On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 04:07:58PM -0000, John Calvin wrote:
> When I was in High School, I broke my glasses and was without them for
> just over a week. I have really horrible vision and had to be almost
> on top of people to recognize their faces. I found though that I was
> able to recognize people at distance by the way they moved. I could
> recognize movement in even large blurry objects.
I've done more or less the same thing. For a lot of the time I didn't
use to wear my glasses, but I didn't have trouble recognising people. An
upshot of this (following a little experimentation and comparison with
others) is that I can recognise people very easily in dim light, at long
distance, or in other difficult visual conditions.
It's noticing and following up on things like this that I really enjoy
doing. People who think about how their mind, body and senses actually
work, and how they can be best used, can be a degree of magnitude more
aware and effective in response than those who don't.
I think it's a terrible shame that in everyday life one doesn't usually
have the opportunity to take advantage in these areas. You have to find
the situations for yourself. And create them.
> It made me wonder how many different methods do we as humans use to
> recognize each other, while only being directly concious of the
> obvious.
It depends very much on how familiar you are with a person. With my own
family, I can tell exactly who is walking around the house where by
their footsteps, for example.
> I do have a couple of friends that I am sure I could recognize by smell.
Ditto.
Martin
-- -----[ Martin J. Ling ]-----[ http://www.nodezero.org.uk ]-----
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