<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 />Neither of us is understanding the other, and I don't know why. Your reply makes no sense to me as a response to my question. Where is the change of viewing orientation or lighting orientation over a broad range in the examples you just cited, or in any other example of known pareidolia? Or is there something unclear about the meaning of this criterion?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes, you've got me confused again on this. We do seem to be talking past each other. I think I've argued this point many times, but you don't seem to want to accept it. I'm not saying you don't necessarily understand what I'm saying, at this point I'm thinking you do, and you disagree with me, but let me nail down what I think is the one single idea we disagree on. It has to do with this quote of yours:
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The whole point is that <b>face illusions </b> made of shadows in natural terrain disappear when the direction of the light source changes because that changes the shadows. <b>And faces made from piecing together random natural shapes in busy terrain also disappear</b> when one views them from a different direction and sees the pieces in a different order or relationship, and sometimes sees new pieces or can no longer see others.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I highlighted two phrases. I agree with both of your assertions. However, what I don't agree with is that there is <b>no</b> case where viewing from different direction or light coming from different direction eliminates all possible examples of pareidolia. It's as simple as that.
Sure, in much of what we're dealing with, that's true, but there are other cases involving observations from close up and various directions, under varying lighting angles, where it's <b>not true</b>. Also, what if you don't have a whole bunch of angles and lighting to work with, then what?
For instance, suppose one sunny day, I went to Yosemite with a small jack hammer, chisel and hammer, and a small stool. I go to one of the walls, and carve out a head and face feature about the size of a small wall in your house. I'm not a very good artist, so it would be relatively crude. But, I have good enough technique with a hammer and chisel that I can make the eyes, nose mouth, hair, outline of head, in such a way that it sort of looks like natural breaks in the rock, not necessarily "brush strokes" looking. But, crude as it may be, it is most definitely appearing like a head and face.
Ok, the next day, I take you to that spot and show it to you from about 5 to 10 feet away. Maybe we go in the after noon, rather than the morning so the sun is at a completely different angle. We walk all the way in a 180 degree from the wall out and around to the other side of the face, from anywhere from 5 to 25 feet away at any time.
All I'm saying is that in this case it doesn't necessarily disappear at anytime, anymore than we disappear when someone looks at us from different angles and lighting, and there's no way for you to be sure if that face is pareidolic in nature, or man made, unless you can find corroborating evidence.
It seems like you don't want to accept that part of the definition of pareidolia, although I could be misreading it. In this case (to you as viewer at the wall in Yosemite) "pareidolia" just means non-man made vs. man made. You would be seeing it all the time, you just wouldn't know if it was pareidolia or not. I would obviously because I made it, but that's a whole different issue.
In this example, there are no shadows or illusions or noisy background involved at all, just "man-made" or "not man made" (i.e., pareidolic).
rd
Topic Author
