My pareidolia knows no bounds.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">But there is no S there in the data. I don't know how to make that any clearer or stronger [rd]<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I'll rephrase my question: If there is no S in the test data, (the data the subjects were given to see if they could, by power of suggestion, be induced to see an S), is box "a" a sample of the test data that was shown to the subjects? Are we being shown by you a sample of the test data or not? If not, what was the purpose of you "processing" the data in the three box a's? (I would have processed them only to see if there was an S buried in the data.)

I'll ask it differently, are the box a's the subject's "answers" or the "question", (raw test data)? If they are the answers where is the test data? We need to see the test data (the white noise with no S in it) so we can judge the relavance of this experiment and your theory. We need to see if we can see the S.

Neil

One day, while searching for pareidolia on the internet, I came across Fred Ressler, who is an artist/photographer.

beyondpareidolia.shutterfly.com/

Here's a quote:

"''Liking its abstract beauty, I took a photo of a shadow on the side of my house with a Cannon Sure-Shot camera one of my daughters had given to my wife, Eileen, and me. When I had it printed, I noticed a face. I showed the image to Eileen and she said there was a body too and it looked like an archangel. I was sort of suprised because neither of us was into angels as far as we knew. It sort of rang a bell when she said that. I had the feeling that it might be an angel. I figured, if this showed up by chance, what would be the results if I looked for this type of image. The irony is that I had thought of photographing these eidetic images in clouds, shadows, tree leaves before but never did it. The result gave me the incentive to look for more images. "The Blues Singer" showed up within ten minutes. I took a shot and called Eileen to show her the shadow on the house siding by our back door. She said shoot, not knowing I already did; I shot again with slightly different results, as the shadows change with wind and time. I realized the grooves in the siding would get in the way, and switched to a 20x30 inch foam board covered with paper and mounted on a homemade stand art. I also took photos inside the house on the floor and walls. I showed an early photo to Eileen and she said it looked like Dan Doloff, an old friend. When she said this I started realizing these might be something more than random images, but I tried not to dwell on this aspect being content with the intrinsic photos. I showed another photo to my daughter, Lila, to see if someone else saw the face. Her mouth dropped open and she exclaimed "It's me." I said "What?". She said "It looks exactly like me". I saw that she was right and I was totally hooked"

It's important that anyone looking at this realize that Mr. Ressler has in all probability only let a certain amount of "thumnails" of his images to get out, and that he has the original high resolution images, which they sell as prints.

Having said that though, some of them are incredible. I found a quote from Mr. Ressler on a message board that there were over "40 corresponding features in shape/size/placement" in the image at the lower left of the link above.

How many images have we seen that would pass that criteria? And we know that Mr. Ressler's images are the product of his mind, trees, shadows, and a camera. He knows he can find them, so he does.

True, they wouldn't pass the test of "reproducibility" at differing viewing anlges, but taken individually, they are impressive examples of faces extracted from nothing. Here's a couple:

Dylan:
beyondpareidolia.shutterfly.com/1152#1139
Lila Native American Princess
beyondpareidolia.shutterfly.com/1133#1152

rd

"True, they wouldn't pass the test of "reproducibility" at differing viewing anlges, but taken individually, they are impressive examples of faces extracted from nothing. Here's a couple: [rd]"

If so, then almost all of us would judge them to be an optical illusions. Thus the examples buttress our case. As I said above each specimen must be judged individually, put under a microsope as it were. We can't assume to be true that which we are trying to prove.

Neil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br />Having said that though, some of them are incredible. I found a quote from Mr. Ressler on a message board that there were over "40 corresponding features in shape/size/placement" in the image at the lower left of the link.

How many images have we seen that would pass that criteria? And we know that Mr. Ressler's images are the product of his mind, trees, shadows, and a camera. He knows he can find them, so he does.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Worth repeating. It's all related.

rd

Although Fred Ressler's art wasn't posted this time I checked it out and it reminded me of somthing I said before that is also worth repeating. I said there is no chain of evidence in this type of thing. There is no harm in citing it or posting it but it's important to stress the point again. Here's what I mean. UFO advocates are fond of showing photographs as "proof" that ET is among us. Most are spots or lights in the sky but others are good pictures. But the reason why they are never good science is because we never really know what we are looking at. Anything could have been done to them.

That was why I was so concerned that the NASA/JPL/MSSS images are authentic, undoctored verifiable and so forth. In essence they are backed by the full legal weight of the US government. But I still like to confirm images as much as possible, and in as many ways as possible, and it's an ongoing effort. If I really felt NASA couldn't be trusted, and had good evidence, I'd quit this in a heartbeat.

Fred may be a nice guy and honest and reliable, but we don't know that. So looking at his stuff is like looking at UFO pics as far as the science is concerned. As for the study you cited, I eagerly await answers anybody can understand.

Neil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />1- “naive observers.” Please define this term.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Someone who has no pre-knowledge of the nature of the experiment.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">2- “The observers were told that the letter S (for “superstitious”) was present on 50% of the 20,000 trials, which were equally divided into 40 blocks and completed over a fortnight.” Was this true, in other words were the test subjects told the truth?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">No, it was not true. The letter S was not purposely present in any of the trials.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">3- “The image presented on each trial consisted of static bit noise.” Does this mean that the image was all “noise,” or was an ”S” actually imbedded in the image 50% of the time?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">There was never an S purposely embedded in any of the images, though random chance meant that some images would probably contain something that could be interpreted as an S.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">4- “The observers detected an S in noise on 22.7% (R.C.), 45.9% (N.L.), and 11% (M.J.) of the trials, respectively.” Am I correct in assuming that the “S” was actually there 50% of the time, but this was the rate of its appearance perceived by the test subjects?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It is unknown (unknowable?) how often an S appeared by chance in the random test images, but it would be substantially less than 50%.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">5- “In the experiment, we only show white noise templates (many of them). We INSTRUCT subject that there is a letter S in the noise, on 50% of the trials, but there is NEVER such S letter with added noise.” Does this mean that in the twenty thousand trials there is never an “S” actually in the image? If so, are the several samples of “a” in your post, genuine excerpts from the study, or are they “modified” to render the explanation clearer and easier to understand? In other words, I want to know whether I am also imagining the “S” by my own power of suggestion (because I also see the real S’s) or whether the “S” is really there in the noise images “a”.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">There are images which may be interpreted to contain an S, but there are no images in which an S was intentionally inserted. The "a" images are sort of the summation of the images where the test subjects saw an S. They illustrate how the test subjects' different preferences for style of S actually influenced their selection of test images. The different S styles demonstrate that the subjects selected different images. An S would not be as apparent in any of the individual images that the test subjects selected as it is in the "a" images. If you are still confused about the presence of the S's, remember that the experimenters could have asked for any letter and gotten similar results using the same test images. They probably could have repeated the experiment for every letter in the alphabet using the same test subjects and the same test images and gotten similar results for each iteration.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">6- “Box a therefore represents, for each subject, the information that, on average, distinguished an S from noise IN AN EXPERIMENT WHEN ONLY WHITE NOISE WAS PRESENTED.” Again, are WE seeing the same (real) “box a” with only noise in it?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Not sure what you are asking here.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">7- “How does this happen? Because the subject IS TOLD to EXTRACT the letter S from white noise, the subject attempts to match his/her knowledge of an S with the incoming white noise.” Forgive me if I don’t take the experimenter’s word for this. Any valid scientific study must be repeatable, so others can do the same experiment and get the same results. This is what JP did in his “Profile” paper in MRB, we could actually do the optical illusion tests and see for ourselves. This is also what we did in our “T or E” paper; we showed the reader how to overcome the light inversion effect.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Until the experiment is repeated, you are correct to be skeptical, though this is a pretty simple experiment for them to have somehow screwed up.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">8- “So, I decided to do a little experiment of my own. I cropped out the three Box “a” from the paper, and applied three simple image processing techniques that I frequently use. Here’s the before and after:” The three “a” boxes you processed all had “S” included in with the noise, so was the “S” included or were the “a” boxes only noise? In other words, are we imagining that we see "S" in your processed images also? Please inform us.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I'm not sure what the point is either.

JR