Re: Visualizing

On Sat, 07 Sep 2024 07:29:56 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 06 Sep 2024 08:59:06 -0700) it happened john larkin
<jlarkin_highland_tech> wrote in <eq8mdjd7lohm9rglsdc7rgi5i7nbde1co1@4ax.com>:
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On Fri, 06 Sep 2024 11:27:38 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
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On Fri, 06 Sep 2024 07:53:46 -0700, john larkin
<jlarkin_highland_tech> wrote:
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I was driving and listening to the local mostly-annoying NPR radio
station, but they had an interesting interview with a book author. It
was about his novel or some poetry or something.
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What was interesting was his recalling a conversation that he'd had
with his wife. She was takling about a plant or something and asked
him to visualize it. He was astounded that she, or anyone, could close
their eyes and *see* something they were thinking about.
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I was shocked to learn that there are people who can't form a mental
visual image.
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Close your eyes and consider a nice white ceramic dinner plate with a
beautiful deep red apple sitting in the center. Can you see it? From
the side and from the top? Do you see the stem? The colors? Imagine it
slowly rotating? See the fruit fly?
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If the world is divided between people who can visualise and people
who can't, that could explain a great deal.

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There are definitely such people, and I've met them.  The example that
springs to mind was a History Teaching Assistant I met in college in
the 1960s.  It turned out that he had been an EE Undergrad, and
discovered that he could not visualize the electrons in motion, unlike
his colleagues.  This TA was wise enough to know that this was
crippling - he would never be able to compete with those who could
visualize electrons.  So he switched to History.
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Joe Gwinn

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The statistics would be interesting, whether the non-visualization
thing is common or maybe very rare. I'll have to google that some
time.
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There is a small fraction of the population that don't like music, for
example. That includes me. Some people absolutely can't remember
faces. I know a guy who can only recognize people by their hair.
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I'd expect that among CE/EE graduates, good visualizers would tend to
be more EE and less visualizers more CE. Things vs words.
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That would suggest a good interview question.
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I was drafted once (never served) and took a test to join the Marine
Corps. One part involved looking at a flat thing with various squares
painted with patterns, and then imagining a box that was folded up
from the flat thing. I guess that visualizing things would be useful
to a Marine.
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I think the original IQ test was for the military.

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I was tested for the draft here and immediately assigned to the air force.
But did not have to serve as there was a law here 'eldest son breadwinner'.
But sure enough my first job was designing stuff for the telcos, army and navy,
so wound up there anyways and worked on those navy ships, dangerous...

I used to work on ships, designing control systems and for a while
going out and maintaining them.

The steam plants were especially dangerous. A welded pipe joint might
leak an invisible jet that would cut you in half. The crew would test
a  joint  by waving a broomstick around it, and see if the end would
be sliced off and fall to the deck.