Maybe Clark's glasses disguise wasn't so stupid after all
-
ZurichGnome — 9 years ago(September 01, 2016 10:56 PM)
Yeah, the hands and/or skin texture thingy sounds goofy. It might work if the person knew the other person like, um, the back of their hand.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke -
grizzledgeezer — 9 years ago(September 02, 2016 10:44 AM)
As for recognizing someone based solely on skin texture or hands, that sounds ridiculous. What's your source for that?
My own experience! Don't you notice other people's bodies?
I can instantly recognize most (not all) of the people I work with simply by looking at their hands. -
pt100 — 9 years ago(September 02, 2016 03:10 PM)
I think it's much more likely that you
imagine
you can. But if pictures of 100 pairs of hands from 100 people you know well were put in a pile, I'll bet your recognition of which is which would be abysmal, especially if they first removed any distinctive rings they might be wearing. And going by just skin texture would be pretty much impossible, unless someone has really unusual skin.
The face is the only way we recognize people easily unless there's something really unusual about their hands, etc. That's why we are the only species to have really distinctive faces. It's due to natural selection among our very social species. I'll bet you could search the Web from now until doomsday and not find any credible evidence for your claim. Even so-called "super recognizers" are good only at recognizing faces:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/04/20/super-recognizers-people-with/
I'm a trained psychologist with a lot of experience in cognitive psych, perception and psychophysics. And your claim is just screwy. As I said before, please furnish a link to some credible evidence. I know you simply cannot.
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.J.B. Haldane -
grizzledgeezer — 9 years ago(September 02, 2016 04:54 PM)
I don't imagine it, I
know
. Don't say something is unlikely or untrue simply because you haven't researched it yourself. That's not science.
My link to credible evidence is you, yourself. You just haven't been looking. Try it, and see.
In my case, my left hand has a flat wart that's been growing slowly for many years. My thumbs are straight, and don't curve back the way most people's do. At the age of 69, my hands are sufficiently "worn" that they don't resemble an unmarked young'un's.
I work with two men, Therron and Floyd, whose arms and hands are highly distinctive. You'd have a heck of a time finding even distant "matches".
No doubt you'll be telling us the
SX-70
never existed, because it's impossible. -
pt100 — 9 years ago(September 02, 2016 10:02 PM)
Geez, you're a persistent pain in the a$$. Most people don't have highly distinctive hands. Just because you and a couple of friends/coworkers do, that doesn't prove anything. You continue to fail to provide any scientific evidence that it is easy to identify nearly anyone by their hands or skin texture. There would be plenty of evidence/science if you were correct. I'm done wasting time on your nonsense. If you don't quit making ridiculous claims, I'll just have to finally put you on my ignore list. I should have done it awhile ago.
By the way, what ever happened to your harebrained theories about yellowing on one edge of the TV screen? As I recall, the TV station engineers you contacted brushed you off. I'm not surprised. Just quit doing these crazy things where you make some ridiculous offhand comment and then spend a lot of time not answering valid criticism, but instead shifting the discussion to avoid actually answering anything.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, just read this thread over again. Doesn't it ever occur to you that if no one in this or many other threads comes to your defense, maybe there's a good reason for that? That's all the help I'm going to give you. If you give another stupid response, you will be permanently ignored by me.
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.J.B. Haldane -
grizzledgeezer — 9 years ago(September 03, 2016 08:27 AM)
Ever notice how people side with the bully because they're afraid of what might happen if they don't?
What I initially stated is
fact
. Lois the reporter and Jimmy the photographer (job that depend on sharp observation) would have eventually noticed that Clark and Superman have the same hands. If you think men's hands are so nearly identical that you can't tell any of them apart
why don't you look for yourself
? It's too much trouble, of course especially as you already know the answer!
When I worked at Bendix Field Engineering, there was a pompous jerk at Goddard nobody much liked. One day at lunch I told him I could tell how old someone was by looking at the back of their hands. He held out his and my guess was within six months. That shut him up for a while. (Of course, it was unfair, as his face supplied additional clues.)
Julius Futterman is famous in audio history for having invented the first practical output-transformerless vacuum-tube amplifier. In the late '70s, a young man from Australia, Trevor Lees (40 years Futterman's junior), started designing tube equipment, and published some of his circuits, most of which were simple direct-coupled stages, with few resistors. Futterman wrote, saying "Those circuits can't work." Lees responded "Have you actually
built
any of them?"
An article about the history of Scrabble told how men in prison, using the regular S&R set, played so often that all of them eventually memorized the
backs
of the tiles, rendering the game largely pointless.
I just
love
people who worship science, but lack the imagination needed to be good scientists. (Did I mention I attended Caltech?) Science isn't about truth, it's about the search for truth. And you don't find truth by assuming you already know the answers. (I can just hear the Pope demanding that Galileo produce "scientific proof" that the Earth goes around the Sun. Yes, I know I'm exaggerating to make a point.)
Have you
ever
had an original idea or unconventional insight? What a dull and condescending bore you must be. -
pt100 — 9 years ago(September 03, 2016 03:57 PM)
An article about the history of Scrabble told how men in prison, using the regular S&R set, played so often that all of them eventually memorized the backs of the tiles, rendering the game largely pointless.
As usual, you have missed the point and wandered off into false-comparison land: anyone who is motivated enough to win a Scrabble game, and who has a decent memory, can memorize. Duh! Bye.
To everyone else: Social science has studied thoroughly the means by which people recognize one another. If you think that grizzledgeezer ever provides any
scientific
data on how people recognize others by their hands or skin texture, please let me know. Maybe I'll quit ignoring him. Meanwhile, he and his two mutant friends can sit around looking at one another's hands.
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.J.B. Haldane -
grizzledgeezer — 9 years ago(September 04, 2016 11:05 AM)
I'll put this the simplest possible way.
You are Superman. Lois Lane has, for years, been
highly motivated
to find out whether you're Clark. One day she looks closely at Superman's hands and thinks "Odd Superman's and Clark's hands look the same. Maybe"
Did it ever occur to you to try an experiment with your friends? Of course not, because you already know the answer.
The problem isn't that you disagree with me, but that you lack the ability to rationally evaluate unfamiliar ideas. Why don't you show our exchange to someone with a PhD in psychology, and ask his or her opinion? I have no doubt what it will be. -
ZurichGnome — 9 years ago(September 04, 2016 07:23 PM)
Uh, as I recall from some other discussion thread, he
does
have a Ph.D. in psychology (from Princeton, I believe). And, as you have done many times, you have simply missed the mark as far as logic is concerned. E.g., you are assuming that everyone else is as fixated on the hands of acquaintances as you appear to be on the rather distinctive hands of yourself and your two acquaintances; and that they are being careful to memorize every detail of those hands and catalog them. Only if the hands are clearly distinctive in some way (mole, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.), which most are not, would this be possible. But since we recognize people almost exclusively by their faces and voices, most normal people aren't likely to memorize hands or skin texture (the latter of which mostly just tells about whether someone is young or oldnot very identifying).
As has already been noted, just because you can distinguish between your rather distinctive hands and the rather distinctive hands of a couple of your acquaintances, that doesn't necessarily generalize.
And you apparently cannot provide one shred of evidence (e.g., psychological studies in person perception) that it does.
We didn't evolve to recognize one another by our hands or skin texture. We evolved as social animals to recognize one another almost exclusively by our virtually unique faces and voices. And that is still how forensic science tends to identify individuals (and, in the modern era, via fingerprints and DNA, neither of which is readily readable to the naked eye of the average person).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke -
Moon_Doggie — 9 years ago(September 04, 2016 09:18 PM)
Are you still prattling on? I hope you don't keep whining about being bullied or piled up on. And, given the history of your posts, either you didn't actually go to C.I.T. or else engineering is all you're good at (if that, even).
Also, I've exchanged many PMs w/pt100, and he graduated from both Johns Hopkins and Princeton w/degrees in psychology. He has also published in various academic journals such as
Perception & Psychophysics
and the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
. One of his areas of expertise happens to be interpersonal perception. Do us all a favor and quit whining.
A person's a person, no matter how small.
Dr. Seuss -
Moon_Doggie — 9 years ago(September 02, 2016 10:25 PM)
Hey, I'm not trying to be nasty, but I tend to agree with pt100 on this. You often seem to have problems with logic and reading comprehension. Not sure why, but it does seem to be a pattern. You'd make a terrible debater.
A person's a person, no matter how small.
Dr. Seuss -
SixtiesHoldout — 9 years ago(September 03, 2016 04:26 AM)
With all due respect, I think you're making a basic error that experienced scientists and/or statisticians wouldn't normally make: you are extrapolating from what appears to be a very small and uncharacteristic sample to try to generalize a principle to the larger population. I'm guessing that even you typically identify someone first from looking at their face when they walk into the room, not from some other part of their body. Maybe you just don't realize it.
I also think that pt100's point about your trying to identify photos of 100 pairs of hands of people you know is very likely accurate: you would fail miserably with most identifications, although you could probably guess the gender and race fairly accurately. The fact is that most people's hands are not very distinctive, apart from race and gender, although a few are (such as, apparently, you and a couple of your acquaintances) because of rare, unusual features.
And since, after all this discussion, you still have not been able and/or willing to try to present any third-party evidence for the truth of the generality of your claim, I hope you can see why it is being rejected. And MD is correct; this does seem to be a pattern with you. I'd suggest that we just drop it, because this is going nowhere. And we've wandered off topic from the original post, which was made facetiously and was supposed to apply only to people who don't know Kent very well.
If you can remember the '60s, then you probably weren't there. -
Moon_Doggie — 9 years ago(September 02, 2016 03:26 PM)
Uh-oh, here we go again. This isn't the first time you've made some claim that cannot be substantiated. Please stop doing this if you can't actually provide any evidence. It's just a huge waste of everyone's time.
A person's a person, no matter how small.
Dr. Seuss -
grizzledgeezer — 9 years ago(September 07, 2016 08:35 AM)
It's difficult to have an intelligent discussion with people who fall back on "appeal to authority" ("I have a PhD in psychology"); deliberately change the point being discussed to confuse the issue; and descend to personal attacks when nothing else works.
Fact. I attended Caltech. If you don't like that, tough. Whether I'm a good EE is debatable, but neither of these have any bearing on the issue. I can give references from very intelligent people who respect my opinions (and vice versa).
Another fact. A PhD is usually awarded only after the candidate has done significant original research. I assume (particularly with psychology) that the research is in areas for which there is little "scientific data". What would be the point of researching an area that was already well-understood?
Yet another fact.
Obviously
, people do not look at other people's hands (or ears, or noses) as primary sources of identification. But that wasn't what I said. I said that hands
could
be used to distinguish among people. (Do you understand the difference between "identify" and "distinguish"?) In this case, it would be strong evidence that Clark and Superman are the same entity.
This can be shown with a simple experiment. But that's too much trouble. If you
know
something is true (or false), why waste time testing your belief?
You should look up Dr Land's famous article in the May, 1959 issue of
Scientific American
about his "retinex" theory of color perception. He was a physicist, not a psychologist, and was raked over the coals, on both a professional and personal level, for his absurd conclusions. (He was largely correct, of course.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy#Retinex_theory
He also had something to say about "scientists" like pt100: "There are many scientists who, for all their marvelous training, are just plain dull. They have been stultified somehow and the world is going by them."
PS: Other than simple nastiness, what is the point in calling my co-workers mutants? -
Moon_Doggie — 9 years ago(September 07, 2016 04:07 PM)
Yet another fact. Obviously, people do not look at other people's hands (or ears, or noses) as primary sources of identification. But that wasn't what I said. I said that hands could be used to distinguish among people. (Do you understand the difference between "identify" and "distinguish"?) In this case, it would be strong evidence that Clark and Superman are the same entity.
Really? This is your great rejoinder? Before I quit wasting any more of my time, let me just say the following:
I never saw anything distinctive about Reeves's hands that would make it easy to say that Kent was also Superman. His hands probably resembled Inspector Henderson's and a zillion other middle-aged males' hands.
It is highly doubtful that Lane would be able to memorize every single detailed feature of Kent's hands that would be necessary to distinguish them from anyone else's hands (or, conversely, that would allow her to say Kent's and Superman's hands were
absolutely identical
rather than simply highly similar). And she obviously never sees Kent's and Superman's pairs of hands side by side for comparison purposes.
Also, to your strange, word-mincing comment about "distinguishing" vs. "identifying": If Lane cannot distinguish Kent's and Superman's handsalthough never seeing them side-by-side for an accurate comparisonyou're implying that she should automatically conclude they are the same person. That's ridiculous, because a negative (not being able to say conclusively that they're different, based on imperfect memory) doesn't prove they are identical.
And, ironically, when you try to say that "distinguish" and "identify" are completely different things in this context, you fail to realize that you are also implying that if she cannot
distinguish
Kent's and Superman's hands, then she is
identifying
Kent as Superman. I.e., saying they they cannot be distinguished is saying they are identical. So she is using their memorially recalled lack of distinguishing features as identifying proof that they are identicalwhich I have already shown to be logically flawed.
I suppose that if we put pictures of the pairs of hands of identical twins side by side, and they had no distinguishing properties, you'd say they were pictures of the same person's hands (even though they are not). So you yourself would be
identifying
them as identical precisely because they cannot be
distinguished
. And they would be "identical" only in the sense that identical twins are identical; but they would not be the
same
hands. To take this one step farther, couldn't Lane just suppose that Kent and Superman are identical twins? Why do they have to be the same person?
I doubt that you will admit to the flaws in your logic that I have pointed out. But I'm done trying to set you straight. Just talk to the hand:
A person's a person, no matter how small.
Dr. Seuss -
SixtiesHoldout — 9 years ago(September 07, 2016 07:46 PM)
The more you argue and get all tangled up in your own arguments, the more ridiculous you appear to others. (Not that you, based on your posting history, would necessarily ever realize that.) For example:
It's difficult to have an intelligent discussion with people who fall back on "appeal to authority" ("I have a PhD in psychology")
Not sure what that means, exactly, but I, too, have communicated extensively w/pt100, and he
does
have degrees in psychology from both Johns Hopkins University (
cum laude
) and Princeton University. And I have read some of his scholarly journal articles in both perception and personality/social psychology. They are excellent and much cited.
Yet at various times you have said,
I attended Caltech.
And
Did I mention I attended Caltech?
Although you attended, I didn't hear you say anything about having a Ph.D. from Caltech. Does that mean you respect someone who
attended
college more than someone who has a Ph.D.? Again, I'm not sure I understand your rather confusing train of thought.
So let's pause here to take a little multiple-choice test. Is your argument:
A) Inconsistent?
B) Hypocritical?
C) Confused?
D) Incorrect?
E) All of the above?
Another of your questionable claims:
A PhD is usually awarded only after the candidate has done significant original research. I assume (particularly with psychology) that the research is in areas for which there is little "scientific data". What would be the point of researching an area that was already well-understood?
This tells me that you may not, in fact, understand how Ph.D. research progresses. I.e., your "assumption," as you put it (which suggests that perhaps you never actually completed a Ph.D. program yourself), that candidates conduct research only in new areas where there is little or no data, is patently false. In fact, major breakthroughs sometimes occur in areas that have already been heavily researched for decades, and where there is a mountain of data.
And as for your odd monologue about "identify" vs. "distinguish," I think MD has put that issue to rest. So I don't need to beat that dead horse.
I'm done wasting time on you, and I suspect everyone else is. So don't expect any more discussion of your nonsense. But something tells me that you'll blather on, talking to yourself.
If you can remember the '60s, then you probably weren't there. -
grizzledgeezer — 9 years ago(September 08, 2016 12:11 PM)
This will be my last post (unless you choose to continue).
When presented with an idea, theory, conjecture,
etc
, that disturbs you, or merely conflicts with what you believe (or would like to believe), how do you react? Instant dismissal? Personal attacks? Thoughtful consideration?
I'm not asking for a written response. I'd just like to know you you handle differences of opinion. Would you have been as quick to condemn Fred Hoyle for his ill-considered views on the origin of the universe?