Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

[anderscolingustafson]

The other day I was disoriented after coming from a Movie Theater. I went the wrong way out of the Theater from the way home and one of the buildings was in the wrong place. I couldn't just reorientate myself to figure out which way to go but I had to keep walking to figure out which direction was home. I have never been able to voluntarily have a visual reorientation illusion.

[Hugh]

The other day I was disoriented after coming from a Movie Theater. I went the wrong way out of the Theater from the way home and one of the buildings was in the wrong place. I couldn't just reorientate myself to figure out which way to go but I had to keep walking to figure out which direction was home. I have never been able to voluntarily have a visual reorientation illusion.

Thanks for sharing, anderscolingustafson.

May I ask if you consciously experienced an instant turn "back to your normal viewpoint" when you realized which way was home?

It happens to me that way with the VRI, everything, the whole world instantly turns "back to normal" and then I know "where I am".

Since you know that you have experienced a VRI, would you be interested in trying an experiment the next time you're at the theater?

Would you try to consciously do a VRI, while you're in the theater?

A 180 degree (completely turned around) flip is the easiest for me, and others that are able to do this.

I'd be very interested in knowing if you can achieve the VRI Flip by conscious thought.

Thanks,

Hugh

[anderscolingustafson]

May I ask if you consciously experienced an instant turn "back to your normal viewpoint" when you realized which way was home?

When I figured out which way was home everything went back to normal but I wasn't consciously aware of any change in my viewpoint.

Since you know that you have experienced a VRI, would you be interested in trying an experiment the next time you're at the theater?

Would you try to consciously do a VRI, while you're in the theater?

A 180 degree (completely turned around) flip is the easiest for me, and others that are able to do this.

I'd be very interested in knowing if you can achieve the VRI Flip by conscious thought.

I will try to consciously do a VRI the next time I'm at a theater to see if I can.

[Hugh]

When I figured out which way was home everything went back to normal but I wasn't consciously aware of any change in my viewpoint.

I will try to consciously do a VRI the next time I'm at a theater to see if I can.

Great to hear!

When you try it, focus on which type of VRI that you want to do, for example, a 90 degree to the right, or left, or a 180 degree VRI to the opposite direction (easiest to do).

I am looking forward to hear of any success!

[anderscolingustafson]

I went to a movie theater today and I tried to consciously have a VRI and I couldn't. It seems that I can't consciously make myself have a VRI.

[Hugh]

That's okay, thanks for trying! Keep at it and it may happen without you even trying, as it does for so many people that get turned around in movie theaters!

[Hugh]

quickfur posted a very interesting thought in another thread

http://hddb.teamikaria.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1911

So even while facing the same direction in 4D (and keeping your head pointing up and feet on the floor), you still have 4 distinct orientations you can be in. Or, put another way, you can spin your body around in 4D while standing on the same spot, and facing the same direction, without changing the latter.

So if I understand this correctly, one can see each of the four orientations of a 3D viewpoint within 4D space, while remaining in the same up/down position, as one does here on Earth because of the "down" direction of gravity.

This is exactly how the VRI is perceived here on Earth!
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So many people are confirming that they experience VRIs, and the "four different" viewpoints that are available of the world with them.

Here's where many are leaving comments about this, on the RadioLab "You Are Here" Episode page:

http://www.radiolab.org/2011/jan/25/you-are-here/

Here are a few... (I highlighted several parts of interest to this thread)

Andrew:
"I tried thousands of times to explain this to my parents and friends when I was a kid but no one else could understand. I eventually trained myself to control it by visualizing how the world would look if I turned it 90 degrees, and lately it doesn't happen to me unless I "turn it on." This is so incredible."

roy:
"I have a very similar problem and have a better way to explain this shift, 90deg or 180. I would like to draw this but will pen it instead. Suppose I was driving to my home horizontally on this board, from the left side to the right (ie heading east), and my home was on the next right turn, facing east, assuming north is up.
I would normally take a right turn and enter my gate, heading in the westerly direction. Lets suppose this is how my brain had oriented my home position.
Now, lets suppose, I was being driven by someone and I dozed off while heading east , prior to taking the right turn. When the car stopped, all i remember is we went straight, as I was not conscious to the right turn. Now when the car stops in front of my home, my house happens to be facing south as I made no turns. Now everything has shifted by 90 degrees. Similarly , if there were 2 right turns, which i was not conscious off, the shift would be 180 degrees.
In this situation, I have to stop and close my eyes and re-orient my self to the 90deg shift and soon, all falls back into place. If you agree and see what I am getting at and if you experience a similar shift, please let me know.
I can also tell you how I deal with this problem and I am now so good at directions. However, I do get disoriented when malls or other places are not sharp 90 degree bends but tend to branch off at an angel."

badenver:
"Wow - this happened to me only once and at age 18. It was terrifying because it happened with my eyes wide open. Walking down the street with 2 friends right outside my house, I suddenly felt lost and disoreiented although I had a clear sense of where I was, somewhere in my neighbourhood and that I was walking. It was just that the scenery had completely shifted...it was a 180 degree turn, where by I knew I was still walking in the same direction I had been before the shift but the path before me felt like it had moved behind me. But not only that, everything felt inverted too. I was completely turned around and terrified. I actually stopped and tried to explain all this to my 2 friends who were just bewildered. I tried to reason out my bearings trying to pinpoint actual landmarks and where they should be, but where they were now... In addition, I had lost all sense of distance and depth, and as I stood on that path trying to understand what had happened, trying to gauge the distance from me to my house and even which way exactly I should be heading, was it forward or backword?....and still unable to feel certain, I was so terrified that all I could do was sit and cry right there on that path. Eventually, I gave in and allowed my friends to lead me home, I just put one foot in front of the other where ever they led me but without any sense of where I was headed, crying with every step. As soon as I reached the gate to our house, and only when I was close enough to touch the actual gate, did I finally feel a sense of place and depth and prespective. What a terrifying experience.....it was like being in the twilight zone, truly, it was like entering a whole new dimension where everything looks the same but feels different and is in a different place.... in my case the terror was from being completely helpless to anchor the scene before me and to make sense of it all...
I just can't imagine how these folks, Sharon as a liitle child....how tough these experiences must have been, and to endure these episodes repeatedly..."

Mike Specian:
"I was listening to this podcast as I was driving. When Sharon said the world "turns 90 degrees" I almost crashed the car. For the first time in my entire life I had learned of someone who has experiences the same thing as I do!

My experience differs somewhat from Sharon's. First, I don't need to spin around to become disoriented. If I close my eyes (or not, I've gotten better at this) and visualize what the world would look like turned 90 degrees, I can open my eyes and see the difference. This is easier in places where I've spent a lot of time. In new places, I have to concentrate harder to visualize the rotation. Sometimes I actively try to avoid this, as it can lead to confusion and distraction.

The best way I've found to explain it is like this. Picture four streets oriented in a square with four identical houses facing in each of the cardinal directions. All of the surroundings are completely symmetric and identical. My understanding is that under these conditions, almost no one would be able to tell which house is facing in which direction. I can.

Here's another example. I would attend church as a kid. The building was perfect for "turning the world around" because I spent long amounts of time there, and my mind would wander a lot. I began to visualize how the church would appear different to me if I turned it 90 degrees. Eventually, I was able to visualize all four orientations. They each represent distinct places for me. Each was a sub-location buried within the original stationary location. Once an orientation had been visualized, with a slight bit of concentration, I could flip between them. Each felt different to me and caused different emotional reactions. I would notice details in one environment that I wouldn't notice in another.

Despite this, I think that I have a pretty good sense of direction. When I would bike around my home town as a kid and the world flipped on me, I became momentarily disoriented. It was no longer clear which path was the best way home. In those circumstances I could either rotate the world back to its standard configuration or try to map out a "new path" in the other orientation.

This still affects me everyday, but I've gotten so used to it that I'm barely consciously aware of it anymore. I'll sit at my desk, type, the orientation will switch, I won't miss a beat, and I'll return to typing. Sometimes I purposefully change the orientation just to make things more interesting."

Rayna:
"I was amazed to hear about Sharon -- I've experienced something similar to her condition since I was a little girl. Many of my first memories about the house I grew up in seem as if they're experienced from a skewed or rotated angle.

As I got older, I realized that if I concentrated, I could turn the disorientation on and off. I remember lying awake at a friend's sleepover, entertaining myself my switching back and forth between points of view.

Today the disorientation is mostly gone, though I still get lost quite often (and am a terrible chess player. I wonder if Sharon is too). "

Kirsten

I am so happy to have stumbled across this! About 4 years ago when I was living abroad I often got confused in my kitchen. On a number of occasions I would go to put something in the oven only to find the oven wasn't where it should be. It has recently gotten worse and has made me panic when I'm driving to work and all of a sudden I don;t recognize the street I am on even though I have driven on it every day for years. It also happens at work when I walk through my call center on my way to a meeting and I everything all of a sudden looks different to me and I don't know how to get to where I am going.

I never realized until listening to this that it's not that I have never seen the place I am in before, it's just that I am seeing it from an angle I have never seen. I feel....found.

Jun. 14 2012 12:49 AM

rachel from scotland

I've experienced VRIs since childhood, and have never been able to explain this to anyone without attracting confused stares. I must have been about four years old when it happened the first time and I remember it affected me strongly. One day my home and my street just spontaneously "changed direction", this was a permanent shift which has lasted to this day. I clearly remember feeling confused and upset at the time and actually tried hard to concentrate to get the "old world" to come back - but it never did. I can still visualise it when I recall memories from before a certain age. I know now that what I was really seeing was the same view but from another angle, but at the time it felt like I had gone to a whole other world. I can voluntarily bring on VRI flips if I concentrate hard enough, but there is usually always a default view for most places I know. This is all very interesting to read.

Jun. 07 2012 10:15 AM

Juan from Florida
I tried to explain it to my sister when we were kids and she could not understand what I was talking about. I always thought it was a tremendous advantage since I could visualize my city in 4 different ways that apparently not many other people could; I just took it as going to another place you knew memories and mood transplanted there too. One minor thing, sometimes I have to turn things araound to be able to remember events that happened in a particular view. More than just the view of the location, I think that there are deeper psychological effects worth exploring. AsI have grown older I have lost the ability to see or remember what I used to as a kid.

Oct. 12 2012 07:37 AM
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beatrice Parsons Binkley from Arvada, Colorado
I can't believe this condition was ever a problem for anyone else. Since I was in kindergarten I have had episodes when my world was "switched" but
I never, ever told anyone because I could'nt explain these happenings.
Whenever the switch occured it was often when I first woke up in the morning. I wish I would have known to close my eyes and spin atound. Instead, I would close my eyes, wait a few seconds hopeing I would be o.k. when I opened my eyes. These happenings continued from @ age 4, through my teen years, and into my adult years. As I aged, the switch happened less
often and now it rarely happens. During all those incidents, I stood still, not knowing which way to go because I was in unfamiliar territory.
I am thrilled that Sharon was brave enough to try to explain her condition so that others (including me) now know what was wrong with us.

Oct. 12 2012 04:10 PM
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ankush from india
Hi have been experiencing same things - 90degree rotation in everything I perceive....even the text book I read...even my computer screen, my room my television video. I can change it by myself and sometimes happens automatically. I am searching since last year about this but never found anything before but now. After reading about it now I understand what It is. But what to do to stop this. Sometimes it just irritates me when I try to understand directions, try to remember things I read in text books, all the things rotates exactly 90 degrees. I have even made a 3d model of my room in both rotation to explain my situation to the people of the world but they dont understand and never will. Help needed indeed. It effects my learning and navigation.

Dec. 15 2012 03:55 PM
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patty harvey
I have this alot, I can be driving along a road I drive all the time, and just look up and not know where I am.It seems to happen more at times of stress,And it usually passes soon. also my sense of direction almost goes away completely after dark.

Apr. 06 2013 04:35 PM
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Nancy Williams from Miami, Fla.
OMG...I almost drove off the road when I heard this radio broadcast with Sharon...I've had this since I was a teenager and I have 4 distinct "Directions" I've tried explaining it to people, but it is difficult. If I do change directions while I'm driving where it would be difficult to find my way around, I can usually just picture myself back in main direction and I'll switch back to my normal familiarity.I never thought other people experienced this...really amazing to hear the radio broadcast...THANK YOU Sharon for bringing this to light...

Apr. 07 2013 01:12 PM
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Pascal from Grenoble, France
I experience this kind of disorientation every days, but I never really feel lost, I just accept that inside some building or in some towns, north in not always on the... north side.
I've found forums or notes talking about it (mainly by Hugh who has posted here too)... but still nothing in french and I don't know if there is a word for that.

Apr. 29 2013 08:47 AM
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Benjamin Craig from Berkley MI
I do not suffer from this, but there has been several instances where i think this intial "map of my surroundings" gets a little weird. I have excellent sense of direction. My friends call me a crow, that is, I can find my way back to places I have only been to once, usually quite a bit in the past. I also have a strange way of keeping my heading in relation to true north in check. This said, There have been a few instances where I can clearly remember the way my brain has laid out a place that I have been to for the first time. The first was my firsttrip to my high school, on an orientation. The "upness" of this initial "map" has since been rotated 90 degrees. I however still remember like it was yesterday when "up" was flipped back to the initial experience. The two other involve my college campus, and my current place of employment. Eavh involve a 90 flip of "up" from my first conception, with a clear rememberance of the old way I had the place laid out in my head. This interview got me thinking. You guys are the best, I listen everyweek!

Nov. 18 2013 07:56 PM
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Shanti from California
I have had VRI for ever and experience it every day. It was only yesterday that I discovered I am not the only one!
Unlike some of the others, the 90/180 degree displacement happens to me automatically and I cannot change it on my own. This phenom has always intrigued me but I never thought anyone else would be experiencing the same thing and never disclosed it to anyone. Now I know I am not alone,, I feel like Richard Dryfuss in The Close Encounters of the Third kind! I want to learn more about research in this field. Please do share and I will do the same.

Dec. 08 2013 07:45 PM
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Janette from Edmonton, AB. Canada
Oh my gosh!!! I have never found anyone who experienced this - I've had a couple doctors tell me it was a petit mal type of seizure - but in all my own research I could not find anything to describe what happens like this does!!! Sometimes I can control it and play with the different sensations when I change my world orientation.... but like this morning - driving into town on roads I have driven for over 35 years - I could not. Thank goodness my son was with me when I got to downtown - he was able to direct me to his house and then "voila" all of a sudden it switched back and I knew where I was. I feel "spacy" though now this morning.

Jan. 17 2014 11:56 AM
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Joyce from Virginia
I have been aware that I had this problem since I was about 6 years old. I thought I was the only one until I heard Sharon describe it perfectly: it is as if someone picked up the world, turned it 90 degrees, and then set it back down. After telling my mom about it, and making a trip to the eye doctor, no one could figure it out, and I was probably too young to provide a good description. So I have lived with this my whole life. I have learned to navigate all 4 of my rotations, although I usually stay in one "default" direction. If I am in a building for the first time, and things flip, the only way I can find my way is to mentally picture which way I turned to get to my present position, and then travel that path in reverse to get me back. I find it interesting that we all have 90 degree rotations. My question has always been: I wonder which of my 4 rotations other people "live" in permanently.

Feb. 08 2014 04:28 PM
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Sue from Seattle
I've had this "flip flop vision" since age 3 and it's so fun to hear of others that also have this 'unique ability'!!! I realized I saw the street I lived on as well as my home in two different 'ways' - it wasn't until we moved to a new house that had the same models every few houses that I realized it was 90 degrees. Age 6 I realized my friend's house faced West and mine faced South, the exact same floor plan yet hers was the "flip flopped version". Like others, my mom said "I just wouldn't talk much about it"...mainly because it sounded so weird and she couldn't understand. I grew into it, practicing my drum and bugle corps field formations 4 counts at a time at night in my "flip flop form" lest I be smashed with a baritone if I moved in the wrong direction. What I want to know is do any of you do the flip flop with your eyes closed, sensing when it has flipped, then open your eyes and seeing you're right? Does lead me to believe it has something to do with our sense of direction and our magnetic compass. I have fun with it, but it always snaps back like a stretched rubber band. I'm 52 now and have been toying with it for 49 years alone - so wonderful to hear I'm not the only one!!!

Mar. 07 2014 03:24 AM
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[Hugh]

So even while facing the same direction in 4D (and keeping your head pointing up and feet on the floor), you still have 4 distinct orientations you can be in. Or, put another way, you can spin your body around in 4D while standing on the same spot, and facing the same direction, without changing the latter.

My idea is that if we are actually 4D ourselves, the matter that makes up our bodies and eyes is 4D as well, as is what is around us.

So you don't have to "spin your body around in 4D" in order to see the four distinct orientations, you just have to look with the portions of your eyes that face in each of those directions, which is possible when you choose to consciously do a VRI.

So you can face the same 4D object, and view it from 4 different orientational 3D viewpoints with VRIs.

It's because the "3D slice" of the 4D object you're looking at, can be viewed in different directions in 4D space, and it's all because of a "necker cube" type of phenomenon involving the VRI.

I really hope that once this idea is fully understood, that it will help to understand how the universe operates even more, and things like dark matter, and the unification of the fundamental forces will be more easily explained.

[Hugh]

3D Viewing Axes

Plane of vision is X (right/left) and Y (up/down)
Look along Z (forward/back)
2D plane is entirely visible if Z is aligned perpendicular to both X and Y.
If you rotate the plane along Y so that X becomes Z, but still look along Z, the plane vanishes from sight as it becomes a 1D line which cannot be seen.
If you want to see the plane in its new position, you can rotate your point of view around Y so that Z becomes X+ or X-, which offer two viewpoints of the plane, each 180 degrees turned around from each other, with Y staying the same.

4D Viewing Axes

Cube of vision is X (right/left), Y (up/down) and W (wint/zant)
Look along Z (forward/back)
3D cube is entirely visible if Z is aligned perpendicular to W, X and Y.
If you rotate the cube around X/Y so that X/W becomes X/Z, but still look along Z, the cube viewpoint becomes a plane of vision.
If you want to see the cube in its new position, you can rotate your point of view around X/Y so that Z becomes X+ or X- or W+ or W-, which offer four viewpoints of the cube, each 90 or 180 degrees from each other, with Y staying the same.

[Hugh]

I had read about how scientists had praised the movie Interstellar for being accurate, to the best of our current knowledge.

If you haven't seen it yet, and plan to, the following points contain some spoiler info from it, just thought I'd warn you...

What was most interesting for me, was the scene from inside the Tesseract.

Murph's room has been made accessible to Cooper, with time as a fourth spatial dimension (called the 5th dimension in the film.)

Cooper gets to float around from behind his daughter's bookshelf, and do things with the books to send messages back to his daughter, at any time of his choosing, based on what room's viewpoint he goes to.

The layout of the Tesseract, with each room's time appearing as an accessible 3D cube viewpoint, is one that is familiar to those who commonly experience VRIs.

When he is floating around in there, and there are all of these other orthogonal viewpoints available for his choosing, it's like being able to choose which "turned around" viewpoint you want to see of wherever you are here on Earth, and choosing to see your surroundings from that direction, using a VRI to do so.

When I think of all of the viewpoints available using VRIs to look around, it's like being inside the Tesseract in the movie, and just like being in the tesseract depicted by the avatar I use.

[Hugh]

In 0D, there is nothing.

In 1D, there is only one axis. Your line of vision looks at a 0D point, which is nothing.

To reach 2D, turn your line of vision 90 degrees perpendicular to the 1D axis. You can now look at the same 0D point from a new perpendicular direction.

To reach 3D, turn your line of vision 90 degrees perpendicular to both of the 2D axes. You can now look at the same 1D line from a new perpendicular direction.

To reach 4D, turn your line of vision 90 degrees perpendicular to all of the 3D axes (by doing a cognitive VRI). You can now look at the same 2D plane from a new perpendicular direction.

[Hugh]

The Hypercube of Monkeys, which shows a monkey in each of the cubes of a hypercube shows what I feel is a representation of each of the cube viewpoints accessible with VRIs.

As you look at each monkey, it is rotated around from the other monkeys, just like how flipping from one cube viewpoint to another with a VRI flips your world viewpoint around to another orthogonal direction.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/nothing-is-more-fun-than-a-hypercube-of-monkeys/



This is kind of what I always wanted to be able to see, is a 4D being sliced up into 3D parts with a 3D slice in each one of the 3D cubes of a 4D cube.

It would be great if someone here could do this with 3D human slices of a 4D human.

As mentioned in an earlier post, a 3D slice wouldn't get turned inside out from one viewpoint to the other, it would just change to an orthogonal orientation, much like using a VRI to move to another orthogonal viewpoint.

If we actually are 4D, we would simultaneously exist in all of the cubes, but because of our limited viewpoint, we'd only be able to experience one 3D slice at any time.

[ICN5D]

That discussion we had, about seeing a 2D plane of 3D still sticks with me. It was the part about being able to rotate around that 2-plane of vision in 4D space. If we can do this, we'd have no idea from a visual standpoint, but might feel it, by a VRI experience. I'd like to see a program that can emulate this in some more direct way. I wonder if a simulated VRI, with direct visual feedback of orientation in 4D will be anything close to what you've been describing.

[Hugh]

That discussion we had, about seeing a 2D plane of 3D still sticks with me. It was the part about being able to rotate around that 2-plane of vision in 4D space. If we can do this, we'd have no idea from a visual standpoint, but might feel it, by a VRI experience.

Thanks for the response Philip. Yes, I remember talking about that. It's interesting to think about.

One certainly does feel their orientational bearing get turned around.

Even though you're looking at the exact same thing, you know it is from a different, perpendicular direction.

It's like looking at the Sun set in your normally perceived West direction, then after a VRI, you see the same Sun setting in what is your normally perceived East (or North or South) direction. Everything has been turned around 90 or 180 degrees in an instant.

I'd like to see a program that can emulate this in some more direct way. I wonder if a simulated VRI, with direct visual feedback of orientation in 4D will be anything close to what you've been describing.

I would love to see this done somehow...

Any and all suggestions from yourself, or anyone else are much appreciated.

[wendy]

I always had a different model for VRI, which is not 4d related. In essence, it's more akin to resetting the video retrace line. I've been able to reconstruct this manually, and also run parallel threads where I am lost and not lost at once.

If you look at a clock in a mirror, the symbols are all reversed, but the clock looks right, because the tail of the 2 is supposed to point in the mouth of the 3. If you get one of those novelty clocks, where the numbers are printed the same way around, it looks strange, because the 2's knee is poking into the back of the head of the 3. It's not so much because we read the numbers easier, but we expect that the numerals link to the right place of the next.

You get the same effect with a reversed sign, against one written backwards, like SKOOB. I have difficulty picking up that the sign has been reversed!

Years ago, i learnt to write upside down and back to front, but not reversed letters. What happens is you define a little up arrow, and a forward arrow, and everything is 'plotted' against these. So instead of writing 'upside down' or 'backwards', you are writing 'forward - up' with these set as a parameter before hand. There have been times i have sat in front of a blank page, writing 'a' in the air, to see if that's the right way it ought go.

The instance i got lost on a street corner, is in one case, i was not expecting trees, and in the other thread i knew well that just down the road was the army base. So here i was, trying to reconcile a visual construction of what i expected the corner to look like, against what was there, and I got lost!

When I get lost in the shopping centre, this is because i have a rectangular grid for it as the under model, and then come across places which are set at 45 to these, and my poor mind can't cope with it.

So what i suspect is the mind is spinning and flipping images of reality, and trying to reconcile it with what it can see.

[Hugh]

Thanks for your thoughts, Wendy.

If you look at a clock in a mirror, the symbols are all reversed, but the clock looks right, because the tail of the 2 is supposed to point in the mouth of the 3. If you get one of those novelty clocks, where the numbers are printed the same way around, it looks strange, because the 2's knee is poking into the back of the head of the 3. It's not so much because we read the numbers easier, but we expect that the numerals link to the right place of the next.

You get the same effect with a reversed sign, against one written backwards, like SKOOB. I have difficulty picking up that the sign has been reversed!

It's interesting how a mirror image compares to normal one, and how the mind can adjust to it and see it normally with a simple flip in one's mind's eye. All of a sudden, things can appear "normally" if one just focuses correctly.

When you mention the mirror, it brought up something I remembered talking to Rudy Rucker about.

He had written about a person who had been turned into his mirror image in the fourth dimension, and said that getting turned around in the fourth dimension would turn you into your mirror image.

When I explained how I thought that if one, and one's environment gets turned around together in the fourth dimension, one wouldn't see oneself as a mirror image because what was on one's right would still be on one's right, he understood and thought it was a very interesting thought.

If we are actually 4D, we don't only have 3 dimensions, so we wouldn't actually be painfully reversed into our mirror image, because our body would be more than 3D and would already "be there" in 4D.

It would be our limited perception of what we think is our 3D body and 3D surrounding environment that we have that would get flipped around with a 4D rotation.

There is a fascinating link about how Rudy Rucker talks about getting a "glimpse of 4D" involves looking at a Necker Cube here:

http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/a-travel-guide-for-the-fourth-dimension

"You can, however, get a glimpse of the fourth dimension through an optical illusion called the Necker cube (labeled A in the figure below). There are two ways to interpret this shape: as a box oriented slightly left and down (B), or as its mirror image (C). If you stare at the Necker cube long enough, it appears to flip back and forth in what mathematician Rudy Rucker calls a “twinkling rearrangement.” Eventually, the twinkling may appear as one continuous motion. But, as Rucker points out in his book Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension, “this motion can only be continuous if it is a rotation in 4-D space.” That’s because a rotation in three dimensions can’t produce a mirror image. “So perhaps we can actually produce a 4-D phenomenon in our minds!”



This is exactly what a VRI does, is this "twinkling rearrangement."

You see things flipped around in another orientation in an instant, and because you are "in the 3D Necker Cube itself" you only perceive a change in your orientation, because you and your environment get flipped around together!

When I get lost in the shopping centre, this is because i have a rectangular grid for it as the under model, and then come across places which are set at 45 to these, and my poor mind can't cope with it.

So what i suspect is the mind is spinning and flipping images of reality, and trying to reconcile it with what it can see.

I'm thinking that if we are actually 4D, in a 4D environment, but with a limited 3D slice viewpoint of it, that as we move around, we orient ourselves according to what we think is 3D, but because it is actually 4D, there are times when we see the same 3D viewpoint, but from another direction (which is totally possible in 4D space) and our mind "flips it back to our normal viewpoint" so that our bearings match how we normally see things.

It is so strange to me that one can use VRIs to consciously turn around one's viewpoint of the space that one is in, totally at will, to any one of four different viewpoints, each at 90 or 180 degrees to the others.

VRIs allow the type of real-life experience of the "twinkling rearrangement" that Rudy Rucker talks about when he discusses seeing in 4D.

I really hope that we can somehow graphically show it here on the forum someday...

Here's an idea of how it might look. I took the photo from the article and added in a figure turned into it's mirror image within the necker cube for a simulated VRI:



So from the perspective of the 3D slice within the necker cube, the left is still on the left, and the right is still on the right, but one has experienced an orientational change in bearings.

What one is looking at directly ahead will still be directly ahead but it will now be seen from a perpendicular viewpoint as well.

[Hugh]

In order for the 2Der to understand the fullness of 3D, he has to take his 2D slice of 3D and turn it "all the way around" the 1D line that he understands into a "new direction". He understands forward/back and right/left, but just has to understand that there is a new perpendicular direction to each of these that is available. Once he realizes that, he can appreciate that there is an up/down that any of his axes can be re-oriented in, and understand the "new space" that is made available because of it.

In order for the 3Der to understand the fullness of 4D, he has to take his 3D slice of 4D and turn it "all the way around" the 2D plane that he understands into a "new direction". He understands forward/back, right/left and up/down, but just has to understand that there is a new perpendicular direction to each of these that is available. Once he realizes that, he can appreciate that there is an ana/kata that any of his axes can be reoriented in, and understand the "new space" that is made available because of it.

The VRI is what I think is our actual experience of this.
______________________________

My Facebook public group about VRIs now has over 20 members. Check it out if you're interested.

You can search for Visual Reorientation Illusions on Facebook, or just use this link.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1641368339467014/

[Hugh]

This was an interesting quote from the Optimal Tesseract Slice thread:

http://hi.gher.space/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25607#p25607

If you 3D slice a tesseract with the xyz plane, then you only need to rotate on the xw, yw, and zw planes. The other 3 rotations available are xy, xz, and yz, which will only spin the slice in our slicing 3-plane, and show us nothing unique.

So I wonder if applying this to the VRI idea, it might explain how a re-orientation of our viewpoint slicing 3-plane can be looking at the same 4D area, from different perceived directions, yet showing nothing unique within each view.

[Hugh]

Here's a representation of a 2D'er in a 3D cube net that I was thinking about.

From the 2D'er's point of view, there are 180 degree flips to the same color of the opposite side of the cube, or 90 degree flips to adjacent sides of the cube.

It's meant to give an idea of how a smaller dimensional viewpoint would experience a higher dimensional reality, which would involve new directional orientations within that space.

The idea with the VRI is that a 3D viewpoint could be possibly orientated in various new 180 and 90 degree orientations within a 4D reality.

It's much more complicated to draw a 3D'er within a 4D tesseract net, but hopefully one can mentally put a 3D perceived body in various turned around orientations within this 4D tesseract net.



If we're actually 4D within 4D space, but with only a perceived 3D slice limited viewpoint of that 4D space, then there would be all these various viewpoint orientations possible of that space, but not all at once. Only in one slice at a time, which is what the VRI experience enables.

[Hugh]

The VRI group I started on Facebook is up to 62 members now.

Someday I really hope that VRIs can be linked to the possible existence of a 4th spatial dimension.

It truly feels like you see “another dimension” of the space around you when the flip occurs.

My dream is that someone who experiences VRIs will also have the necessary mathematical and scientific skills to make the connection.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1641368 ... ?ref=share

[PatrickPowers]

VR would be an excellent way to depict walking around in a 4th dimensional world. Our travel in the Earth's surface is essentially 2D, so just substitute the ana-kata dimension for what is usually the up-down dimension.

[Hugh]

VR would be an excellent way to depict walking around in a 4th dimensional world. Our travel in the Earth's surface is essentially 2D, so just substitute the ana-kata dimension for what is usually the up-down dimension.

That is an excellent idea Patrick!

What I would love to do is to somehow link up the work being done with Virtual Reality and 4D with the work being done with Virtual Reality and Visual Reorientation Illusions (VRIs)!

VRIs happen all the time up in space in zero gravity.

The perceived subjective identities of the ceiling, floor and walls all get exchanged quite easily.

Here on Earth, most VRIs only spin around the up/down axis due to gravity, so only the “walls” (cardinal directions) exchange identity.

For example you come up from a subway and you think you are facing what you think is your normal North, but then realize you are facing South in the direction your normal North is in, then the “whole world” gets literally “turned around” in an instant so that your normal North is in your normal North direction again.

It happens to a lot of people often and some can even consciously make it happen just by thinking it.

I love to sit in a movie theatre and flip it around to 4 different ways, one at a time so that it feels like I am in four different theatres!

Astronauts in space talk about how incredible it feels to use VRIs to be able to turn around their surroundings not only along the perceived up/down axis but the right/left and forward/back one too!

Imagine flipping your viewpoint around to make the floor exchange identities with the ceiling!

Have you ever experienced a VRI yourself?

Here is a link into an article about using VR to study VRIs.

https://www.universetoday.com/149559/si ... with-this/

It would be awesome to see work being done with understanding 4D with VR to also be linked to the VR work being done with VRIs.

[Challenger007]

VR would be an excellent way to depict walking around in a 4th dimensional world. Our travel in the Earth's surface is essentially 2D, so just substitute the ana-kata dimension for what is usually the up-down dimension.

That is an excellent idea Patrick!

What I would love to do is to somehow link up the work being done with Virtual Reality and 4D with the work being done with Virtual Reality and Visual Reorientation Illusions (VRIs)!

VRIs happen all the time up in space in zero gravity.

The perceived subjective identities of the ceiling, floor and walls all get exchanged quite easily.

Here on Earth, most VRIs only spin around the up/down axis due to gravity, so only the “walls” (cardinal directions) exchange identity.

For example you come up from a subway and you think you are facing what you think is your normal North, but then realize you are facing South in the direction your normal North is in, then the “whole world” gets literally “turned around” in an instant so that your normal North is in your normal North direction again.

It happens to a lot of people often and some can even consciously make it happen just by thinking it.

I love to sit in a movie theatre and flip it around to 4 different ways, one at a time so that it feels like I am in four different theatres!

Astronauts in space talk about how incredible it feels to use VRIs to be able to turn around their surroundings not only along the perceived up/down axis but the right/left and forward/back one too!

Imagine flipping your viewpoint around to make the floor exchange identities with the ceiling!

Have you ever experienced a VRI yourself?

Here is a link into an article about using VR to study VRIs.

https://www.universetoday.com/149559/si ... with-this/

It would be awesome to see work being done with understanding 4D with VR to also be linked to the VR work being done with VRIs.

Virtual reality, it seems to me, is a new resource for research and a new way of looking at the world. even now it seems like a toy to a greater extent, but in the future, it seems to me, this is a resource for new discoveries.

[Hugh]

Virtual reality, it seems to me, is a new resource for research and a new way of looking at the world. even now it seems like a toy to a greater extent, but in the future, it seems to me, this is a resource for new discoveries.

I totally agree, Challenger007!

I would love to be immersed in a Virtual Reality presentation of a 4D environment, with a “3D slice” viewpoint of it, and see if there are any aspects that are similar to what I experience with Visual Reorientation Illusions.

Are there rotations in there that are like VRIs?

I remember talking to Rudy Rucker about this years ago and he said that if you get turned around in 4D your right would become your left but I said that if both you AND your environment get turned around together then you wouldn’t feel that your right had become your left but you would notice a change in your orientation and we had an AHA moment over this...

The thing about this whole idea in this thread though is not that we are 3D in a 4D universe but that we might be 4D in a 4D universe but with only a 3D slice viewpoint of it and that VRIs are an indication that there are more directions for light to travel from an object to our eyes in.

Aale de Winkel made an interesting point in the "Flaw in Flatland" thread from this forum on Dec. 4, 2003 when he said: "I doubt very much that tetra-vision would be the same as x-ray-vision.
Tetronians will not be able to see within a trionian body, they see the lightrays reflecting off a body just in a direction more then we trionians do!"

The thing is that VRIs allow you to see the same thing from more than one direction!

You can actually cognitively turn your world viewpoint around with a VRI and look at the same thing from another direction!



Hopefully we can somehow link up VRIs to the possible existence of higher dimensions someday.

It would be awesome if VR can help us get there.

[Hugh]

Here is an example of a 180 degree VRI flip in a movie theatre.

You are facing one way, then the VRI happens and you find yourself instantly facing the opposite direction, while in the same theatre!



This happens to many people in theatres during the movie.

Then, when the movie finishes and they exit the theatre, they begin walking in the “wrong” direction because their world has been “turned around” on them!

Their brain then automatically turns the world “back to normal” and they know exactly where everything is again.

My question has always been, during this whole experience, you end up seeing the same place from different directions, how is that possible?

[PatrickPowers]

The thing is that VRIs allow you to see the same thing from more than one direction!

You can actually cognitively turn your world viewpoint around with a VRI and look at the same thing from another direction!



Hopefully we can somehow link up VRIs to the possible existence of higher dimensions someday.

It would be awesome if VR can help us get there.

It so happens I'm working on this. Suppose you are in 4D looking at a 2D object in the xy plane. Say that it is a painting on transparent glass so that both sides are the same. You can make a complete orbit around it in the wz plane. The object will look the same all the time, even when you get to -z, the antipode of your orbit. The only way you could tell you were moving would be from the background. Weird, eh?

Lets say that you have six of those 2D XY objects, each with its center on a point on a circle in the WZ plane. Then you would be able to see the objects moving relative to one another as you orbit the center of the WZ circle in the WZ plane. Some of the objects would get bigger and some smaller during your orbit as you pass closer or further away. But they still would all look pretty much the same at every point in the orbit.

[Hugh]

It so happens I'm working on this. Suppose you are in 4D looking at a 2D object in the xy plane. Say that it is a painting on transparent glass so that both sides are the same. You can make a complete orbit around it in the wz plane. The object will look the same all the time, even when you get to -z, the antipode of your orbit. The only way you could tell you were moving would be from the background. Weird, eh?

Hi Patrick, it is awesome that you are working on this!

First, have you ever experienced a visual reorientation illusion (VRI)?

What happens is that you see the same plane of vision from another direction.

I’m wondering if it can be somehow linked to the possible existence of a higher dimension.

You said that one can make a complete orbit around the 2D plane in 4D and it would look the same, but the background would change.

What if the 2D plane were not transparent, so you couldn’t see through it, and the plane extended a large distance?

You wouldn’t be able to see the background change but you would experience a change in orientation, right?

That’s what happens with VRIs, your N/S/E/W bearings exchange perceived identities in a Necker cube type of instant flip.

My idea is that we are all actually at least 4D in a 4D universe, and that we can actually see light coming from more directions than we currently think.

Aale de Winkel made an interesting point in the "Flaw in Flatland" thread from this forum on Dec. 4, 2003 when he said:
"I doubt very much that tetra-vision would be the same as x-ray-vision. Tetronians will not be able to see within a trionian body, they see the lightrays reflecting off a body just in a direction more then we trionians do!"

What I would love is if someone who has the knowledge of higher dimensional space such as yourself can somehow show that VRIs might be our experience of that space.

Is there any way that you can think of?

Astronauts experience VRIs around all 3 axes in zero g so that they end up having the perceived ceiling/walls/floor all exchange identities.

One Skylab crewmember described it this way: “It was a strange sensation. You see brand-new things… It’s really like a whole new room that you walk into… with the lights underneath your feet, and it’s just an amazing situation to find yourself in”. Another noted “All one has to do is to rotate one’s body to [a new] orientation and whammo! What one thinks is up is up”. “It’s a feeling as though one could take this whole room and, by pushing a button, just rotate it around so that the ceiling up here would be the floor. It’s a marvelous feeling of power over space – over the space around one” (Cooper, 1976).

This is something that I and many others have experienced, the “marvellous feeling of power over space!” I love to sit in a movie theatre and flip it around to the 4 different orientations!

Here on Earth though, I can only do cognitive VRIs so that the walls (N/S/E/W) exchange perceived identities, whereas up in space astronauts can do cognitive VRIs to flip around a room around to 6 X 4 = 24 different ways!

Is there any way possible that this is because we are actually higher dimensional beings in higher dimensional space?

[PatrickPowers]

Nope, I've never had a VRI, never even heard of them until I read this thread.

Looking further into the 2D-in-4D thing. You have a 2D object in the XY plane. You circle around it in the WZ plane. That 2D object always looks the same at every point of your circle. But how can this be? Half way around the circle you should be seeing that object from the back, right? How can it be the same?

The first answer is that in 4D a 2D object has no surface area so maybe you wouldn't be able to see it at all. It certainly doesn't have a distinct front and back, so even if you can see it there is no contradiction. The observer's relation to the XY plane hasn't changed one bit, so at any observation point in that circle, right is still right and up is still up and the object looks exactly the same.

So how about an approximately 2D object like a playing card? It has both a small w and a small z thickness. Let's say they are the same and the cross section of the playing card in the WZ plane is circular. It doesn't really matter what the shape of the cross section is but circular is simple and as good as anything else so we'll use that. The playing card is then quite analogous to a vertical strand of spaghetti here in our 3D world. When circling the playing card in the WZ plane one is seeing different aspects of that skinny cylinder. When one gets to the opposite side, one sees the opposite "side" of that strand of spaghetti. So there is no contradiction. I suppose in 4D one "side" would show the figure on the playing card squashed down to very small area, while the other "side" is the back of the playing card similarly squished.

[PatrickPowers]

Is there any way possible that this is because we are actually higher dimensional beings in higher dimensional space?

According to the string theorists we live in an 11D space. We are made of 11D stuff. What exactly the other 7 dimensions are and how they relate to one another they don't know. I know nothing more about string theory, but can tell you that quantum spin takes place in at least one other dimension outside of our 3+1. Electrons are measured as having radius zero, so they can't possibly be literally spinning within our 3+1 space. Indeed, a "particle" with radius zero and no definite location or velocity can't exist entirely in our 3+1 space. I'd say that no one knows what's really going on. The common idea is that the other dimensions are mostly circular and too tiny to measure, but who knows.

[Hugh]

Thank you for all your responses, Patrick!

According to the string theorists we live in an 11D space. We are made of 11D stuff. What exactly the other 7 dimensions are and how they relate to one another they don't know. I know nothing more about string theory, but can tell you that quantum spin takes place in at least one other dimension outside of our 3+1... The common idea is that the other dimensions are mostly circular and too tiny to measure, but who knows.

I agree that higher dimensions are a possibility, and their existence would explain a lot about the unanswered questions in physics. Michio Kaku says that with more dimensions one can unite all the forces and explain them.

The problem is that so far we don’t have enough proof that higher dimensions exist. We need more indications that they exist.

I think VRIs are a potential indication of them. Lots of people experience them, and almost all astronauts in zero gravity experience them, mostly because they sense the perceived floor and ceiling exchange subjective identities, (which is shocking) whereas here on Earth usually only the walls (N/S/E/W) exchange perceived identities.

The thing is, that with practice, one can choose which direction they want to look at with a cognitive VRI.

I can sit in a movie theatre and cognitively turn it around to all 4 different orientations around me at will. I can do a 90 degree right or left turn, or a 180 degree turn completely around to the opposite way. Others can do this too.

I have always wondered how is it possible that I can see the same thing from different directions unless those other directions actually exist?

Can this be explained using higher dimension geometry?

Here is one explanation by Philip.



It would be great to hear any further thoughts on this.