is what we see, what we see?

[TimbaLanD]

Ok, imagine that we have glasses on say 5x magnification and everything we see is proportional to what we see. Now say we put on –5x glasses on and we see things smaller but they are all proportional. How do we know what we see is the actual size? Am I making sense here? Can anyone here understand what I am saying?

[BhavinB]

The concept of 'size' is based on some reference we hold. So as long as we see the reference and the object in the same proportions, then it doesn't really matter how our eyes magnify / minify.

[swansont]

As BhavinB said, it's always a measurement with regard to some reference. There is no such thing as an absolute length measurement, according to relativity.

[reor]

... Am I making sense here? Can anyone here understand what I am saying?

Er... hmm... well... yes. No. What was the question? :D

 

If you're talking about what i think you do, then my friend, you're on the right way. (Or on drugs?) You may have the chance to understand the true nature of reality.

[TimbaLanD]

But how do we know the actual size? Say if our eyes were designed as seeing 10 times the normal size, we would see everything 10 times bigger, but actually it could be 10 times smaller in the real world (?) I need to get my head around this!! I think I need to be spoon fed on this one!

[CharonY]

10 times smaller than what? As stated above, without a point of reference relative measurements are meaningless.

[TimbaLanD]

Now are you able to explain that in plain English? )

 

Ok, I think I have confused everyone and I just can’t seem to get my thoughts into words.

 

Say X sees things twice the size as to Y sees things and Z is observing both X’s and Y’s point of view and concludes that what X saw was twice the size as to what Y saw. But what is the actual size despite what they saw?

 

This is actually harder to explain than I thought!!! (

[CharonY]

Well, how do X and Z know that what they see is half as large as Y?

Let's assume that there is an object with the length of 1 m. If asked how long it is all three will respond 1m, right?

[Cloud]

Y sees the object as 1m in length. X sees it as 2m in length

 

So this would make Y the reference - wysiwyg

 

whilst X is "whay you see is twice what you get" (wysitwyg).

 

Ok, I'm now confused???

[TimbaLanD]

Answer this..

 

Everyone in this world dies. 1000 years go by… God comes down and resurrects everyone but before he resurrects everyone he gives everyone 2x magnification eyes.

 

Say we forget how we saw the world in our previous life!! Will we wake up and carry on as normal??

 

Will we carry on as normal although our eyes see things twice as large and we would think this is normal but actually it was twice as small in our previous life!! Have I lost you?

[BhavinB]

Maybe what you mean is our angle of view might be minimized. In that sense, yes, we'd notice that we can see less in either direction.

 

But everything will seem larger, even our ruler. So ofcourse everything would still measure to the same values.

[GutZ]

Answer this..

 

Everyone in this world dies. 1000 years go by… God comes down and resurrects everyone but before he resurrects everyone he gives everyone 2x magnification eyes.

 

Say we forget how we saw the world in our previous life!! Will we wake up and carry on as normal??

 

Will we carry on as normal although our eyes see things twice as large and we would think this is normal but actually it was twice as small in our previous life!! Have I lost you?

 

Yeah I believe it would. Since everything you see would be double it's size, but we calculate in our mind how big something is compared to some thing else (reference). Take a car for example. With nothing around you can't know how big it actually is. On earth we can grasp it's by comparing it to it's surroundings. Like the distance from you to the car, or a nearby tree.

 

If you didn't have these things you couldn't know for sure. It may seem small like lets say a star, but it's so far away it only appears to be small, while in actual fact it's a lot larger then it seems.

 

So if we had double the maginifaction I don't think it would change much since your comparing to the surrounds that are also double the size. Like take a basketball court with players that are 4 feet tall. Double the size of the court, players, and the distance from the court it should appear to be the same even though the players and the court are much larger. You need that reference though like swasont said, I believe that's what he meant that there is no absolute length. It just seems that way because we are use to a pretty stationary reference such as the earth.

 

Does this have anything to do with how light acts over distance? It has to do something with light since our eye gets information from light so....

[kenshin]

Maybe what you mean is our angle of view might be minimized. In that sense' date=' yes, we'd notice that we can see less in either direction.

 

But everything will seem larger, even our ruler. So ofcourse everything would still measure to the same values.[/quote']

 

I beg to disagree.Try this with something that you can touch,something which is not very small,say a marble.See it through a magnifing glass.You will see it enlarged.Now,you try to touch it at it's boundry.What will happen.You won't feel the marble as edge is not actually there.(hope I make sense).Simillarly,if you see everything twice it's size,say a piller which is one feet long will look equal to two feet,but when you will try to touch it's top,there is no top as your hand is at 2 feet but pillar's top is at one feet.

(again hope that I make some sence).

 

Putting it more concretly,if a measurement is to be correct,then it has to be same with all the possible ways of measurement(based on the same standered).

[Mokele]

Oh, gods, such profundity on something so simple.

 

There is an external world out there which we interact with. In order to more effectively do so, we have evolved numerous senses which gather information about the external world.

 

Obviously, it is in the best interest of the organism to integrate the aquired data into as accurate an understanding of the world around it as possible (since failure to do so would result in walking off cliffs and the like). Therefore we have evolved a complex neural system which integrates the gathered data to form a reasonably accurate picture of the world around us.

 

Basically, we know what we see is actual size (or close to it) because hundreds of millions of years of evolution have gone into refining our ability to accurately understand the external world via sensory information. Any system that was majorly inaccurate would have had seriously deleterious consequences and been immediately supplanted by a more accurate system.

 

Mokele

[BhavinB]

I beg to disagree.Try this with something that you can touch' date='something which is not very small,say a marble.See it through a magnifing glass.You will see it enlarged.Now,you try to touch it at it's boundry.What will happen.You won't feel the marble as edge is not actually there.(hope I make sense).Simillarly,if you see everything twice it's size,say a piller which is one feet long will look equal to two feet,but when you will try to touch it's top,there is no top as your hand is at 2 feet but pillar's top is at one feet.

(again hope that I make some sence).

 

Putting it more concretly,if a measurement is to be correct,then it has to be same with all the possible ways of measurement(based on the same standered).[/quote']

 

This is a very hard conclusion to come about.

Our eyes are not magnifying glasses. A magnifying glass has terrible spherical abberation, depth of focus and numerical aperature. In comparison our eyes have variable lenses, greater numerical aperature and post processing (through our brains). So what we see is slightly compensated for in our brains.

Therefore, your simple answer is not correct without more evidence as to the similarities of an eye and magnifying glass.

[Rocket Man]

measurement is based on true distances, ie 1m = the wavelength of krypton.

 

the way we see things, size is relative to everything else, it's learned.

a good example is that we see inverted images, the brain processes that and takes key details, "down" isnt even important, all that is is important is that down is the opposite of up every thing else is relative.

 

the brain is a relational network, if you lived with lenses, you'd quickly learn to get by, the brain doesnt work in numbers, it works in relatives and past experiences. two eyes give depth perception, projection size on the retina is compared with past experiences.

 

there is no math involved in reaching for an object, it's trial and error, there's a rough guess before you reach for it but when you actually go for it, you fine tune the approach.

 

supposing your lenses had a magnification gradient, 2 - 0.5 up to down, you'll learn how to recognise relative distances between different the magnifications. given time, you might even be able to play a competitive ball game as if the lenses weren't there. the brain learns how to extract the same key details from the new images as it did with the old ones.

[TimbaLanD]

This is all very technical but I am actually asking a simple question here. I understand I have confused everyone in the process. I am sorry!

 

This is what I was thinking. Remember what I said about if our eyes were 2x magnified, we would see the world twice the size including our selves. If we see a marble on the floor we will reach out and pick it up. Because we see our hands as twice the size and the marble as twice the size we would pick things up as normal. We will not even know that we are seeing things in 2x magnification.

 

Another way to think about this is, just imagine how we see the world now. We see normal and now think of this normal viewing of the world is actually 2x magnification.

 

Another way to think about this is, imagine if everything we see is actually twice the size and the way we see things is -2x magnification, so we will see things as we see now, right?

 

Does anyone understand what I am trying to say here??? My head is going CRAZY!!!

[mr d]

hello

 

a quick answer would be anything we see is normal size, for our particular vision parameters. if you were born with eyes that saw at 10x what you have then would be your normal vision. size of objects- distance is a devise designed by humans for reference. also if you were to put on a pair of 10x googles and where them about, your understanding of what you saw would adjust to take that in as your normal vision.

 

mr d

[TimbaLanD]

hello

 

a quick answer would be anything we see is normal size' date=' for our particular vision parameters. if you were born with eyes that saw at 10x what you have then would be your normal vision. size of objects- distance is a devise designed by humans for reference. also if you were to put on a pair of 10x googles and where them about, your understanding of what you saw would adjust to take that in as your normal vision.

 

mr d[/quote']

That is exactly what i am looking for!!! ) BUT then, the size of something is not actually the size of what we see, is it? Its how we see it, right?

[Cloud]

That is exactly what i am looking for!!! ) BUT then, the size of something is not actually the size of what we see, is it? Its how we see it, right?

 

So what you're saying is that what we see could not be the actual size of the object in reality

 

e.g. this computer screen I'm looking at right now: its 45cm in length. Thats what we humans see but that isn't how big it is in reality. Let's say its actually 90cm in length.

 

Well, when I touch the two sides and get person X to measure the distance from one side to the other of the monitor - guess what - its still 45 cm !!! I have physically touched both sides and person X has measured it to be 45 cm. It HAS to be 45cm!!! It cannot possibly be 90cm in length.

 

And even if things are 2x what we see in this so called actuality - who cares. The measurements are set to quantify our navigation around space successfully.

 

If that makes sense? I think others have already explained it more successfully than I have.

[reor]

Dude... what is your problem? Currently, the answer would be "we don't know, yet". I wonder if we ever will. Or does anyone know of the "ultimate refference"? And it would also apply to time.

[wpenrose]

Ok, imagine that we have glasses on say 5x magnification and everything we see is proportional to what we see. Now say we put on –5x glasses on and we see things smaller but they are all proportional. How do we know what we see is the actual size? Am I making sense here? Can anyone here understand what I am saying?

 

Years ago, someone made glasses that inverted the scene before them. Test subjects wearing the glasses therefore saw everything upside down. But after a couple of weeks, they adjusted and started to perceive everything upright. When the glasses were removed, they had to re-adapt all over again.

 

These experiments were described in Scientific American maybe 20 yr ago. They illustrate the brain's ability to adapt, as well as its ability to fill in information that isn't even there.

 

Dangerous Bill

[TimbaLanD]

How do they find out how other animals see the world as?

[Rocket Man]

How do they find out how other animals see the world as?

 

they dissect the eye, they determine how light behaves as it travels through the lenses, and they look at the projection pattern on the retina.

 

i had another thought about this one, it's not about how big the object is, but how much of your vision it occupys. so we dont acually see sizes, we see angles. then we use the second eye to check distances and make an estimate as to the actual size.

this is also why most people have one eye stronger than the other.

my right eye is stronger than my left. if i close my left i can almost cope, if i close my right, i have difficulty making out shapes, its not blurry, but i normally depend on my right for textures, shapes etc and use my left for depth.

[goingtothedo]

So what you're saying is that what we see could not be the actual size of the object in reality

 

 

 

Our eyes do not see reality. Our eyes collect rather a specialised set of data which is fed to the brain. The brain then constructs a model giving us useful information on how to interact with the world.

 

There was a test run, quite some years ago where volunteers were fitted with spectacles that inverted their image of the world. i.e. they saw everything upside down. After a few days, their brains adjusted and re-inverted the images so that even with the upside down lenses, they saw the world right side up.

 

And when they took the specs off again, their brains had to relearn how to display their vision. It took a few days again for their normal sense of vision to revert.

 

When someone buys a pair of "varifocal" glasses (i.e. spectacles with varying focal length to allow vision for distance, reading and all in-between), it again takes a few days for the brain to learn how to see through them; typically a couple of days to a couple of weeks. After this learnng period, vision feels "normal" again.