Even worse, I can identify most cars at night using just the taillight/headlight shape
I can look at any car’s headlights and tell you which way they’re going.
I can look at any car’s wheels and tell you if it’s run me over or not.
Thanks again, Mitch
yOu’Re LiTeRaLlY kIlLiNg ThE pLaNeT bY hAvInG bAsIc PaTtErN rEcOgNiSsIoN
Or by the curve from a part of the wheel arch.
Cool people do something similar with birds and plants. I can do it with dogs
It was fun the first time I successfully identified a species of maple from almost a mile away (it was a silver, not super hard lol)
I do birb al plant groups too (tho badly)!
But I cannot fucking remember dog breeds at all, or even distinguish between them properly.
I’m much better at identifying cats. Its just a cat, kitty, a chonker even sometimes.
One of the things I absolutely cannot do. I just don’t care about cars at all.
I love cars, but even I’m getting to a point where it’s just “generic SUV”, “generic hybrid crossover”, “holy fuck BMWs are ugly now”.
Whenever I’m in Munich, I see a lot of BMW test vehicles, with the new parts partially camouflaged. I never really liked them, but they’re getting worse really rapidly now. Their new SUV looks like it’s a cyberpunk parody of an overly aggressive car.
I’m one of these people that identifies vehicles by looking at them. It’s a talent that impresses my kid so I’ll take that as a positive! 😁
I can do that too. Cars: four wheels, lorries: many wheels, motorcycles (or mopeds): few wheels and an engine (or it’s a bicycle).
It takes a fraction of a second to parse the list once you have it memorised. It’s not that hard.
Not only am I one of those people, I’m also one who judges people for buying certain cars. Like “Ha, look at that loser who bought that early model Chrysler 300, enjoy your motor blowing up” or “is that a SUPRA that’s actually just a BMW Z4?” Then usually whoever is in the car with me asks what the fuck I’m talking about and I just say “nevermind” and move on to judging the next car in silence.
Except for Tesla’s, I will point at them and yell “ewwww” when I see them, but not because they’re EVs, because of Elon.
Hello, are you me? I judge everybody in a lifted pickup truck the most tho
Bro, you sound like a delight to be around. Judging people for what they drive is pretty shitty. Unfortunately, lots of people don’t have much of a choice. Like, sure, buying that
earlyany Chrysler 300 seems like a real bad idea. But maybe the person who bought it got it for the $15 that it’s worth, and maybe it was all they had to their name. And maybe they needed just any car that can get them to their job or transport their kids. Get off your high horse there.Yes I am aware some people don’t have a choice but to buy cheap cars, I have been there as well. After high school I paid $800 for a 96 Suburban that was horrible on gas but it was my only viable option. I mainly judge people who spend obscene money on an overpriced vehicle or a big stupid truck that you can tell they only drive on pavement.
Excuse me? It’s called an emotional support truck.
I will remember the year, make, model and possibly trim level of a person’s car before I remember their name.
Like, it’s just Design. Different car makes and years have different design languages. Also, they usually have a big shiny logo that tells you the make, so you can go “huge Audi saloon” -> “A8”.
Generally you can pretty accurately estimate the years (and make) of cars, due to the design preferences of the time
A 2003 Toyota Tacoma is very recognizable because of the simple and bubbly design a lot of late 90’s and early 2000’s cars had (coincidentally my least favorite time period of car design)
Of course there’s also just a lot of stuff you pick up by seeing a car you don’t recognize, researching it, and mentally noting the differences for the next time you see one!
Hey, the whole thing about shrimp is a misunderstanding. They have more receptors for different colors, yes. But it’s because their brain is so rudimentary that they can’t combine the input from 3 color receptors to perceive more colors; they need a separate color receptor for every single color.
The comments here really don’t realise what sub they are in Lol
I don’t think it’s really such a carbrain thing worth picking on.
I can also recognize a decent number of bikes by makes and models. People like to get particular about stuff. Could be clothing, animals, instruments, etc.
Shrimp actually have less color range.
They’ve got more receptor types in their eyes than humans, but lack the ability to interpolate any mixed color data they’re receiving, so they basically only see the 12 colors/shades while humans perceive an entire spectrum.
They were probably making reference to the colours visible to mantis shrimp
Yes, me too. Problem?
Hmmm I just read the study and while a plausible explanation it doesn’t seem to be a settled matter.
You could have specified you were speaking about mantis shrimp to begin with and skipped being snarky for no reason.
Some cars are more iconic than others, and some cars are pretty common.
It tends to be a good writing tip when storytelling to use specific details to build a detailed picture.
So, “I drove my car to the place where my friends and I drink beers” becomes “I drove the old Focus out to the abandoned track, where my friends and I would always set out lawn chairs to drink a few Coors.”
I can do this and i hate it
Same, it’s such a stupid thing to live & take up space in your brainhole.
Like a 100 different brands of cereal - we should have way less “types” & just make the quality better, make them last, stop rewarding financial success to what overall costs more.
Why would you think it’s stupid to recognize visual patterns?
We’re hard wired to be able to recognize human faces and all sorts of meaning behind a single face, from the person’s age to their emotional state. We can extend that complex pattern recognition skillset to dog breeds, animals, tree species, fruits, vegetables, paintings, flower types, colors, and all sorts of patterns from the natural world. Even the shape of clouds tell us something about the weather, and the color of a wound can tell us something about how it’s healing (or not).
Human-created patterns are easy to memorize, too: letters, numbers, fonts, patterns, fabrics, clothing types, symbols, emojis, warning labels, signs that mean “no smoking” or “emergency exit this way,” etc.
So is it that much of a stretch that we can recognize an impressionist painting or an Art Deco building or even specific examples of those, and remember the artist/architect and maybe even things like the year it was created, and where it is physically located? If we’re doing that kind of stuff seamlessly with our brains, recognizing a few dozen car models seems trivial in comparison.
Why would you think it’s stupid to recognize visual patterns?
Well, not stupid, thats just memetics and a key feature of basically any brains/neural networks, but humans pushed a lot of that into the subconscious levels in favour of simplified info being presented to the conscious thought patterns.
But I can’t help it regardless of context not requiring a bit more “technical” info (most is the time useless) that most dont.
A stupid example: “someone was ‘hit by a car’/‘hit by a Miata’” … if the convo isnt about how/what/where was broken then the extra info of ‘a geometrically lower impact body with probably lower impact force bcs of low weight’ is useless from a social pov. Yet I need or wish to know it just to “understand” the info being conveyed (I’m bad at choosing words, but I feel like social interactions without a bit more technical or exact data like that cost me extra energy and it depletes my social batteries quicker).But everything you said I completely agree with, basically just facts.
seamlessly
Recognise yes, drop it & use it further as an idea is what “I don’t want to do as much as possible”.
Like numbers you mentioned, most of us can ‘understand directly’ what 1, 2, or 3 is, but “what” 10 is is already a stretch for most & we just use the idea of 10. Which makes us incredibly more efficient at abstract numbers compared to monkeys which basically have the same brains (just different parts developed differently). But we also lose all the intricate (but useless!) info.
Weird thing about numbers (and such) is that even abstract ideas we tend to perceived them on log scales, just like with more direct external stimuli (such as light, sound, etc and how that gets physically registered and then perceived).
People have a natural taxonomic instinct, to identify animals, plants and other humans. Manufacturers of consumer goods manipulate that instinct through branding and design language, to cause you to remember and distinguish their otherwise functionally identical products. It’s a form of spamming.
