Faces from the Chasmas

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jrich</i>
<br />Perhaps I misinterpreted Tom's query (Tom?), but I understood him to be asking how we might objectively determine whether a particular pattern is likely to be "real" or likely the result of our natural pattern recognition abilities finding a "match" where none really exists.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Right.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If one is going to take the position that ANY "art" pattern that anyone might see is a legitimate candidate for artificiality, then one must also concede that at least some of these candidates are actually pareidolia.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Agreed.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">So we must examine the response of the human pattern recognition system to the visual stimuli to judge the validity of the patterns.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">None of this is that simple or we would have had a solution long ago. Consider this complicating factor, among many I might mention:

When I've shown certain artistic features in images to a variety of people, the responses are variable in the extreme, even before the viewer is biased by the knowledge that the image is from Mars. Some require a key to see the feature, some do not, and some are irritated by the key because the feature is "so obvious that no one could miss it".

Then, when everyone is seeing the same feature, reactions range from "unimpressive" to "impressive but possibly natural" to "shows professional artistic technique such as proportion and perspective, and must have been created by an experienced artist" (not an uncommon reaction from artists).

So feature recognition is only the tip of the iceberg here. But I think I'm starting to agree that the solution will have to be a statistical one. We may not be able to tell artificial from pareidolic for any one feature. But we can sure ask why Mars is filled with detailed artistic features in certain areas such as Cydonia, whereas nowhere else we have examined is. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />So feature recognition is only the tip of the iceberg here. But I think I'm starting to agree that the solution will have to be a statistical one. We may not be able to tell artificial from pareidolic for any one feature. But we can sure ask why Mars is filled with detailed artistic features in certain areas such as Cydonia, whereas nowhere else we have examined is. -|Tom|-<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">That IS an interesting question. Is it observational bias (we're not looking other places or other places aren't as heavily imaged)? Is it because those that created the art favored certain areas for some reason? Is it because some cataclysmic event destroyed or obscured much of the art and only certain areas were spared? Or is it because certain types of Martian terrain naturally lend themselves to pareidolia?

Who knows? But I don't think the solution to this particular question lends itself to discovery by statistical analysis except to rule out observational bias.

JR

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jrich</i>
<br />Or is it because certain types of Martian terrain naturally lend themselves to pareidolia?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Yes! That's it. If you want to harvest something, go to where it is plentiful. I will be talking much more about this part of it. But a good starting point would be to undertand what's meant by an image having both "high spatial frequecy" (HSF) data, and "low spatial frequency" (LSF) data. And I apologize to anyone who already knows this. Please bear with me.

Plus, the other thread I'm presenting is the notion that "that one sees what one knows".

I hope to make this clearer over time.

rd

Another possibility is that some of the imaging methods used by the orbiters produce images more likely to result in misinterpretation. For instance, grayscale images (either inherently or due to incorrect exposure) may underrepresent the true emission variability, causing distinct features to become indistinguishable and resulting in apparent shape bounderies where none truly exist. These imaging methods may be predominate in the images available for certain areas or perhaps the imaging of certain types of terrain is more problematic in this respect than others. I can see a role for statistical analysis here: are certain image types or imaging methods overrepresented in the imagery that are believed to contain art?

JR

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jrich</i>
<br />grayscale images (either inherently or due to incorrect exposure) may underrepresent the true emission variability, causing distinct features to become indistinguishable<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">You remind me that one of our coming artificiality tests is color when that becomes available. If features are color-appropriate (such as flesh tones, blue eyes, etc.), and those colors are not otherwise present in the local background, that tends to rule out natural origin. And vice versa. -|Tom|-

I'll be returning to some of the possible artificial structures which I and others have discovered in an attempt to "weight" them qualitatively, and to introduce any new evidence as it might arise.

Here's a composite of the south oriented "lovers" mosaic posted recently. The two images in which this Mars-glyph are found have slightly different lighting but almost all of the details remain in both images, including the detailed eye and the strands of hair and part on the buxom girl's head. A good <i>a priori</i> prediction for this image would be if in very different lighting, say early morning, (these two images are afternoon shots), the silhouetted man on the left were lighted, revealing a detailed eye, and the girl were a silhouette! We don't have that of course, but if we did it might convince some skeptics.

Here's M1301494 and M0200343 composite of Lovers.



Neil