#extramission theory of vision

[equinoxparanormal]

The basilisk, which slays its victims with a single glance, seems as fantastical as the scorpion-tailed manticore or the Barnacle Tree, which sprouts goslings like fruit. But there was a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation for the basilisk’s lethal look: the extramission theory of vision.

According to the extramission theory, which was developed by such thinkers as Plato, Galen, Euclid, and Ptolemy, our eyes are more than the passive recipients of images. Rather, they send out eye-beams—feelers made of elemental fire that spread, nerve-like, to create our field of vision. These luminous tendrils stream out from our eyes into the world, apprehending objects in their path and relaying back to us their qualities.

[sethshead]

Why are extramission beliefs so difficult to overcome by training? One answer lies in the explanation of the origins of this misunderstanding. Our account is based on the contributions of diSessa (1993), who claimed that underlying scientific misconceptions are primitive, phenomenological experiences (termed p-prims), and on Werner’s(1948, 1957) theory of development. One phenomenological experience, very much evident in vision, is an orienting response. Vision is generally thought of as directed outward, away from the self, toward specific objects. This outer-oriented, dynamic quality of seeing might be at the heart of the extramission bias, because it may be that when asked about vision, people may syncretically fuse their phenomenological, outer-directed experience of vision with their beliefs about the nature of the act of seeing (Werner’s, 1948, 1957, approach adds the notion of syncresis to diSessa’s, 1993, approach). Presumably these erroneous notions also coexist with scientifically acceptable ones, without people seeing the inconsistency. Evidence consistent with our interpretation has shown that extramission beliefs increase in conditions that are designed to stress the outer-directed quality of visual experiences (see Winer & Cottrell, 1996b; Winer, Cottrell, Karefilaki, & Gregg, 1996).

I am reminded of an apocryphal anecdote about Wittgenstein: He and some students were out taking a day stroll. One looked up at the sky and wondered aloud how foolish people once were to imagine all that above revolved around earth. Wittgenstein replied that, if one didn’t know otherwise, how could anyone tell?

In fact, there is an easy way to tell: Mercury and Venus have irregular orbits that only make sense in a heliocentric model. But that’s beside the point. Extramission is very poetic, very evocative of the inescapability of psychological projection. It is true as a metaphor of the human condition. It is consistent with all those corruptions of quantum physics about collapsing wave functions. Which is what makes it so dangerous that we can’t turn around and say that it is not physically true. Within my lifetime the arts and humanities have grown ever more hostile to thought not grounded in phenomenology. Holding that there is any actionable reality or salient rules outside of an individual’s perception will at best provoke eye-rolls of contempt for so plodding and pedestrian a thinker; more likely they will be associated with white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, scientism, or any number of other sins against the whole human race.

Among my peers and colleagues, doctrines, articles of faith, affiliations and associations can be wrong; statements of fact cannot be, since there are supposedly no objective, universal facts to begin with. The reader constructs the text, and life is a text. As a technique of literary analysis, this is limiting enough (after all, isn’t an interpretation enriched by seeing a work though another’s eyes, especially those contemporary to its authorship, with their awareness of the signifiers embedded throughout?). When we prioritize such an attitude towards the physical, natural world, we erode students’ capacity for real, critical thought. Far from the existence of facts requiring the passive consumption of facts, reinforcing the authority of traditional power structures, understanding the processes whereby those facts are establishes provides us a logical framework for absorbing information. Conversely, relying exclusively on one’s senses and intuition for conclusions renders one vulnerable to misinformation, to propaganda and manipulation by those reading to pander to how one wishes to imagine the world, rather than reveal how it truly is.

Yes, how could you guess I’d steer this ‘round to any number of Trumpian lies?

From Birtherism to “Stop the Steal,” the Trump cult is impervious to fact. Their allegations are very poetic expressions of their discontent, with Barack Obama’s perceived “Otherness” to the shock of defeat; BUT THEY ARE STILL WRONG! There are processes more pertinent than bias confirmation. Granted, I doubt many Trumpsters studied under my colleagues, but these ideals still define our cultural Zeitgeist. Whether grade schoolers teachers embracing the ethos that there is no such things as a wrong answer to anti-maskers choosing to believe they put no one at risk, we have been hit with an epidemic of extreme relativism and solipsism. In such an environment, adult, college-educated study respondents certain that we see by emitting light from our eyes and resistant to contradiction, is entirely predictable.

If our academic dogmas and philosophies do not allow us to dispel, absolutely, this error as a flat-out error, then of what use are we to the purpose of inquiry?

[ownerzero]

Our Eyes Emit Eye Beams, According To Extramission Theory

Superman’s laser vision, Cyclops’ optic blasts, and the basilisk’s killer gaze, all of these may be fictional powers where they emit light, heat, or some other type of energy through their eyes. But there was a theory that dates way back saying our eyes actually do emit “eye beams”. According to the extramission theory, which […]

The post Our Eyes Emit Eye Beams, According To Extramission Theory appeared first on AWorkstation.com.

source https://aworkstation.com/our-eyes-emit-eye-beams-according-to-extramission-theory/

[frankiebow]

My students think I'm pretty good at this "lethal gaze" thing @PublicDomainRev: "The Extremely Real Science behind the Basilisk’s Lethal Gaze" — According to the extramission theory of vision, our eyes send out beams of elemental fire that spread, nerve like, to create the visual field, via @JSTOR_Daily: https://buff.ly/2uGG22U https://buff.ly/2uFpZ5K #teacherproblems

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

22 Jan 2019: Food data + shopping data = health data

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading and please do send ideas, questions, corrections etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

[Image: Konrad Wachsmann]

Food data + shopping data = health data

Whole Foods has launched a digital product catalog which helps customers shop according to their dietary needs - they’ll be able to find items by dietary preference, see ingredient lists and nutritional information. You can imagine that dietary preferences from Whole Foods and body mass index data from clothing sizes shopped on Amazon could be very useful input data for the Amazon health business, particularly if they have plans for a long-term wellness service.

Elsewhere in health, Microsoft’s latest partnership with industry is with pharmacy giant Walgreens to provide Office365 and cloud services, but also “tests of ‘digital health corners’ within some Walgreens stores”. Industry/tech partnerships are often viewed through a defending-against-Amazon lens these days: Microsoft and Walgreens, Microsoft and Kroger, Ocado and grocers various - all partly presented as being someone’s answer to Amazon turning up in their market.

The weight of attention

A research paper suggests that “people automatically and unconsciously treat other people’s eyes as if beams of force-carrying energy emanate from them, gently pushing on objects in the world”. This is interesting because it reflects the extramissive theory of how vision worked, which dates back to the fifth century BC.

But do humans have a similar mental model for VR or machine vision? Do we feel the “weight” of all of the mobile phone cameras, surveillance and cctv, watchful self-driving cars and, more generally, the big tech cos collecting data from uncountable sensors and apps?

Web of intent

Google and Facebook are the dominant digital admedia cos these days. Everyone else seems to be struggling as G and FB attract more attention and ad dollars. More attention and data = better targeting. But the other company doing well is... Amazon! They’re growing fast because they’re arguably the only company closer to the point of purchase and to the consumer intent than G and FB are.

AI and apps replace faxes in NHS long term plan

The digital parts of the new long term plan for the NHS aim to give citizens new ways to access healthcare services, to speed up existing workflows inside the NHS, and to do a lot of things with data to connect everything together and reduce waste.

Adding a lot of technology will be a challenge because historic attempts to modernise the NHS have famously struggled. NHS still has widespread use of faxes and pagers, which both indicate the need for modernisation and perhaps hint that the journey will be tough. For instance, faxes are currently a key communication channel in many GP-to-pharmacy workflows. Can they all switch?

The plan lists ten practical priorities that “will drive NHS digital transformation” (p92 of this pdf). Eight of them mention or involve data (access to data, AI decision-making, predictive techniques, capturing data easily, protecting privacy, data in clinical research, securing data, interoperable data) so there will be some interesting tensions between access/sharing and privacy/trust.

TUCstarter

The Trades Union Congress tried a Kickstarter-like feature to solicit new union members in the visual effects industry. “28% of joiners chose the ‘join now’ option, with 72% choosing to ‘join if we hit the target’”. This suggests that the Kickstarter-style conditional commitment is a transferable mechanism of “social proof”, and a reassuring way to people to join a new thing.

Other news

M&S is trialling “90 lines of loose fruit and vegetables completely free of plastic packaging”.

France fines Google E50m under GDPR - the French data regulator said the Google’s data consent policies weren’t transparent or easy to access.

“Not using modern techniques like computer systems is a great mistake, but forgetting the computer simulates thinking is still greater.” - from 100+ Lessons Learned for Project Managers (at NASA, mid-1990s).

MPs use WhatsApp heavily, to communicate, plot and sometimes leak. It makes you wonder if there’s a WhatsApp clone with a Chatham House Rules switch, which anonymises the sender’s identity after a while, but not the content.)

A survey suggests that consumer safety concerns and industry concerns about liability are the biggest barriers to adoption of self-driving vehicles (pdf). But in both cases, industry is confident that self-driving will reduce accidents and consequently liability exposure.

Co-op Digital news

We are not our users: we should not tell them how to feel. “To create services that people want to use, we must make a deliberate effort to remove our emotional attachment to the things we’re creating and let our users decide how to experience them. By appreciating that we are not our users, and being considerate of their circumstances, we create services that are tactful, inclusive and respectful.”

Doing this is doubly hard because humans love projecting their hopes and fear onto services - and technology as a whole. Designers believe they’re making a service that is easy to use, but Jo Schofield reminds us that users may feel differently. And other stakeholders will bring their own emotions and perceptions to it: a front-line worker might wonder if a new system will lead to redundancies or whether The Management are using this system to track them. A manager might hope that this new service will fix all of the problems. So technology is an unreliable, wobbly mirror, and because of that it’s harder to see it clearly.

Events

Health team show & tell - Tue 22 Jan 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Food ecommerce show & tell - Tue 22 Jan 4.30pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Engineering community of practice meetup - Wed 23 Jan 1pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Web team show & tell - Wed 23 Jan 2.30pm at Federation House 5tfloor.

Line management drop-in clinic - Thu 24 Jan 1pm at Federation House.

Heads of practice community of practice meetup - Thu 24 Jan 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Startup tool-kit discussion group - Thu 24 Jan 5pm at Federation House.

Delivery community of practice meetup - Mon 28 Jan 1pm at Federation House.

Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 29 Jan 2pm at Angel Square 12th floor.

Open:Data:Night - Tue 29 Jan 6.30pm at Federation House.

Digital Transformation meetup - Wed 30 Jan 5pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Line management drop-in clinic - Thu 31 Jan 1pm at Federation House.

Heads of practice community of practice meetup - Thu 31 Jan 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Universal Basic Income - Thu 31 Jan 6.45pm at Federation House.

Intro to Open Street Map - Sat 2 Feb 11am at Federation House.

More events at Federation House. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved and thoughtful readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s flunky @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog.