Cyan2 comments on Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 March 2008 11:58PM

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Comment author: Cyan2 02 March 2008 08:31:16PM 2 points [-]

My visualization of the man walking down the street included a number of irrelevant details: my view was from above eye level; the man was wearing a hat; he was walking towards me, but moving towards the right of me, not directly towards me; he was walking on the right side of the street (my right, his left), on a sidewalk; and he turned right (my right, his left) to go into the drugstore.

I believe my view from above was triggered by the word "down" in the description of the scenario, and the hat came from the word "old" -- the generic man-in-hat is also what I usually imagine when I read Nero Wolfe novels, which are set in the '30s through '70s.

I'm not claiming that these details a strongly fixed -- as soon as I consider alternatives to the specific details I related above, I get visualizations of those alternatives. I'm also not claiming that these visualizations are close to photographic in immediacy and sharpness -- for me, they have about the same clarity as visual memories, which is to say, not much.