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Adam

1 (2.6%)

Bob

19 (48.7%)

Chris

7 (17.9%)

Dan

12 (30.8%)

Total Members Voted: 36

[cerapa]

Is there supposed to be colour in that image?

All I see is a bunch of zeroes and a one on a white background. If what you see is less subtle, then that's pretty damn subtle.

[andrea]

the one really stands out in my opinion. But I don't really agree with chris on ignoring the zeros entirely. The one stands out so much because it is surrounded by a large field of zeros. I voted Dan.

As to why I consider the 1 more important ( in my opinion) than any other digit... well, that may be tricky. But I am going to try.
The field of zeros is memorized as an uniform background; it only needs 3 informations to store the whole field. ( width, height, digit(0 or 1). or number, shape and digit).
The single one also requires 3 informations to be defined and memorized ( X-coord, Y-coord, digit.)

This means that from a memory per digit point of view, the single "1" is as important as the whole field it is immersed in. Which means that it is way more important and noteworthy than any "0" in the picture.


However, as the background field expands, Chris's opinion becomes more and more valid: Think about the room you are in and what is important in there. Most likely, the first thing that you thought isn't "it is full of air", because air fills our environment completely. It is our field of 0s. In fact, such a line of thinking was attempted as a model to the universe , in the past ( see Dirac sea).


By the way, the "room with 300 people and 1 chair" fails a bit as a reason for which the zeros are more important.
Because I can tell you that in a room with 300 people, after an hour or 2 battles are going to be fought over that chair and he who notices it first gets to sit on it.

[sjm9876]

-snip-

Whilst I don't actually see a discolouration, I agree my attention is drawn to a cone of some sort to the right of the 1.
Still, most likely just a nuance of the image. Though it could be argued the whole thing is a nuance of the image, because I imagine the entire situation would change if the 1 was on an edge anyway.

[Cheeetar]

Bucket, you're going to need a much better explanation of the point you're trying to make, that doesn't rely on some story about people who are abstractions of things only you understand. Do note that I understand you're talking about perception- I just don't understand what exactly it is about perception you'd like people to discuss.

[alexandertnt]

Most of their opinions they express seem to be derived through reasoning, not through perception. I wouldn't be suprised if the 1 stood out to all of them (including Adam, after realising the 1 existed), especially given that the human brain has basically evolved to notice and pay attention to (especially visual) things like that.

[crazysheep]

If the exception is what stands out first to you, do you see how that could heavily influence your worldview? Your social and political opinions?

Indeed.

[Jelle]

Seems less about focus and more a discussion regarding interpretation to me. Sure the 1 stands out, but that's simple pattern reconignition.

[GlyphGryph]

...I don't really agree with any of them as I see this - a subtle wave of green discolouration blowing out as a wave to the right side of the of the 1.

I was just about to post the same thing! Oddly enough, I saw this before I noticed the 1, and is probably the reason I ended up doing so.

My next reaction was to quote the post so I could see the BBCode because I thought to myself "This argument seems dumb and weird. Maybe there's more going on here, though, things that might actually be interesting. Time to look a little deeper."

Then "Okay, nothing there. People are saying there's 300 zeroes (obviously not, but whatever) but is that even true? Worthwhile to do some basic fact-checking before getting involved."

And I learned it's not a square, data-wise! 25x12. I thought that was interesting. Other than that, there is a '1' at [6,6] and the rest of the grid is zeroes.

So, ultimately, I believe that everyone in the conversation is kinda weird. Why focus at all? The task is to describe something, presumably they want to do so accurately.

"It's a 25x12 grid of digits, with a '1' at [6,6] and 0s in every other position, with no boundary markers for the cells and an interesting ocular effect creating a visual illusion of a cone extending encompassing the right side of the grid, radiating from the 1."

That should cover both the technical parts of the description, as well as "focusing" on the interesting parts - the things that arise from the topic being discussed.

Arguing that the '1' is/isn't important/is less important than the zeros/is not important is stupid - nothing in the image is important, except to the extent that it plays a role in the definition the people have to give! And as far as defining features go, everyone seems to be "focusing", when all the focusing does is lead them to an incomplete picture and a weird argument full of nonsensical and baseless statements. Even Bob seems to fall for this sort of thing, saying things like "The zeros are clearly more important to the overall picture." What does that even mean? Who knows! Not these guys, that's for sure.

I guess if I "focused" on anything, it more has to do with the shape of the data on the whole, the reason the question is being asked, and then what of interest can I pull out of this.

[MagmaMcFry]

I don't agree with any of the people in the discussion. There's a bunch of zeros, and there's a one. As long as I have no idea what the hell these zeros and the one are there for, I might as well just, you know, tolerate them all. Seriously, why are all four people trying to judge the importance of the zeros versus one when they haven't even been given a measure of importance yet?

It also seems like all four people just randomly blurted out a position at the start of their argument and then spent the rest of their argument trying to defend their position for no other reason than that it's theirs.

[Vector]

.

[Frumple]

I just... I just want to offer my support and condolences for that poor, ignored, background. It's a lovely shade of dark grey for me and takes up more space than every single other thing in the considered area, and despite that it's received like two mentions at all and no appreciation whatsoever. Poor background.

[Biowraith]

First thing I looked for was the 1(s) because I hadn't read any of the text and expect it was probably one of those tests to see if you notice the discrepancies (I expected there to be at least one more 1 that you'd maybe not notice after you spotted the first 1, thinking that's all there was to find).  Some sort of optical illusion maybe.

Then I read the text below, but I got bored and stopped after about 8 lines of it.  None of it is important or significant because it has no context beyond their tedious discussion.

On the photo, I saw a girl/young woman on a horse.  I checked to make sure there wasn't something in the background that I was meant to miss (and considered mentioning the trees and the water and the pattern on the horse and the nail varnish and so on and so forth) because I was too busy looking at the girl/young woman on the horse.  It never entered my mind that the test might be which of the two I used to describe the photo until I read the explanation.  Even now I've read that, I still have trouble imagining anyone describing it as just a photo of a horse, or just a photo of a girl (unless they were doing so specifically to make a point, I suppose).

I'm still a little hazy on the point of the thread, other than just to point out that different people place significance on different things and make different decisions / form different opinions as a result, but I'm guessing there must be more to it than that.

[i2amroy]

In the very first instant my mind is totally encompassed by the 1, simply because, as mentioned by those before me, the zeroes take the place of a patterned background. However after that moment I notice what the zeroes are, and then I get a bit of that discoloration (though mine moves as I look at different parts of the background). In my opinion in that case it's not so much the point where the 1 is or the zeroes are that is the most important, but rather the point where the 1 is bounded by zeroes. It's the interaction between the two that is important, not one or the other, so I voted Dan.

As for the girl/horse picture, I'd say it was a picture of a horse due to four simple reasons:
1) The horse is closer to the photographer than the girl is.
2) The horse takes up a larger portion of the photo than the girl (but doesn't become a "background" due to the actual background in the photo).
3) The horse is closer to the center of the photo.
4) If we imagine the photo as a variety of "emphasis lines" most of them point towards one thing, the horses ears (the girl's body, her arm, the horse's head, etc.). This is part of the horse, and thus emphasizes the horse in the photo.

(Strangely if I'm trying to make it ambiguous I call it a girl/horse photo, not a horse/girl photo, since generally girls are more complex than horses, thus placing them first in the two).

[nenjin]

I took Chris' view, because I guess I find outliers more interesting than homogeneity. Or maybe I'm just very human in that I'm wired to look for differences to establish pattern recognition, so differences demand my attention more than similarities.

[Sergarr]

I refuse to participate in this vote, because all 4 answers include males! Where's the female variant when you need it?

And horse because it is huge.