[HN Gopher] On Proprioception, the Sixth Sense of Storytelling (...
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On Proprioception, the Sixth Sense of Storytelling (2022)
Author : wawayanda
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-01-26 13:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (themillions.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (themillions.com)
| retrac wrote:
| I have a conjecture, that we understand language primarily
| through proprioception. So when we see and hear someone talking,
| we mirror and model their muscle movements, and we understand it
| fundamentally, in terms of our own body moving. I suspect
| proprioception plays a role in abstract thinking, too. Conceptual
| metaphors are movement based, as if our hands were manipulating
| thoughts. We pick ideas apart, reassemble them, sort through
| them, toss them out.
| ghusbands wrote:
| Blind people understand language perfectly well, which rules
| out your conjecture.
|
| [ETA: Yes, this is a response to "see and hear", which should
| perhaps be "see or hear", and because "we mirror and model
| their muscle movements" implies more than just vocals/sound.]
| syntaxfree wrote:
| You're able to capture a whole world of proximity relations
| through echolocation.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I assume you mean by auditory information. Echolocation
| pertains specifically to the use of echoes to determine
| location, which would not help at all in this case, with
| the granularity required.
|
| Even assuming that auditory information it is, I am unsure
| if it enables mimicry as much as visual information, which
| apart from being our predominant sense, it gives clear clue
| as to which movement led to which action/sound
| retrac wrote:
| I must have expressed it poorly, because my conjecture seems
| to apply equally to blind people. Looking back, maybe it's
| because I wrote "see and hear"? Just an artifact of my
| perspective as a hard-of-hearing person who relies heavily on
| lipreading. I suspect when blind people hear speech, or read
| with braille, they mirror the muscle movements involved, as
| if they were speaking the words themselves. Sight isn't
| required for that. Neither is hearing. The deaf-blind can
| learn sign language through feeling the motion of the signs.
| I suspect it all works the same way, hearing language, seeing
| language, feeling language acted out physically - the
| audience understands it by acting out the same motions
| themselves, internally.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| proprioception is separate from vision.
| metanonsense wrote:
| You should read ,,A thousand brains" by Jeff Hawkins (if you
| haven't already done so). A large part of their theory is that
| the brain has evolved to orient and move in a 3D world and that
| this is the basis of our abstract thinking.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Super interesting, I often thought this too, i know which
| book will be next on my list.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Personal anecdote, there's a lot of your nervous system that is
| indeed simulating other personas in your head. And the closer
| you get the deeper the mirroring (children, spouse).
|
| After some catastrophic events, whenever I was smiling, the
| shape was altered, and took how my ex was smiling (very
| different facial structure) and triggered hallucinations of her
| face onto mine and other various emotions. It happens whenever
| (at various intensities) I mirror her smile.
| omershapira wrote:
| Every "Perception for VR" class I give focuses on understanding
| proprioception. Designers ignore it until they experience spatial
| planning just with proprioception:
|
| * Start by closing your eyes and touching your nose. Why can you
| do that?
|
| * Continue by trying to touch two fingers on opposite hands
| behind your head. Why _can 't_ you do that? (because your
| proprioceptors are saturated).
|
| * Now, you can build an environment with post-it notes and a
| blindfold: https://omershapira.com/blog/2016/04/the-painful-
| introductio...
| jackhalford wrote:
| I just touched two fingers behind my head with eyes closed
| (although does that really matter, hands being out of sight?).
| So I still don't get the point about proprioception
| chrisweekly wrote:
| same
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I tested this out too. I noticed a few things where GPs
| explanation is probably abbreviated:
|
| I noticed that finger-to-nose, I was able to do the first
| time, every time. 100% accuracy, and with no "do a little
| circle to figure out the last 0.5in". As opposed to touch-
| fingers-behind-head, I could "feel" the uncertainty and
| successfully touching fingers the first time, while not
| impossible, was probably 10-20% success rate. I was able to
| improve it by doing a little (radius of perhaps 5mm?) circle
| with both fingers once I knew I was about in the right place,
| since I was usually within about a fingers-breadth. But the
| whole process was just a lot less bulletproof than finger-to-
| nose. Which I think was GPs point.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| N=2, nose is a hit 100% of the time with pinpoint accuracy
| but fingers behind the head only hit if I repeat the
| movement. Going much slower increase accuracy but it's
| never as good as hitting the nose anyway. At normal or
| increased speed I usually miss by a finger width.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Continue by trying to touch two fingers on opposite hands
| behind your head. Why can 't you do that?_
|
| I can, easily, every time, any pair of fingers, and also behind
| my back and many other positions. Really, I don't care for this
| assumptive style of explication.
|
| I can readily believe it is an issue for many or even most
| people (you have investigated and know far more about this
| topic than I). I am able to do this from a combination of
| spacing out on this sort of thing since childhood and a lot of
| athletic training, but surely this isn't that rare.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| Not only am I unable to touch two fingers behind my head with
| my eyes closed, I'm not able to do it in front of my head. I
| _can_ easily touch my nose with my eyes closed. Is there
| something going on where there 's one less degree of freedom
| with the nose, which makes it easier?
| fritzo wrote:
| I agree proprioception is important in fiction, but I think of
| senses as being more immediate outputs of our sensors: touch,
| pain, temperature, sight, hearing, smell, taste, balance, etc.
| Proprioception seems like a more downstream integrated signal
| inferred from sight, balance, touch, and hearing.
| ghkbrew wrote:
| Not really. You actually have a unique set of sensory neurons
| that tell you the spacial orientation of your body by measuring
| muscle/ligament stretch:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception
|
| Edit: yes your general "body sense" is intergrated over
| multiple senses, including sight, touch, inner ear, ... but my
| point is that proprioception is an independent signal in that
| mix.
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