Claim: Pareidolia is bias

[Giddierone]

So, [and I say this somewhat tounge in cheek] to bring this back around to the claim mentioned in #1, that pareidolia is "a cognitive bias that hinders us from studying evidence with due openness and objectivity" might this recent paper about the cave paintings, and how they are interpreted, actually support the claim, in that the authors are intent on interpreting the degraded image along the lines of known things, pigs, bipedal humanoid morphologies etc, rather than being "objective" and considering all possibilities such as some unknown thing [aliens/spacecraft etc]?

 

[NorCal Dave]

So, [and I say this somewhat tounge in cheek] to bring this back around to the claim mentioned in #1, that pareidolia is "a cognitive bias that hinders us from studying evidence with due openness and objectivity" might this recent paper about the cave paintings, and how they are interpreted, actually support the claim, in that the authors are intent on interpreting the degraded image along the lines of known things, pigs, bipedal humanoid morphologies etc, rather than being "objective" and considering all possibilities such as some unknown thing [aliens/spacecraft etc]?

Interesting.

If the red markings are just random marks that we can maybe interpret as humans and pigs, that would be classic pareidolia right? Seeing a pattern in a random collection of stimuli that was NOT intended to look like what the pattern suggests is pareidolia.

If the red marks are some sort of intentional attempt to produce something that looks like something, it's not pareidolia if we see what was intended by the creator. Right? There is the possibility that we may see something NOT intended by the creator, and that would be pareidolia. But again, if the marks are some sort of attempt to draw something, we should be concerned that pareidolia might make us see something unintended while trying to understand what was originally intended. I suppose in that case, the authors of the OP paper might have a point.

As for pareidolia keeping us from seeing aliens and UFOs, as there are no actual aliens or UFOs aside from what artist create, how would one know they were seeing an alien or UFO from 40,000YA? In trying to interpret the marks, experts start with what IS known. There is fossil evidence for things like pigs, dogs, humans and other fauna in the area. There is no evidence for aliens or UFOs. No alien bodies or fossil remains and no crashed UFOs. Occam's razor says these are probably representations of what was in the area at the time they were made, though the exact animal may be up for debate.

In fact, as the UFOlogist have no actual evidence of aliens or UFOs, as in alien spacecraft, just what the popular culture produces at any giving time, it's the UFOlogist that are more likely to find those things because of pareidolia. Pre-supposing aliens and UFOs with NO evidence and then looking for evidence of said UFOs might "hinder us from studying evidence with due openness and objectivity".

 

[JMartJr]

They are unsure whether that should also describe the figures on this thread.

Outta curiosity, I looked up some other cave paintings in Indonesia. These are the human figures I found in a cursory search:

None of these resemble the "human figures" with the pig... CAVEAT: Maybe I saw other human figures that DO look like that but I didn't recognize them! But the other human figures I found from Indonesian caves do not lead me to accept those three as humans.

Though note -- the first image does at least have the two projections off from the head, which Ann K sees as dog ears. If those are humans, they may be studiously looking away from the pig...

Edited: Struck through and "x"ed out a bit in response to Ann K's post below... I was the victim of an erroneous website...

 

[Ann K]

@JMartJr, the first picture is not from Indonesia, but from Lascaux in France. And while the animal pictures in there are superb and impressive (and mostly huge), this, the lone human figure, is another that looks like it was done by a small six-year-old.

 

[JMartJr]

None of these resemble the "human figures" with the pig...

On the other hand, the pig does seem to resemble other pigs closely enough.

 

[John J.]

On the other hand, the pig does seem to resemble other pigs closely enough.

I'm going off-topic a little here, but that's what sort of worries me. Not much, just a bit.

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.

Prof. Maxime Aubert and his team discovered the oldest then-known representational art in 2020, believed to be from 45.5 Kya.
It resembles some of the Lascaux paintings, with its disproportionately small, spindly limbs*.
The 45,500 year-old painting of a pig was accompanied by stencils of hands, just like at Lascaux.

@Giddierone has made us aware that Prof. Aubert has had the good fortune to discover even older representational art- extraordinarily, also a pig, dated to 51.2 Kya. It's stylistically similar (at least re. relative proportions of limbs and improbably bulbous body) to his 2020 discovery- and arguably to the Lascaux pictures.

45,500 year-old pig at left, 51,200 year-old pig at right.

Small area of of Lascaux 2 art, ponies/ horses. Note limbs. It is generally accepted the Lascaux art is "only" 17,000 years old.

I'm not aware of any palaeoarchaeologists commenting on the two oldest pieces of representational art- approximately 5,700 years apart- both being pigs (even if pigs were an important prey item for humans for 1000's of years) and both having (I think) a similar style to some of the Lascaux animals.

It's as if there's a shared "prehistoric style" of art stretching from Indonesia to France over at least 34,000 years.

I won't pretend to have any expertise in these things, and I'm not aware of any murmurings of doubt amongst those that have,
so I guess it's all above-board.

*Remembering these are wild animals thousands of years pre- the domestication and selective breeding of pigs (including the Sulawesi warty pig).

 

[NorCal Dave]

I won't pretend to have any expertise in these things, and I'm not aware of any murmurings of doubt amongst those that have,
so I guess it's all above-board.

Yes, we'll have to wait and see. Sounds legit for now, but they sure do have some artistic ques from Lascaux. And with Gunung Padang, the claim wasn't just that it was a pyramid, (it's not) it was the oldest pyramid by far. Something members of the Indonesian government liked to tout. Indonesia, home of the world's oldest pyramids and now the world's oldest art.

 

[Ann K]

It's as if there's a shared "prehistoric style" of art stretching from Indonesia to France over at least 34,000 years.

I think it far more likely that there have been PIGS over that distance and that time, rather than a human-transmitted style of art. They need not have been domesticated, but could still be an important prey animal.

It resembles some of the Lascaux paintings, with its disproportionately small, spindly limbs*.

Please note, pigs HAVE "disproportionately small spindly limbs".

 

[John J.]

Please note, pigs HAVE "disproportionately small spindly limbs".

Well, yes. But the 51,200 Kya pig in particular looks like a fat sausage on legs. It looks like it would be vulnerable in the wild.
I guess- maybe like the Lascaux animals- the people of the time might have seen prey animals in those terms, big animated food parcels, and so emphasised the (desired) plump bodies in their art.

Professor Aubert identifies the pictures as being Sulawesi warty pigs (also called Celebes warty pigs) which is a semi-domesticated species,

It is the only pig species that has been domesticated apart from the wild boar; being semi-domesticated may have had an influence on the variability of its appearance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebes_warty_pig
...and like the Eurasian wild boar has probably experienced some gene-flow from domesticated varieties.

Possible example of gene flow, possibly scientifically unsound so click to enlarge if interested.


You wait c. 150,000 years for an indication that H. sapiens has abstract thinking, and someone draws a pig.
A gap of 5,200 years, and someone else draws a pig (which is found by the same guy). I like pork, but I do wonder.

 

[FatPhil]

You wait c. 150,000 years for an indication that H. sapiens has abstract thinking, and someone draws a pig.
A gap of 5,200 years, and someone else draws a pig (which is found by the same guy). I like pork, but I do wonder.

I still don't understand how painting a pig shows "abstract thinking". There's little more concrete than the thing you killed for supper last night. Paint a representation of the trap that you made to catch it, sure, and you'll have demonstrated an ability to analyse a problem, generalise, and formulate a solution. But a pig's just a pig.

 

[Ann K]

I guess- maybe like the Lascaux animals- the people of the time might have seen prey animals in those terms, big animated food parcels, and so emphasised the (desired) plump bodies in their art.

I think we are wandering way off the topic of pareidolia here, but Lascaux is full of paintings of animals that migrated through the area, but they were not prey animals. The one thing that they almost never portrayed was the one thing that was by far their usual source of meat: reindeer.

Of a similar date are the drawings in nearby Rouffignac cave, referred to as "the cave of 100 mammoths" (although "100" is a severe underestimate). Do not underestimate the artistic and observational skills of our distant ancestors. The cave drawings depict mammoths with an anal musk gland, a detail which was not verified for centuries until an intact specimen was found frozen in permafrost. It amazes me to think that the pictures were done by people who saw mammoths wandering through France, and things like lions and wooly rhinoceros as well.

It is quite possible that the finest paintings in Lascaux were done by a single talented individual during his lifetime. The same might have happened at Rouffignac.

 

[Ann K]

I guess- maybe like the Lascaux animals- the people of the time might have seen prey animals in those terms, big animated food parcels, and so emphasised the (desired) plump bodies in their art.

I think we are wandering way off the topic of pareidolia here, but Lascaux is full of paintings of animals that migrated through the valley, but they were not prey. The one thing that they almost never portrayed was the one thing that was by far their usual source of food: reindeer.

Of a similar date are the drawings in nearby Rouffignac cave, referred to as "the cave of 100 mammoths" (although "100" is a severe underestimate). Do not underestimate the artistic or observational skills of our distant ancestors. The cave drawings depict mammoths with an anal musk gland, a detail which was not verified for centuries until an intact specimen was found frozen in permafrost. It amazes me to think that the pictures were done by people who saw mammoths wandering through France, and things like wooly rhinoceros as well.

It is quite possible that the finest paintings in Lascaux were done by a single talented individual during his lifetime. The same might have happened at Rouffignac.

 

[Ann K]

From Wikipedia article on pigs: pigs in the Neolithic. "Pigs is pigs!"

The initial emergence of wild pigs, followed by the genetic divergence between boars and pigs and the domestication of pigs.

 

[John J.]

I still don't understand how painting a pig shows "abstract thinking".

It shows you have a conscious internal representation of that animal, not just a reaction to it or a generalised memory.

Reproducing "the image in your head" involves planning and tool use: the ability to maintain a constant memory of the appearance of the animal, plus the ability to work to a systematic plan for some time, so that your memory is translated into a two-dimensional pattern on stone which nonetheless conveys the appearance of the animal in such a way that the subject is immediately identifiable by others- an astonishing ability!

I think we can be confident that the image would be recognisable to at least some of the artist's peers, just as it is to us today.
The picture is an external memory storage device! The artist's work shows us that he or she saw this animal.

We don't know the purposes of prehistoric art. Maybe to help in retelling stories, maybe to impress others with how clever you are, maybe a magic/ religious appeal for similar game in future

Lascaux is full of paintings of animals that migrated through the valley, but they were not prey

(I don't know, but I'd guess that the Lascaux people would sometimes hunt equines/ bovids if the opportunity arose),
who knows.
But the art presumably did have a purpose, and the effort put into it doesn't seem to confer any survival benefits* unless it helped reinforce or elevate the artist's status in their group- which depends on others being impressed by the artist's representation of an animal that they had seen and remembered.

*Just occurred to me, maybe people occupied with such activity were less inclined to go wandering off from the cave at inopportune times, or get involved in fights about mates etc. that might occur with everyone just sitting around eyeing each other up. Maybe pastimes originally had a survival/ social benefit after all!

 

[BlackHoleNFO]

One of the best cases of pareidolia I've seen...

View attachment 69319

You can imitate such pictures with AI and so called "controlnet". Controlnet uses a Black and White Picture of a Face and mesh it into a generated AI picture. I have some examples, maybe later. I also think this is AI too. The person looks weird.

 

[JMartJr]

I ain't buying that tree trunk closest to center, either. IT is okay, and sure it might pass out of sight beyond that structure, but the way there appears to be the rest of the trunk, but displaced to the right and in front of the building.... it ain't conclusive, but it looks off.

 

[jarlrmai]

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...

It is in fact our brains propensity to see faces that allows such abstract representations to work.

 

[Ann K]

You can imitate such pictures with AI and so called "controlnet". Controlnet uses a Black and White Picture of a Face and mesh it into a generated AI picture. I have some examples, maybe later. I also think this is AI too. The person looks weird.

I don't think so. This picture has been around for years, probably longer than AI. That doesn't mean it's not faked in some other way, of course.

 

[BlackHoleNFO]

I don't think so. This picture has been around for years, probably longer than AI. That doesn't mean it's not faked in some other way, of course.

Hold my Beer:

The oldest Picture is from 8/2023 on TinEye
Then i modified the Picture

I searched again and found a lot of Picture and the name of this Person: Lula Da Silva
Searching again: https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?q=AI+Art+Lula+da+Silva+pareidolia
-->
The Hoax Eye on Mastodon:
https://mastodon.world/@hoaxeye/110920460788100490

Finally:
https://www.malumatfurus.org/insan-yuzu-seklinde-manzara/



The first photo is not what was used, but I tried, it's the second one, actually.
So it is AI.
Cheers*

 

[FatPhil]

The oldest Picture is from 8/2023 on TinEye

Well, it certainly looks like diffusion, and that technique is a decade old:

Diffusion model

For generating images by DDPM, we need a neural network that takes a time t {\displaystyle t} and a noisy image x_t {\displaystyle x_{t}}, and predicts a noise ϵ θ ( x_t , t ) {\displaystyle \epsilon _{\theta }(x_{t},t)} from it. Since predicting the noise is the same as predicting the denoised image, then subtracting it from x_t {\displaystyle x_{t}} , denoising architectures tend to work well. For example, the U-Net, which was found to be good for denoising images, is often used for denoising diffusion models that generate images.[52]

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_model

U-Net was created by Olaf Ronneberger, Philipp Fischer, Thomas Brox in 2015 and reported in the paper "U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation".[1] It is an improvement and development of FCN: Evan Shelhamer, Jonathan Long, Trevor Darrell (2014). "Fully convolutional networks for semantic segmentation".[2]

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-Net

 

[BlackHoleNFO]

In the "finally" Link they write about "controlnet"...
https://github.com/lllyasviel/ControlNet

 

[JMartJr]

Raises a point -- to what extent do we think of images INTENTIONALLY created to look like a face as being pareidolia. Does a computer created image making faces out of "stuff" still count?

Is a similar image made by a human artist pareidolia?

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Fruit Basket" c. 1590

What abut a face drawn by AI that is just "intended" as a face?

What about a portrait painting?

Gustave Courbet, "A Desperate Man: 1845

A photograph of a face?

Self Portrait Repairing a Large Kite

In all those cases, what you are looking at is not the/a face, but is seen as one...

 

[Ann K]

Dali, 1940, "Slave market with the disappearing bust of Voltaire"

 

[Mendel]

Raises a point -- to what extent do we think of images INTENTIONALLY created to look like a face as being pareidolia.

there's a duality that distinguishes it. your first 2 examples have it, the other 3 don't.

 

[JMartJr]

there's a duality that distinguishes it. your first 2 examples have it, the other 3 don't.

You have captured my interest, can you expound a bit? ^_^

 

[Giddierone]

Late 1800s 'Anthropomorphic landscape' advert for Dr. August König's Hamburger Tropfen — to cure all ailemnets.

Source: https://maxkade.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-picture-puzzle-vexierbild.html
Memorable 1990 advert for Nurofen (ibuprofen) with vocal from Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In The Sky.

 

[Mendel]

You have captured my interest, can you expound a bit? ^_^

your first examples are a forest(1) and a face(2), and a fruit basket(1) and a face(2). Your other examples are a face(1), a face(1), and a face(1), and they do not have duality.
You could say they are a face and a picture, but that's just changing the semiotic level, not a duality.

 

[JMartJr]

Thanks -- I'll go dig out my dictionary and work on that a bit. If I remain confused, but also feel I am capable of getting past it, I'll follow up with you! ^_^

 

[BlackHoleNFO]

Raises a point -- to what extent do we think of images INTENTIONALLY created to look like a face as being pareidolia. Does a computer created image making faces out of "stuff" still count?
View attachment 74915

you mean because its is an face and not "can be one". i think its a question of definition.

 

[psikiwi]

Is a similar image made by a human artist pareidolia?

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Fruit Basket" c. 1590

I just found Arcimboldo last week, from an unrelated site, and looked him up on Wikipedia. This guy was prolific, and still-life images a common theme. What surprised me was the time period: b. 5 April 1527 – d.11 July 1593. Guess I'm not the savviest art historian out there.

I snapshotted several images, thinking to get them posted here, but you've jumped the gun. (and now I can't find them...)

 

[John J.]

Raises a point -- to what extent do we think of images INTENTIONALLY created to look like a face as being pareidolia.

Personally I think if there has been an intent to portray a face or other recognisable object, it's not pareidolia,
the observer perceives a (for example) face because that was the intention of the person who created that image/ art installation etc.

In this picture we're meant to see Jimi Hendrix. We don't see his face in a chance arrangement of unconnected visual elements, we see it because a recognizable representation of Jimi's face has been cleverly incorporated into a scene.

pareidolia

noun
the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist, as in considering the moon to have human features

Collins Dictionary .com, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/pareidolia

pareidolia
noun
psychology specialized
a situation in which someone sees a pattern or image of something that does not exist, for example a face in a cloud

Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pareidolia

(All emphases in the original, not mine).

There are definitions which say pareidolia is seeing a structured image in random or ambiguous visual elements though, so there's plenty of room to disagree with my take on it.

 

[Mendel]

Personally I think if there has been an intent to portray a face or other recognisable object, it's not pareidolia,
the observer perceives a (for example) face because that was the intention of the person who created that image/ art installation etc.

i am focusing on the perception, as pareidolia is an act of seeing (and of creating meaning as a recipient). The intent of whatever creator is not part of this process.

If pareidolia is seeing a human face in something else, there needs to be
(1) something else, and
(2) a face.

Extend as needed to non-face pareidolia.

 

[JMartJr]

Re: Intent and pareidolia -- I am enjoying these posts very much. I am fascinated by the human process of defining things and drawing lines between categories, and especially as that process works with what may be more of a continuum than discrete categories. Which may or may not be the case here...

 

[FatPhil]

i am focusing on the perception, as pareidolia is an act of seeing (and of creating meaning as a recipient). The intent of whatever creator is not part of this process.

If pareidolia is seeing a human face in something else, there needs to be
(1) something else, and
(2) a face.

Extend as needed to non-face pareidolia.

I think I disagree, if I've interpretted you correctly. When the perception is of a created work, if that work has been created to look like a face, it *is* a representation of a face. And if it's been created to look like a face, then that's the creator's intent. You're correctly interpretting it if you see the face.

So I'd say I view pareidolia more as:
(1) something that isn't a face, and isn't intended to be perceived as a face
(2) perception of that thing as a face

So a company logo that inadvertantly looks like a something snigger-inducing would count as pareidolia, the cock-and-balls were not intentional.

I admit I have a grey area regarding images created by deliberately selecting a point of view that composites multiple natural elements in just such a way as the illusion is created, but without any rearrangement of those natural elements. But no good discussion can exist without corner cases that mess everything up.

 

[Mendel]

You're correctly interpretting it if you see the face.

Yes. And pareidolia is the means by which you interpret the artwork.

There is no "wrong" or "right" in pareidolia, it's just a way in which we can perceive things from incomplete representations.

The Lula da Silva example we discussed earlier didn't cease to be pareidolia when we found out it was intentional.

 

[FatPhil]

Yes. And pareidolia is the means by which you interpret the artwork.

There is no "wrong" or "right" in pareidolia, it's just a way in which we can perceive things from incomplete representations.

The Lula da Silva example we discussed earlier didn't cease to be pareidolia when we found out it was intentional.

You're contradicting both of the dictionary definitions quoted above, specifically the explicit negatives within. And similarly, I no longer consider the da Silva example to be an example, because the representation of a face does explicitly exist.

 

[Mendel]

You're contradicting both of the dictionary definitions quoted above, specifically the explicit negatives within.

both definitions place pareidolia as an act of perception, of seeing
what is seen is
(1) something that exists
(2) a pattern/image/meaning that does not exist
the da Silva scene pretends to be a photorealistic depiction of a muddy street and buildings (1) that can be perceived as da Silva (2) although da Silva is not photorealistically there

And similarly, I no longer consider the da Silva example to be an example, because the representation of a face does explicitly exist.

exactly my point
if your decision on whether something is pareidolia or not is determined by facts outside the perception process, then that definition of the term becomes unwieldy. It's easier to understand pareidolia as something our perception does, and less ambiguous.

 

[BlackHoleNFO]

face in car wreck:

Spoiler: AI Info

Model: SDXL_juggernautXL_juggXIByRundiffusion,
ControlNet 0: "Module: depth_midas, Model: diffusion_pytorch_model_promax
Sampler: DPM++ SDE,
Schedule type: Karras

 

[Harabeck]

face in car wreck:

Hmm, not seeing it. Some parts of the car look suspiciously chocolatey to me though.

 

[JMartJr]

I think it is just the central greenery? If not, if it supposed to be the whole car, I ain't seeing it either.