How many dimensions do we see?

[MrRagston]

A while back some dude(don't remember the name but I give him credit for the thought) posted a thread called 5th dimension with some real complicated shit in it, but was some real good brain food.

It had me thinking about it a bit and I remember that the video he included said that humans can only see in two dimensions, being the first (height) and the second (width). Since we can not tell how thick something is or how deep something goes by just looking at it I figured this was true; but then I got to thinking. Can we really only see two dimensions in a three dimensional world?

The answered to me looked like that was pretty much the case, but then I started to get deeper into it and thought about how we do this thing called "see"ing. When light bounces off an object and into our eye, our eye organ is able to "read" the information using the rods in our eyes (which detect brightness) and cones (which detect color), knowing this made me realize that we never see things as they are, it's not possible in any manner.

Light takes time to travel. From the source of the light, to the object, then to the eye. When an image strikes the retina the, nerve impulses last approximately 1/25 seconds. Since this happens in a good bit less than a second, I'll refer to time here as instances.

In each instance, light travels an immeasurably small distance, but it does indeed travel. Basically, the way it goes, is that the information that reaches your eyes displays to you the object as it was instances before. You are seeing the object as it was when the light hit it, in the time it takes that molecule of light to reach your eyes, the object could change. If we stop the instance at the moment you see the object, you could be seeing something that is no longer there, something that has moved, but the light that bounces off whatever is behind the object hasn't reached your eyes yet to let you know that the object that you are currently "seeing" is no longer there. Meaning, you are seeing the object as it was, not as it is. Translation, you are seeing in the past, never in the present.

I'm asking if we can count this as seeing in three dimensions (height, width, and time) because we can only see in the past, not capable of seeing in the present or into the future. Help me out if you will.

BTW, since it takes us 1/25th of a second to "see" something, doesn't that mean that out eyes see at 25 fps?

 

[lightbright]

It's 7am....did you plug into the damn "Matrix" last night or somethin?........

 

[Costanza]

A while back some dude(don't remember the name but I give him credit for the thought) posted a thread called 5th dimension with some real complicated shit in it, but was some real good brain food.

Here's the thread you were talking about:

http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=234365

 

[MrRagston]

It's 7am....did you plug into the damn "Matrix" last night or somethin?........

On real quick serious note, I work from 6PM to about 4AM at a warehouse moving heavy shit (like grills that way 178 lbs. and shit) and I wake up right before I go to work, so basically, this would be like night time for me.

 

[MrRagston]

Here's the thread you were talking about:

http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=234365

Much appreciated. If you the first post and watch the video in the second post you'll see what I'm talking about if you can understand enough of it.

 

[nonac]

Great read guys 2 thumbs up. Wish more black men would discus something as riveting as this and not how big that bitches ass was.

 

[regulus]

not gonna bother to read the responses

you only counted 4 dimensions. height, width, depth, and motion which is a function of time

 

[Nok17]

...3

 

[mk23666]

Good reply 3rd Day

 

[MrRagston]

damn. not even a thx you...
thats why i keep it strictly joking and goofing off.
white people pay me to know this; a black man ask me, and
when given the answers, simply ghosts

My bad pimpn' hadn't checked this thread out in a bit, but believe me man, droppin' intelligence like that never goes unappreciated, even if no one says it. Even still, much thanks man. I'll probably have more to think of later so I'll looking out for you in some of my threads.

By the way, if you don't mind, go through how a person can see depth. I still kinda think that people can only see height and width simply because if you look at a wall, you can't tell how far that wall stretches into itself, or how deep it goes. Of course, if we look at an item that is sitting it plain view and can see the other object/s behind it or/and it's shadow, we can make a rough estimate, but I still don't believe this is seeing depth. No matter what angle we look at it, we see how tall it is and how wide. We have to walk around it to get it's depth, or at least that's what I've theorized.

 

[MrRagston]

not gonna bother to read the responses

you only counted 4 dimensions. height, width, depth, and motion which is a function of time

I know that there may easily be more dimensions than that, but none of them can be proven at all, it has been theorized, but there is no way to test it. I know for a fact that at least 4 of those 10 dimensions exist so I am focusing on those.

 

[MrRagston]

Damn, glad you opened my eyes to that one though. Much appreciated fam.

 

[Mask]

great thread, reading this got me curious

So the third dimension is when we see a third view?

 

[RoadRage]

I think what he was getting at in a round about way, is that time could also be seen as a dimension. For if you was to get coordinates based on longitude, latitude, and height, you still may not be able to find the object if you are unable to calculate the time that it was there, this is why Einstein called time the fourth dimension.
However, being that time is infinite and a second can be broken down into an infinite amount of fractions, in theory, due to our lag by our senses anything moving faster than 50ms becomes unmeasurable to us, and would appear to be beyond our comprehension to the known dimensions. This leads some to believe that at high speeds there may be other dimensions that are beyond our ability of perception! When you get into the M-theory and the string theory many have estimated that there are up to 10 to 11 dimensions out there. Most of the dimensions involved unproven theories on super gravity and low energies very abstract concepts that may impossible to prove they even exist.
But we can only perceive 3 or 4 at best.
Hope I didn't confuse you even more.

 

[Top-Cat]

I think what he was getting at in a round about way, is that time could also be seen as a dimension. For if you was to get coordinates based on longitude, latitude, and height, you still may not be able to find the object if you are unable to calculate the time that it was there, this is why Einstein called time the fourth dimension.
However, being that time is infinite and a second can be broken down into an infinite amount of fractions, in theory, due to our lag by our senses anything moving faster than 50ms becomes unmeasurable to us, and would appear to be beyond our comprehension to the known dimensions. This leads some to believe that at high speeds there may be other dimensions that are beyond our ability of perception! When you get into the M-theory and the string theory many have estimated that there are up to 10 to 11 dimensions out there. Most of the dimensions involved unproven theories on super gravity and low energies very abstract concepts that may impossible to prove they even exist.
But we can only perceive 3 or 4 at best.
Hope I didn't confuse you even more.

very intelligent answer bro.

 

[Mask]

another good example of 2-d that will
aid you in understanding is simply a graph.

everybody knows what a graph looks like...

in this graph, do not pay attention to the bars.
thats not important in this explanation. only pay attention
to the x,y lines. this is 2d. when two lines intersect, they
are called 2-d images.

in physics we use vectors (simply a graph with x,y,z lines) to illustrate 3- dimesional images.

pay only attention to the x,y,z lines. x is for length, y is for height, z is for
width.

another good image of a vector to represent 3 dimensional space.
see how the x,y,z lines are positioned? they are about to measure a
3 dimensional object (pay no attention to the 2-d square on which the vector sits)

got you, know whats funny i took a drafting class in high school,
but i wasn't ready for that shit back then, to me it seems like the 3rd dimension = "Height, Wide and Depth(sorter)"

 

[RoadRage]

yes exactly.
im trying to make it as easy as
possible for them to understand.

You are doing your thing kid, breaking it down!
Sometimes its hard to translate complex subject into plain layman's terms, but you did a good job, especially with the graphs. This is why I love BGOL! Much props due!

 

[Dante Blane]

Just watch What the Bleep Do We Know? They talk about this subject a lot. They talk about dimensions, space, time, etc. they also make it easier to understand for the average joe who has been out of school for a minute. It's about 3 hours and more hours worth of info.talking about questions we ask ourselves about life all of the time.

 

[Mask]

thats exactly what it is.

you see how you can look all the way down
this street until everything gets smaller? this in everyday
street conversation is called: persepctive. in math it is
called depth (the z in x,y,z)

now imagine if you could not see depth. you would be living in a 2-d world

im with cha fam, your doing ya thing with this 3D shit like kinfolk RoadRage said


BGOL the best....

 

[NnubianN]

We can see left right and straight. Up and down are considered part of straight ahead since it comes into view as our sight ventures further out beyond our nose. Left and right can also be called peripheral vision. OK now that's all cleared up we have our 3 dimensions. So where is our 4th dimension? It's behind you. But you cant see behind you. You know how fast you'd have to be going straight ahead in order to catch up to yourself and see behind you? That's called infinity. If we were to try and measure a true straight line it couldn't be done on Earth because of its curvature. A true straight line would take you straight out into space. Now imagine trying to run along that imaginary straight line as fast as you could until you came up behind yourself. Now you've found the 4th Dimension. Which is also known as infinty. Subsequently, you can also see everything that's BETWEEN you and the back of your head. If infinity could be measured we'd name it Time. But of course we can't see or measure infinity.

So in theory, if an extra set of eyes could be set in back of our head we could see in all directions at once and THAT is the 4th dimension. My opinion of course. Yeah I know. It's crazy

OK chillun. The Rambling Man has finished telling another imaginary tale. Please file out of the library and on to your next class

***Let me add that none of what I said above is proven as fact. It's not even science. It's just my own interpretation of things. So sue me

 

[RoadRage]

Think of dimensions as point on a axis.
There is height, width, and length.
OK if I were to give you the coordinates of a object based on height, and length using the terms of latitude and longitude, you may be able to find the object if the object was on the ground.
Now if the object was up in the sky you would need the coordinate of height to calculate where it is located. Now all of these coordinates are useless with out knowing the time that the object was or is supposed to be there. This axis of time is what Einstein called the 4th dimension!
Now don't question me about the other supposed dimensions, because they involve wild theories such as worm holes, films, dual realities and all types of far out concepts!

 

[MrRagston]

Whoa whoa whoa, hold it all, sorry fam, you can not see depth, not at all. How is that? If you could see depth you could see how the object looks from behind, from looking at it's front. You can judge what I object might look like when looking at it from an angle, but truth is that behind the height and width of the object you see, there could be other things.

For example that tall rectangular block, you do see it at a angle, but if you put a ruler against your screen you can see how wide it is (including the edge) and how high it is, but as far as behind it, the object could easily be jutting from behind, but since you can't see depth, you can't be sure if it is or if it's not.

Like I said, when seeing an object at an angle you can guess it's depth, but by not knowing what's behind what you're looking at, you can't tell if the object has more mass than it appears. Therefor, you can not see in the third deminsion. You can guess but you can never be sure, there for you wouldn't be seeing depth, you'd just be adding shape to your height and width to guess the depth.

For example, if you take a cube and set it down at an angle, you can see it's height and width and if you look at it's edges, you can guess it's depth. Now, say you put a roll of pennies on the other side of the cube while it is still at an angle. Now say these two objects were one, you would still be able to see the height and wide and edge of the cube, you could tell how tall and how wide it is and even guess how deep it is, but on the other side of that cube, at a certain point, the object would be deeper, though, not being able to see depth (see through the object) you can't tell how deep that certain point is.

 

[RoadRage]

With stereo vision we can see depth!
For example if you were to cover one eye, your sense of depth would
become impeded.
True 3d would be a hologram object as opposed to simulated 3d an effect you would find in a regular monitor.

 

[RoadRage]

If we didn't see in 3d, it would be nearly impossible to catch a baseball!​

 

[MrRagston]

A better example is imagine looking at a L in this direction

>.>-----L

For this example the L is a 3-d shap, having height, width, and depth. Looking at it from that angle, it would look like an I, or the side of a rectangular cube but you can't tell, because you can't see the third deminsion, depth. (Please remember, that when you change vantage points it's not considered seeing 3 dimensions, you are only referencing what you've seen from the obeject to what you are seeing now) Now say we tilt the L clockwise while stays on just on one plane. You would then see an object that still look like I'm I, but has a edge on it. Once again, if you could see depth, you would know that the object is straight from top to bottom and then juts out at the bottom.

This proves that looking at it from an angle doesn't allow you to gain it's full perspective as if we were seeing three dimensions, we need to look at the objects from different sides because we know it's 3 dimensions, simply meaning that we can only see in 2 dimensions and then reference all of our "views" of an object to build a 3d image in our head.

Can we see depth = No, like I said in the begining, we can not.

 

[MrRagston]

If we didn't see in 3d, it would be nearly impossible to catch a baseball!​

I just posted, but like I said, we don't see depth, but we do see from two different angles. One angle from one eye, and another from the other eye. The only way humans can GUESS the depth of an object is by referencing different "views" from different angles of an object. So when you take one eye away, you are left with one less angle and a damp sense of depth.

We can catch things and just in one very very simple way.

....Things get bigger as they get closer to the source of our view. Seeing something at 2 angles only helps you judge distance better, but we judge distance by size on most all cases.

You know that from a couple of yards away that someone's head is smaller than you're finger nail, but you know that isn't the real case, even if you close one eye, as the person walks towards you, you can judge his distance because he gets bigger.

 

[NnubianN]

Well said! The difference between what you're saying and what I'm imagining is the extra dimension. You call that hidden side depth and 3 dimensional while I call that hidden side Time/Infinity and the 4th Dimension.

Let me ask a question: Is it possible to make a camera that can see all sides simultaneously? A camera that's round like a ball with its entire surface one lens or multiple lens that can "see" everything from all around it? And could that perception be transmitted to a viewer that could also show that unique view, i.e a ball monitor? I'm sure it could be done but even if so we as humans could never see the "whole picture." Try imagining that total view and see if that doesn't expand your awareness...even if only a tiny bit.

Yeah I know. Crazy