now'). When it is gone - as in an Alzheimer's sufferer - we may have achieved oneness with reality, but we've lost the ability to know it, as we no longer have that artificial construct of reality to use to guide us through the changes perceived since that construct was decided on.

I remember having a Carlos Casteneda moment in my 20's when it dawned on me that each individual human makes up their reality (or construct of it) as they go along; no one more accurate than another, all of them guesses.

Nowadays, it just makes me smile. ~:)

[Togakure]

Yup, me too. :smile:

[Sjakihata]

When each individual creates his/her own reality, does it then not render discussion useless? Instead of discussion it should be dialogue - so we can exchange certain information, and if the targeted individual does not accept / believe we should not judge them.

[Togakure]

Well, my take is, each individual has his or her own perception of reality, but there is an absolute reality that stands apart despite how anyone/anything chooses to perceive it. I see "enlightenment" as the ability to accurately and consistently perceive this absolute reality and understand it.

I have always enjoyed what you describe as dialogue, as opposed to what typically goes on in the Backroom. So many seem to need to prove themselves right, prove others wrong, convince others to adopt their point of view. It gets tedious.

[Sjakihata]

Toga, you do believe in an absolute truth. Do you also think then, that individuals exposed to the truth will be able to reckognize it, if not it would be frightning, no?

[Togakure]

Hmm ... have to think about that before I respond. I need to run some errands anyway so I'll get back to you a bit later.

[Byzantine Prince]

In my personal opinion we are actually just anybody but we take roles because of our animal sides. We don't need to have a style or anything. All we need is to exist. The mind is blank until you add a bunch a crap in it. If you clear yourself then you'll be free. Only logic should exist. Logic solves itself. Once you look at the outside world forget everything you ever knew, just use logic and "see" the future by yourself.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Well, when you take those IQ tests, they have the spatial reasoning problems with the dice and such...or the cube that has been unfolded and has different symbols on each side and you have to say which of the cubes pictured would result from folding up that sheet. Those never gave me much trouble. But the more complicated ones, the dodecagons and the like, were really hard. That should give some indication of how many different things you can visualize. All depends on the person naturally.

[Kraellin]

well, let's define what you mean by 'visualization' first. these terms tend to get confused a bit, so a bit of definition would be in order. if you're talking about memory let's call it recall. you can recall a picture of something, a field, a house, or whatever. but if you're talking about a mental image picture that you create, let's call it a mock-up. you're mocking it up, creating it and looking at it. thus, we're dividing up the two types of what i think you're calling 'visualization', one being a recall or memory and the other being one you create, a mock-up.

both are similar in nature, being mental image pictures. it's just that one is recalled from memory, which is a sort of automatic mock-up maker, making images all the time on auto-pilot, and the other is something you create by your own volition in present time. artists do this all the time. they'll 'mock-up' an image as a guide to what they wish to paint. they see it in their mind. they create it in their mind. this is typically, or simply what we call 'imagination'. one can imagine a red ball in your own mind and see it. this is a mock-up. one could also recall having seen a red ball in the past and see it again in the mind. one could even mock up a red ball, unmock it and then recall having mocked it up and see that. get's tricky, doesnt it :)

now, if by 'visualization' you are talking about mocking up items to see, i doubt there is a limit to this. and certainly, if you saw a million grains of sand on a beach, you could also recall having seen them and thus could 'visualize' or recall having seen them.

i suspect, however, that what you may be trying to ask here is not the seeing of items in your mind, but conceiving the numbers involved; wrapping your head around what a million is by 'seeing' it. i've talked to folks before that have trouble getting the concept of what a million is, as if this were an abstract or something. it's like they're trying to 'hold' within their mind, a million things, and conceptually grasp this many things as a whole. and if that's the case, it's not that hard to do, but it does take some practice.

the secret is to do one. do this until you can do it comfortably. just mock up one of something, a grain of sand, a dot, a ball, whatever. then do two. do that till you can do it comfortably, then do 4. as you climb up the scale of numbers, it's sometimes easier to compartmentalize these things. put 10 balls in a box in your mind and hold it till you can do that, then double the number of boxes with 10 balls. at any time you feel you can handle it, raise the number of balls in each box. make it 20 in each, 100 in each and so on. raise the number in each box and raise the number of boxes. when you can do this comfortably with a million (or whatever number you set), you'll 'grasp' what a million truly is.

i used to do this with large soybean fields or corn fields. i'd try to imagine how many kernals of corn or number of beans in the field there were by both observiing the fields in reality and then within my mind. it's staggering how high you can actually go. a billion is actually a rather small number when you start dealing with values which exist in this universe... or even with soybeans extant in a field :)

and one last note on this; you'll tend to find after a while, that these values tend to be more related to space than to matter when you start getting into larger numbers. just something i've noticed.

K.

[A.Saturnus]

the question i am asking is kinda hard to explain for me, so it may go through convoluted loops to say exactly what i mean. there has to be an upper limit to the amount of distinct things that a person can see and i want to know what that number is. i can't visualize a million. i don't think anybody can. i visualize many many separate objects, as many as i can, and then i just tack the noun 'million' on the amount i can visualize. but the total amount i can visualize is nowhere near that. it is probably in the thousands if not hundreds. and by visualization i mean a still image like a photograph or a capture frame. i don't mean like a sweeping panoramic view or a motion picture where the objects i am contemplating fade out of view at one edge of the viewing area as similar objects pop into view at the other end of the viewing area. but there has to be a specific number or range of numbers that is the upper limit of how many distinct things a human being can visualize, and i want to know what that number is. i have no idea what discipline that would fall under, or how to even begin searching for it. which is why i posted it here. sorry i couldn't be more concise.


The discipline this belongs to is called general psychology. As Ironside already said, you can keep about 5 "objects" in your mind at a time. More precise, we speak about 5 "chunks". Such a chunk can be anything, for example the texture of sand. You cannot imagine every piece of sand at once, instead they all together form one chunk. Chunks can be quite complex things, but when you see it as one chunk, all its details become "fuzzy". If you start to think about these details the chunk dissolves into its parts which become then chunks of their own.



Then I talked to some some, and now I'm seeing these same hundred different past variations while talking to someone and knowing that given the speed of light and the speed of sound, what I heard was not truly in sync with what I saw. His words were 1/5000 of a second in the past (let's say) but he, as I was seeing him, was 1/5,000,000 of a second in the past. And then add in the time it takes for my brain to absorb what he was saying.... it was like I was stuck in a temporal soup. I swear I nearly fell down while thinking about it. "Plop!"

It's actually more mind-boggling than you think. Lets say you see a character. You have the impression that your conscious perception is formed instantly, but that is not so. Of course, as you already said, the light takes some time from the object to your eyes. It further takes several milliseconds from the retina to reach your brain. And then it gets complicated. You would assume that even though delayed, at least everything is ordered nicely in time. But in fact, things that happen after seeing something can influence what you saw. If the character is exposed for about 50 milliseconds, you would normally be able to see it. But not when the exposure of the character is followed by another shape at the same place shortly afterwards. We call that masking. That means the mask, which is shown after the stimulus, suppresses the perception of the stimulus. But it gets even worse.
If you look for 50 milliseconds at a stimulus (again, that's enough to identify a simple object such as a character) and then the stimulus jumps to a different place in your visual field so that you have to make an eye-movement, you cannot notice essential changes to the stimulus. But if the stimulus disappears the moment you make the eyemovement for 50 ms, then you will be able to notice the same change!

If that doesn't drive you crazy, study psychology. And if it does, do it too.

[Quietus]

First of all, vision is different from imagination.

Vision comes from light sources. If you close your eyes, no light, no image.

How many cars can fit in a highway? How much light can the eye take at the same time?

What you see is simply an interpretation of your mind - in real time - through light sources. If you have a stain in your clothes and bleached it, it doesn't mean those stains are gone, they are still there (and must wash it with detergents). The chemical composition was just altered that when light hits it, all the wavelengths bounces back (i.e. sum of all colors is white).

[Tachikaze]

I once visualized 72,438 objects, but that was after a good night's sleep and some really potent curry. It would have been 72,439, but one object was blocking my view of another.

[Navaros]

how many things a person can see is directly related to the state of one's vitreous and other components of the eye, which is different for everyone.

visual perception really is "in the eye of the beholder"

just be thankful that you guys can see things without floaters driving you nuts, like they do to me.

i see dozens and dozens of floaters interferring with my vision most of the time. for me personally i'd wish that those were things that i could not see. i'd give anything to keep that crap out of my vision permanently. they are a plague.

sometimes it's better to not wish to see too many things at once. ~:eek: