Marina Cortês
Ticks of time: on Cosmology, Everest, and Ballet
Ticks of time: on Cosmology, Everest, and Ballet
In the context of flooding by generative content, there might be a natural argument, based on evolutionary biology, to put a cap or upper limit, on generative quantities.
Due to the nature of the physical world in which we evolved, a three-dimensional world where we use visual detail to give us information on predators, there might be a natural scale (a number of objects) that our visual cortex is naturally comfortable processing.
There might a natural scale on the number of distinct objects our brain has evolved to perceive. Exposing it to numbers much higher than this might pose a challenge to our brains.
Recently I was exposed to the high numbers of data files that generative technologies can generate very rapidly, while trying to discern between and keep track of all the files the model was offering me in rapid succession.
This led me to reflect on the relationship between human sight and the technology. I believe there might be a natural scale, a natural number of different objects, that our brain is evolutionarily able to process per unit time, in our 3d+1 spacetime.
Human sight and the processing of visual stimuli by the brain is based on gradients between the different stimuli that the optical nerve receives. We do not perceive colours, we perceive variations in colour. The same for textures, we only process variations of texture, or any other property of visual data received by the brain. If we are presented with fully homogenous colour, say a very uniform shade of yellow in our field of vision we will not be able to process it, and the visual cortex becomes confused. The same for textures. Coherent integration of visual signals requires there to be gradients in the outer world signal we are processing. Luckily there are no homogenous coloured objects in the world around us. Or perhaps we should be because there are no fully homogenous features in the outside world, our brain has not evolved to perceive them.
Summary – First point
In summary the first point is to explain that we perceive the external world based on differences and contrast (gradients).
The next step is to say that we do not have infinite vision at large distances. The eye can not see infinitely distant objects. There is a finite length of detail the human eye can focus on. If an object is very far away you might be able to perceive its shape its boundaries, but not the details of the object. So there is a finite amount of detail we can perceive around us.
Evolutionary this might have a reason also. If a predator is very far away, appearing like a dot on the horizon, we might not need to worry about its particular details. However if this dot becomes larger and larger in our field of view it might be in our interest to discern if it is actually a large member of the Felidae family (say a lioness) jumping for its lunch (er.. us).
Summary – second point
The second point is to show that our brain might have evolved to only perceive a finite number of objects around us. We may think of it as a dome (see below).
The number of objects which may be closer to us depends on the number of spatial dimensions. We live in 3d+1 spacetime. In space-time higher dimensionalities geometries we would have denser spheres. Noisier neighouborhoods.
I tried to look at the world around me and how many distinct objects we have around us in a normal day of our lives. Now, if you forgive me for putting on my physics hat, a physicist doesn’t count in individual numbers, we count in orders of magnitude. I aimed for a rough estimate of the number of objects that our brain and might naturally be presented with on a regular basis, meaning our visual cortex is comfortably queried to distinguish between that many objects.
How many neighbours do we have?
If in addition I also factor that the number of objects which can neighbour us is a function of spatial dimension, it might be better to put forward an estimate of objects per spatial dimension. I estimated that we are able to distinguish between 10 to 100 different objects per spatial dimension, that is 10^(1.5) and in our 3d world this comes up to 10^(4.5) or around 30 thousand different objects.
This still feels large. The real number might be better approximated with celestial coordinates because since we do not see in radial directions around us. This means that my calculation above, based in Euclidian geometry could be better done in spherical geometry. In spherical geometry the calculation is 4/3 times \pi times 10^(1.5) cubed, which yields around 10 thousand objects.
Fourth point – summary
Ten thousands objects might be closer to the actual processing capacity of the visual cortex per unit time.
Due to the nature of the physical world in which we evolved, a three-dimensional world where we use visual detail to give us information on predators, there might be a natural scale a number of objects that we are naturally comfortable processing.
If our brains are presented with objects numbering much higher than this natural scale we might not be evolutionarily equipped to handle those, and our brain be prone to malfunction or challenge in processing those quantities simultaneously.
In the context of flooding by generative content flood, there might be a natural argument, based on evolutionary biology to put a cap, or upper limit on generative quantities.
