Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!mitchell
From: mitchell@cbmvax.commodore.com (Fred Mitchell - Product Assurance)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: 4D Visualization (If you think you do it, you probably don't)
Message-ID: <9654@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 13 Feb 90 16:48:17 GMT
References: <99@emtek.UUCP> <16033@well.sf.ca.us> <6162@eos.UUCP> <487@enuxha.eas.asu.edu> <6174@eos.UUCP> <14094@s.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: mitchell@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (Fred Mitchell - Product Assurance)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 39

In article <14094@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
>Ultimately, we may be able to expand our ability to visualize in more than
>the usual 2 or 3 dimensions. Imagine in the future a child using a direct
>brain input device. Much like someone learning two languages from childhood,
>it may be possible to adapt the brain to seeing (read: perceiving) in ways
>we can't now understand.

The problem with 4-D visualization is this:

To visualize the 4th dimension PROPERLY would require a pair of 
4th-dimensional eyes, each bearing a 3-D retina (in contrast to our
3-D eyes with 2-D retinas). The brain, of course, would be wired
to handle such. Also note that a 3-D retina would involve a million-fold
increase in the volume of data that must be processed by this 4-D brain.

I'm not saying the task is impossible (I've been trying for years to improve
my 4-D visualization [which led to the above observation]). It is just that
the task is inherently more complicated than one would suspect.

Whether OUR brains can handle imagining something properly that would
require such an enormous increase in bandwidth is open to debate. For
sure we can grasp some primitive elements of the 4th dimension (as I have
done), but to TRULY visualize it as well as we do the 3rd dimension? I
submit that that would require a MUCH bigger brain!

To give you an idea of the 'wierdness' of it, A 4th-dimensional creature
looking upon one of us 3rd-dimensional beings would see EVERY PART of us
simultaneously- skin, gut, heart, blood, brain, bones, EVERYTHING! We
would appear "ugly" and "unappealing" (assuming that they have the same
asthetics as we do), as well as just plain "flat" (in their sense, not
ours!). They would also be able to hold an infinite number of us in the
palm of their 4th-dimensional "hands" (assuming their "hands" are the same
length as our bodies). Somehow this sounds Twilight-Zonish! :-)

>Sean

-Mitchell
mitchell@cbmvax.UUCP
"To Life, Immortal."