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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| It's nice to be able to see through optical illusions, as this article from The Conversation describes. It would be even nicer to be able to see through lies and bullshit, but that's probably harder. And I did find possible bullshit in this article, in addition to the slightly click-baity headline. Optical illusions are great fun, and they fool virtually everyone. But have you ever wondered if you could train yourself to unsee these illusions? I can usually see past the optical illusion once it's pointed out to me, or if I figure it out, but not always. Now, it should be obvious that there are pictures at the article. They'd be a pain to reproduce here, and why bother, when I already have the link up there in the headline? We use context to figure out what we are seeing. Something surrounded by smaller things is often quite big. Which is why it's important to hang out with people smaller than you are. Or bigger, depending on the effect you're looking for. How much you are affected by illusions like these depends on who you are. For example, women are more affected by the illusion than men – they see things more in context. The article includes a link to, presumably, a study that supports this statement. I say 'presumably,' because when I checked this morning, the link wasn't working. So I can't really validate or contradict that assertion, but I do question the validity of the "they see things more in context" statement. Young children do not see illusions at all. The link to that study did work for me, and from what I can tell, it was about a particular subset of illusions, not "all." The culture you grew up in also affects how much you attend to context. Research has found that east Asian perception is more holistic, taking everything into account. Western perception is more analytic, focusing on central objects. None of which fulfills the promise of the headline. This may also depend on environment. Japanese people typically live in urban environments. In crowded urban scenes, being able to keep track of objects relative to other objects is important. Okay, this shit is starting to border on racism and overgeneralization. Also, the glib explanation is the sort of thing I usually find associated with evolutionary psychology, which reeks of bullshit. However, what scientists did not know until now is whether people can learn to see illusions less intensely. A hint came from our previous work comparing mathematical and social scientists’ judgements of illusions (we work in universities, so we sometimes study our colleagues). Social scientists, such as psychologists, see illusions more strongly. And this is starting to sound like the same old "logical / creative" divide that people used to associate with left brain / right brain. Despite all these individual differences, researchers have always thought that you have no choice over whether you see the illusion. Our recent research challenges this idea. Whatever generalization they make, I can accept that there are individual differences in how strongly we see optical illusions. So this result, at least, is promising. Radiologists train extensively, so does this make them better at seeing through illusions? We found it does. We studied 44 radiologists, compared to over 100 psychology and medical students. And we finally get to the headline's subject, and I'm severely disappointed. 44? Seriously? There is plenty left to find out. I'll say. Despite my misgivings about some of the details described, I feel like the key takeaway here is that it may be possible to train people away from seeing a particular kind of optical illusion. But it may be a better use of resources to train them to smell bullshit. |
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