Claim: Pareidolia is bias
- Thread starter Giddierone
- Start date
Area 51/50
Member
Is deliberate conveying a different meaning than intended here? Perhaps we're getting hung up on semantics because I think I'm shifting ambiguously from the "random" and "deliberate" terms for evolution into "random" and "deliberate" terms for pareidolia. My fault.
Regardless of the utility provided to our moth friends, both the skull and eye design are "random" in the sense that random mutations resulted in these phenotypical traits; wing design wasn't deliberately chosen with any intention. But from our perception, the wing pattern is not random as it's reliably present on each moth, meaning not pareidolia. For pareidolia, the "random" is a pattern that isn't purposefully arranged, which our moth friends are, despite them having no idea or influence. Confusing to write.
How about this distinction:
If you and I stare at the clouds together, we're liable to rack up several instances of pareidolia each. But when we compare notes, I saw a frisbee, one of Mick's famous balloons, and even something resembling a cloud. You saw a tesseract, the Disney Castle, and the starting lineup to the 1995 Chicago Bulls. You always get the cool stuff. We both experienced pareidolia, but the results were completely different as the phenomena is subjective to our unique perceptions.
But if you and I stare at those moths together, it's likely we'll both just see moths with a skull-like design on their bodies. We need better hobbies. I think that makes sense, though?
I do think you may be right on whether it's defensive mimicry, though. I overlooked that I said mimicry for both. I meant the specific design is likely part of it's defenses like most of their vibrant wing designs. Perhaps the little eye dots, but I doubt mantids are like, "Wait, is that a human skull?"
Good catch.Word, I get you. For me, the fact that it's not an ambiguous pattern removes it from pareidolia contention. Perhaps seeing a face in a peacock's feathers would count as a one-off if the sun triggered the iridescence in the right spot. But every time I see a peacock and it looks like the NBC logo, I'd say no.
Reminds me of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.External Quote:
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jarlrmai
Senior Member.
The "Death's Head" on a the Death's Head Hawkmoth is reliably present on each moth as well, there's some gene that expresses as that pattern, but nothing evolutionarily pressured it towards looking like skull as far as we know it just the way it happened to go. So as random as a cloud?
But on the Owl eye moth the eyes shape were seemingly selected for over the ages as the resemblance of a face of a owl meant improved survival and breeding chances for the species.
Area 51/50
Member
I'm confused on when we're discussing pareidolia definitions or evolutionary biology stuff. IDK, I'm not super confident in my definition of what constitutes pareidolia, tbh. I'm not sure it matters what the moth is doing. The body codes for it reliably, so I don't necessarily consider it random. But if it's not "intentionally" showing us a skull, which it doesn't even know what that is, it's random in that sense... ughhhhh... *head explodes*
I've been up far too long and am drifting off. I think I'm shifting to them being pareidolia because they're not intended to be skulls and eyes and that's what our brain immediately notices them as. I think I convoluted my definition earlier.
What the heck is this thread about anyway? We cracked Roswell?
Signing off for a bit. Nice chat. Have a good day, everybody.
I've been up far too long and am drifting off. I think I'm shifting to them being pareidolia because they're not intended to be skulls and eyes and that's what our brain immediately notices them as. I think I convoluted my definition earlier.
What the heck is this thread about anyway? We cracked Roswell?
Signing off for a bit. Nice chat. Have a good day, everybody.
Todd Feinman
Active Member
Exactly. The "Death's Head" on the moth that has evolved may or may not offer some selective advantage for the moth; it has nothing to do with our seeing a human skull. The pattern doesn't hinder it enough to be eliminated at the current time. Randomly selected patterns that began to or rather instantly started to look like big eyes to possible predators, conferred a selective advantage to those moths with the characteristic, while fewer of the species without the frightening markings survived to breed.
Ann K
Senior Member.
I have a friend who is unable to recognize faces. She recognizes voices, though, and always knows who I am if I speak to her first.
Ann K
Senior Member.
I have several mirrors in the studio for that very reason. Before I built my current studio I painted in a tiny "baby's bedroom"-size room. I was told by another artist that I needed to back off further and look at my work from a distance. I told him if I did that, I'd fall down the stairs! I ended up propping work at the head of the bed and looking at it in the mirror on the opposite side of the room, thus doubling the distance.
Todd Feinman
Active Member
Have you heard of the Sight-Size method? It is a method for drawing based on the apparent size of an object / person at distance.
Ann K
Senior Member.
Yes. It comes in handy for something like figure drawing, but it's next to useless for something like plein air landscapes, where the object is to make a decent painting, rather than an accurate representation of a scene. Nature doesn't usually present perfect compositions.
Todd Feinman
Active Member
You do plein air? Nice! I do sometimes, too. A lot of fun.Yes. It comes in handy for something like figure drawing, but it's next to useless for something like plein air landscapes, where the object is to make a decent painting, rather than an accurate representation of a scene. Nature doesn't usually present perfect compositions.
MyMatesBrainwashed
Senior Member
Dunno if relevant but feels like it might be...
I don't know how broad the category is, but when looking at things created in a human form (probably not just human) we NEVER assume pareidolia.
I think it might be what made the face of Mars so compelling.
If you see something that looks like it was made to look like a face you assume the person who made it meant it to look like a face. Not the other way round (which would be pareidolia). Obviously gets fuzzier the more abstract you go.
Induced pareidolia seems relevant too. How it's not actually pareidolia even though it's the reason the observer sees whatever it is. Looking at noise for anomalies has a certain "inducing pareidolia" aspect to it but I can't fit it together yet.
I don't know how broad the category is, but when looking at things created in a human form (probably not just human) we NEVER assume pareidolia.
I think it might be what made the face of Mars so compelling.
If you see something that looks like it was made to look like a face you assume the person who made it meant it to look like a face. Not the other way round (which would be pareidolia). Obviously gets fuzzier the more abstract you go.
Induced pareidolia seems relevant too. How it's not actually pareidolia even though it's the reason the observer sees whatever it is. Looking at noise for anomalies has a certain "inducing pareidolia" aspect to it but I can't fit it together yet.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
I'm not 100% sure I'm following your argument, but I have to disagree with this bit. I see a lot of things made by humans that look like a face, I do not assume that was always the intent.
MyMatesBrainwashed
Senior Member
Because it wasn't the intent.
My post says "made to look like a face".
Like a bust. You'd never assume it's pareidolia why you see a face on it. The Easter island heads, you'd never assume pareidolia. You assume someone made a head. Paintings. Etc.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Ahh, I see now what you are saying, and largely agree, though I'd argue it's still the same mechanism that makes an Easter Island Head look like a face to our brains as it is that makes the images in my post 132 (two up, or one up now since one has been deleted as I type!) look facey. Whether or not WE see a face where there is not in fact a face has nothing to do with whether the stimulus was produced by an artist with intent, evolution with producing a scary face on a moth's wings, or just a random rock weathering. That process is internal to the brain of the viewer.
If you showed me just one Easter Island Head, in a place where we there was no context to suggest any culture ever existed to create such things, maybe my FIRST thought might not be "Oh, that's just natural rock and some pareidolia is happening." But absent evidence that people ever lived there to make it, pareidolia would have to be on the table as a likely explanation.
Look at these two images of rocks, one carved by people and one by weather:
If you had the one picture to go on (which is the case we tend to have for "artifacts" found on Mars, for example) I am by no means sure I'd say definitely that one was inadvertent pareidolia and one was an intelligent artist portraying a face. If I DID, I'm not sure I'd get right which was which! Neither actually looks much like a real human face (this is NOT a disrespecting of the artists on Easter Island, naturalistic portraiture was not the goal and is not the only way to make art) but both undeniably look like faces to our brains. For the same reason -- it's a thing our brains like to do, make sense of stuff, find patterns, find faces, find what we've seen before in something new, categorize stuff...
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Saw this on Twitter. JAPAN- Tokyo's world famous 'Museum of the Many Faced Rocks'.
Source: https://x.com/folkhorrorforum/status/1395165744967659526
Source: https://x.com/folkhorrorforum/status/1395165744967659526
Todd Feinman
Active Member
There was a reference upstream to using AI analysis to help avoid being misled by pareidolia. Which reminds me there is a whole series of self-published papers by Rhawn Gabriel Joseph and a few colleagues purporting to have found ancient (and current!) arthropods, cyanobacteria, cocoons and more on Mars by analyzing thousands of NASA photos for things that look like arthropods, cyanobacteria, cocoons and more. In one case they did some sort of "morphological and computerized quantitative pattern analysis" of holes in rocks from a Santa Cruz beach and photos from Mars that supported their hypothesis that the Martian holes had to have been created by Martian mollusks. In another they showed a bunch of photos to "Twenty experts, sixteen specializing in insect and worm biology were consulted and of those who replied: eight agreed these ovoid forms are similar to worm eggs and/or cocoons."
(They wind up taking the argument in both directions -- these things may have biological origins because they look similar to living things on Earth. The fact that they only resemble living things on Earth just supports the idea things evolved differently on Mars after possibly being seeded from the same interplanetary source.)
(They wind up taking the argument in both directions -- these things may have biological origins because they look similar to living things on Earth. The fact that they only resemble living things on Earth just supports the idea things evolved differently on Mars after possibly being seeded from the same interplanetary source.)
MyMatesBrainwashed
Senior Member
I think this guy illustrates my point quite well cos I don't assume pareidolia looking at it. Or at least I assume it's been made to look like it does and therefore isn't pareidolia.
That it's a natural formation, that it's random, is harder to accept. To be convinced it's pareidolia I'd require some evidence that it wasn't made on purpose.
It's the total opposite reaction to what the authors are concerned about.
And you touch on why the "probably pareidolia" for the face on Mars. Because there shouldn't be anyone around to create a face on Mars. We didn't know the mountain doesn't look like a face and it was actually just noise pareidolia. It was probably gonna look like a face but wouldn't have been a created face and therefore still be pareidolia. The created part being the most important.
The pareidolia it turned out to be was even more disappointing than originally thought.
It didn't start out the same as "this noise looks like bones", "probably pareidolia".
If someone perceives a puppy-shaped cloud, no reasonable person would consider this worthy of investigation. What's different about a face-shaped rock formation?
The difference is the prior belief that the prior existence of intelligent life (that is inclined toward producing art) on Mars is a live possibility.
The difference is the prior belief that the prior existence of intelligent life (that is inclined toward producing art) on Mars is a live possibility.
Ann K
Senior Member.
Well ...no, intelligent life on Mars is not plausible in the least. We have a pretty good idea of the history of the atmosphere and the water content of Mars. We would be tickled pink to find any evidence of something as rudimentary as microbial life on Mars, but we don't even have that yet.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
I agree, but of course the CULTURE is steeped in Mars as the home for life other than Earth, in movies , novels and other fictional works of art, so it makes sense that people believing live aliens are in the solar system are thinking first about Mars. And we have rovers there sending lots of pictures back, so there's plenty of imagery randomly carved rocks to give the appearance of being fossils or dropped tool or bits of old buildings.
"Prior belief" exists -- it's just not well founded (or maybe "it's not up to date" is the better way to put it.)
John J.
Senior Member.
Sort of agree.
Must admit, when I first saw the Cydonia face I thought "Wow, that's interesting. I hope we can get a better look at it somehow",
although I was, and remain, sceptical about there being any life on Mars in the last few hundred million years.
Maybe I had just a smidgen of hope (and certainly curiosity) that it might be something more than pareidolia, whatever my beliefs (and what I might have been taught, or read).
We now know no sane human-type species would choose to settle on Mars in the past, because of the clear warnings of the
Daemonic Alien Big Cats of Cydonia, emblazoned on the Martian surface near the Human Skull of Cydonia.
(If you squint a bit, the top one gets a leonine mane too).
We'll be safe as long as no one points a laser at Earth.
MyMatesBrainwashed
Senior Member
That leads to be wary of simply assuming pareidolia is pareidolia.
And this statement it truer than the one the article uses (that a natural formation that looks like a face is still an anomaly winds me up about their statement. It suggests they aren't actually interested in anomalies, only unnatural ones. I think that's important).
But it only works as long as you can't prove (or accept) something is natural. It doesn't work for bone-like. That's pareidolia, no assuming. To not assume it's pareidolia in this sense would be that something made it to look like bones.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
No, I'd argue that it is still pareidolia because it 'can' be seen as a face but it can equally not be. I saw one example a few months back...I'm still trying to find it...where I had no idea it was even AI or had a portrait in it and to all extents and purposes it was some castle in Germany with a river next to it. It was only after 5 minutes of looking at it, for art purposes, that I slowly saw the face, and hair, and the upper body of a woman...all expertly blended into the image. It was extremely well done and not at all obvious...yet once you'd seen it you could not unsee it. Will try to find it...its one of the best ones.
John J.
Senior Member.
I get your point I think, but not sure I agree (though I might be in a minority); my tuppence worth:
Pareidolia is seeing a face or other identified object among random or ambiguous visual information, where there is no face present which would include no intention on the part of an artist etc. to create that perceived face.
A clear photograph of a face is not a face, but interpreting it as a face is not pareidolia. A very poor photograph of a face might not be immediately perceived as a face, but if discerned as a face it isn't pareidolia- the information that the ambiguous photo contains represents a face, albeit poorly. If we interpreted that same photo as a non-face-related object (not the face of a different person or a statue- that would be misidentification) that would be pareidolia.
The Mona Lisa is not a face, but we perceive a face, because that is the artist's intention, successfully implemented. It isn't pareidolia.
"Hidden" faces in some Dali paintings, and the computer-assisted art above, are the result of the artist taking great effort to depict a face although not in an immediately apparent way. When we eventually see e.g. the eyes, we are interpreting visual information carefully put there by the artist to represent/ be perceived as eyes. The artist has deliberately created a face.
And seeing that face isn't pareidolia.
The visual information has been deliberately designed to be interpreted by the viewer as a face, and if we see that face, we see it as the artist intended it to appear.
When @Ann K paints a landscape, and others see the face of an anti-social serial killer, that is pareidolia (and a timely reminder to American teenagers not to spend the night in a gallery hosting an exhibition of the Wise Woman's art; I've seen the films).
Edited to add:
Just thought: If we include deliberate representations of e.g. faces as pareidolia, then when we describe the Cydonia face as pareidolia we're not ruling out that it was designed to appear as a face. And we get into all sorts of semantic trouble!
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Giddierone
Senior Member.
I saw this recent BBC story titled 'World's oldest cave art found showing humans and pigs' and wondered what effect changing the captions to "landed space craft" and "extraterrestrial being 1, 2 & 3" would have on how it's interpreted...
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0vewjq4dxwo
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0vewjq4dxwo
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Cave art from Muna Island Muna Island in Indonesia. Widely accepted among kite folk as being the oldest representation of flying a kite in the world. with the very schematic stick figure at the bottom holding the string -- it even has the bridle splitting into two lines just below the kite! When I'm with kite folk, I think so too because why not, its a good story. But on a skeptical discussion site, I'll admit that it might as easily be lightning, a tree, a smudge of paint that ran and therefore it isn't anything, a little but of the red that seems to infuse the cave wall naturally -- or a UFO shooting a beam of light down to a big headed grey (well, red I guess) alien. What you see is what you want...
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John J.
Senior Member.
I guess a certain Swiss
Ann K
Senior Member.
The pig looks like a pig. Humans 1 and 3 look conspicuously like four-legged creatures with ears, perhaps dogs, and not the least bit human; the four legs on each are unmistakable. Calling them humans is "pareidolia-because-it-makes-a-good-headline". The pig is well-drawn, so the artist could have done a better job if they were meant to be humans.
Human 2, the stick-figure person beside the pig's snout, has Santa Claus (circled) descending on his head. He's older than I thought!
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
My pareidolia must be broken today, I don't see humans, dogs or anything else among the "figures" 1, 2 and 3. I don't see legs, two or four. Given the amount of red splotches above the area labeled as figures, I am not sure I even see a figure where "human 2" is confidently labeled.
Perhaps I'm lacking context of seeing how more definitive human figures are drawn elsewhere in the cave?
Good job on the pig, though.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
I was thinking "could be a pig, at a stretch" until I saw the annotations that were putting the head and arse the other way round - so maybe it's a contortionist pig? Let's hope they clone it, I'm looking forward to trying mobius-strip slices of salami from it.
But my main objection to the article is the to-me-Victorian human exceptionalism of "The discovery pushes back the time that modern humans first showed the capacity for creative thought.". I've seen paintings by elephants that are at least as skillful as anything I can do (a low bar, but I am privileged enough to have these academics anoint me with that capacity), and I've seen enough Attenborough to know that when it's mating season, a large number of animals can show an incredible eye for aesthetics, and the skill to fine tune their creations. (I remember an instance where one of the crew accidentally dropped a metalised chocolate bar wrapper, and they noticed that it was taking pride of place in the architecture of the bower a couple of days later.)
Ann K
Senior Member.
Two dogs, perhaps hunting dogs, seen from the back, both staring at the top right corner. Distinctly dog-like heads, not human, dog-like ears, and distinctly four legs.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
I tend to see it the other way round, which to me makes it a lot simpler. The human brain evolved to see anything that looks like a face as a face. That includes actual faces. So in that sense all facial 'recognition' is pareidolia, and the brain simply doesn't have a ' ooops...that's not a real face ' default mode because one doesn't want to be spending vital survival time working it out.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Although I haven't read it all yet here's the paper on how they came to their judgement of what's depicted in the paintings.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07541-7
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07541-7
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Thanks, that may show me where I'm wrong. Or at least let me assert that THEY are wrong with greater authority!
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Ahh. Thanks, that at least let's me see what you are seeing. I can't make myself see distinctly four legs, though.
I'm just seeing "lots of lines to fill space, like maybe to indicate hair or an attempt at shading. But I'll say, pending reading the paper Giddierone linked, I am seeing dogs more than humans. (Or possibly not dogs, maybe wolfs out on a pig hunt?)
John J.
Senior Member.
Must admit, the claimed human figures aren't strikingly obvious. Maybe H1 has a grass skirt or a kilt-type wrap?
Don't want to start a conspiracy theory-like rumour, but I'm surprised that the pig is stylistically so similar (to me, anyway) to the Lascaux paintings. The Lascaux animals are beautifully naturalistic to a point, but many have bulbous bodies and disproportionately small limbs.
Maybe it's a coincidental artistic similarity; but the Sulawesi porker does resemble a modern domestic pig as a result.
The discoverer of the Sulawesi pig, Maxime Aubert, is breaking his own relatively recent record for the oldest-claimed representational artwork
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55657257
Don't want to start a conspiracy theory-like rumour, but I'm surprised that the pig is stylistically so similar (to me, anyway) to the Lascaux paintings. The Lascaux animals are beautifully naturalistic to a point, but many have bulbous bodies and disproportionately small limbs.
Maybe it's a coincidental artistic similarity; but the Sulawesi porker does resemble a modern domestic pig as a result.
The discoverer of the Sulawesi pig, Maxime Aubert, is breaking his own relatively recent record for the oldest-claimed representational artwork
Indonesia: Archaeologists find world's oldest animal cave painting, BBC News, 14 January 2021External Quote:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55657257
Ann K
Senior Member.
One thing that I think we can all agree on is that if Human 2 is what they think a person looks like, then 1 and 3 are not, or vice versa. (But there's always the possibility that the artist's 6-year-old did the amateurish stick figure beside the pig, I guess...)External Quote:
OK, now I've read the "Nature" article referred to by @Giddierone, it sounds to me like the writers are tentative on a good many of their interpretations. Much of the article is on the dating methods used, but in speaking of a different painted scene, they say
They are unsure whether that should also describe the figures on this thread. Another possibility, not one mentioned in the article, might be the practice of using the hide of an animal to disguise a hunter ...but I think that using a disguise of a predator like a wolf or dog would make a very poor strategy for hunting a pig!External Quote:
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