Be Smart

Why You See Faces in Things

Joe here. And this is a
face except not really.

but I&amp;#39;m willing to bet when
your brain saw this pattern,

Well, it was, but I&amp;#39;ve been
seeing weird things everywhere.

this building has a face, and
this mop has a big mad face.

And this pepper is even angrier. Probably

Everywhere I look, it&amp;#39;s
face, face, face, face, face.

Seeing faces in non-human
objects is something people from

I mean, there&amp;#39;s a whole
subreddit for this kind of stuff.

and more memes than you can
shake a face shape stick at.

So what sort of collective malfunction is

obsessed brains? Surprise!
It&amp;#39;s not a malfunction at all.

Your brain is doing what human brains do.

and how your brain sees
faces in faceless stuff.

That&amp;#39;s right. Your brain&amp;#39;s
about to learn about itself.

Almost as deep as whatever
subconscious weirdness makes you

The term we&amp;#39;re looking
for is facial pareidolia.

where there aren&amp;#39;t any actual faces.

except I already count
at least six bands on

As far as your brain&amp;#39;s
concerned, pareidolia is a feature,

We homo sapiens are
really good at identifying

of our fellow species
members well helps us build

right? On the flip side,
quickly, spotting the faces

of things that want to hurt
or eat us keeps us alive.

So it&amp;#39;s not hard to see why
natural selection was like,

yeah, let&amp;#39;s keep this little
skill and let&amp;#39;s turn it to 11.

or foes happens really
fast, like literally as fast

Here&amp;#39;s an extremely condensed version
of how seeing works.

Okay, light goes in here, hits cells here,

which send chemical and
electrical signals along here,

Why they put the seeing
part at the opposite

I don&amp;#39;t know. I didn&amp;#39;t design this thing.

Interpreting millions
of electrical signals

and trying to turn them into
some coherent sensation of

what the world actually
looks is hard work.

It&amp;#39;s a lot for one little
chunk of your brain to handle.

So the primary visual cortex
works more like a traffic

When visual data comes in, it
sends some to other regions

That&amp;#39;s here. Motion? That
goes here. Looking at words?

That goes here. This division
of labor where different bits

what we&amp;#39;re looking at even faster.

But honestly, take a look
around you right now.

Take an honest look at all
the stuff your visual system

To keep this visual information
tsunami from piling up.

Our visual traffic controller
sorts signals into two pathways.

and where things are located
in space is interpreted

But figuring out what something
is happens along here.

Telling the difference
between a bird and a bee

or an adult person or two
kids in a trench coat.

But wait, how does your brain
flag something as a face?

Well, scientists have discovered
that a pattern as minimal

of a third dot arranged in
a triangular pattern on a

contrasting background, that&amp;#39;s enough

for our brain to scream, &amp;quot;Face&amp;quot;

Article by AI based on youtube video transcript: Why You See Faces in Things

Summary by AI based on youtube video transcript

Article by AI based on youtube video transcript

Notes

Why Isn’t the Climate Movement Voting? | Nathaniel Stinnett | TED

A Better Treatment for Overdose Is Coming

The Most Important Explosion in History

The Real Reason Robots Shouldn’t Look Like Humans