Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Discussions about how to visualize 4D and higher, whether through crosseyedness, dreaming, or connecting one's nerves directly to a computer sci-fi style.

Postby Hugh » Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:18 am

I recently came across another reference to the VRI and the experience of it. There is a book called "Inner Navigation: Why we Get Lost in the World and How we Find Our Way" by Erik Jonsson.

There is a link to the book on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Inner-Navigation-Lost-World-Find/dp/0743222067

If you click on the "LOOK INSIDE" feature it will allow you to view several pages of the book including the author's experience of the whole universe turning around in an instant (a VRI) and how his cognitive mental map of Cologne got flipped around.

It's an explanation of the VRI from someone other than myself that may make understanding it easier.
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Postby wendy » Mon Oct 29, 2007 10:35 am

The book describes a reality/actuality conflict, where something in the actuality is causing the reality to alter. It's quite interesting when several realities are run side-by-side.

In practice, the mind keeps updating reality based on a rather limited input from actuality. We don't see everything in front of us, but fill in a lot of detail from past experiences. Visual illusions work by presenting a diagram which invokes different and conflicting past experiences. If you have not had that experience, they don't work.

In the case of visual orientation, there is input from the actuality that causes the reality to 'flip'. You don't particularly notice it here, but a little later on, when extra data just does not fit.

It's really quite interesting when several realities are running side by side. It is possible for one reality to return the feeling of being lost, and another to know exactly where one is! This happened once, when i was walking down a street in some barracks i was working at.

Since one reality was based on input from maps, and diretiions etc, the second was based on a location of visuals (ie a building of this shape is here, while a sleeper-wall is there). I had made a deviation to visit a different location, and had lost bearings on the internal map.

So the reality based on recalled map-streets was having a hard go, because it was not expecting this street. On the other hand, the visuals were picking up the correct bearings from seeing buildings and walls across in the adjacent street.

It is also quite easy to get lost on things like street corners, etc, if one is not expecting to see things there. For example, i got lost on a street corner, because i was not expecting to see trees there (i passed it every work-day), but on this occasion, i saw trees there, and it through me.

The visual reorientation, then is a variety of reality/actuality conflict.
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Postby Hugh » Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:22 am

Wendy, I'm glad that the book that I referenced was able to talk about the VRI in a different way, so that it may bring up some memories for you of this orientational flip phenomenon.

Your experience of the flip is similar to my own. One sees a familiar place from a "new" direction, and this feels unfamiliar, as there is a conflict between what one is used to and what one is actually seeing. The internal map does a flip in order to get one's bearings "correct" again, so that one feels what one is looking at is from the "normal" direction.

You mention that "the visual reorientation, then is a variety of reality/actuality conflict."

My question is though, how can one say which of the four possible orientational flips of any place here on Earth is the "real" or "actual" one?

The more that I have experimented with the VRI, the more I realize that each of the different perpendicular viewpoints is only one possible viewpoint, and that each is real and actual. We differentiate between the views because of our familiarity with each of them. Our "normal" viewpoint is normally taken as the "correct and actual" one, but through experimentation, each of the four viewpoints can become quite familiar, and "normal".

In my mind the "reality" is the "totality of existence of all 4 of the different viewpoints".

Each place can be viewed from different perpendicular directions at will, and each different direction is real. This is why I see the VRI as possible evidence of the existence of higher dimensional or parallel spaces. :)
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Re:

Postby zero » Thu Apr 03, 2008 7:03 pm

Just browsing through this chronologically, so this is a rather dated comment. Still, i don't see it being addressed, and i think it's worth commenting on.

Hugh wrote:A 3d slice of a 4d hypercube is a cube. As you say though, how this multi-dimensionality would get integrated into our ordinary 3d experience is the question.

A "slice" or "projection" or "shadow" (whichever term one prefers) of a tesseract onto an intersecting three dimensional manifold will not always be a cube -- that will depend on the orientation of the tesseract with respect to the 3D manifold.

For ease of visualization, let's take this down a dimension to consider a 2D slice, projection or shadow of a cube. It could be a square, an elongated rectangle, a regular hexagon, or a number of other possible shapes. It all depends on how you slice it.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby zero » Thu Apr 03, 2008 7:48 pm

Hugh wrote:VRIs are 90 or 180 degree instant rotations of one's visual orientation. It's as if the whole universe is "turned around" instantly. You may have heard of someone getting lost because they got turned around in their orientation. The fact that the flips are always orthogonal makes me think it may have to do with a higher dimension.

People often get "turned around in their orientation" by losing track of compass directions, as you quoted:

From page 4 of Human Visual Orientation in Weightlessness , Charles M. Oman says:

"Actually, it is possible to have a VRI right here on Earth, as when you leave an underground subway station labyrinth, and upon seeing a familiar visual landmark, realize that e.g. you are facing east, not west. On Earth, gravity constrains our body orientation, and provides an omnipresent "down" cue, so we normally only experience VRIs about a vertical axis."

i would like to point out that these experiences do not result in corrections that are "always orthogonal." Though it may be common when dealing with city blocks where the roads all intersect orthogonally, the correction (or mental "flip") may very well involve other angles in different circumstances.

When one experiences a VRI, you do see light from the same object coming from what you perceive as another orthogonal direction.

The above statement is most notable for its incoherence. If light from object A is approaching viewer B, then -- unless you actually move A or B to another location -- the light from A to B will continue to come from the same direction, not from a direction orthogonal to the original.

In 4d, wouldn't it be the same? If we did a 360 degree turn in 4d space, wouldn't we come back to the starting position? Wouldn't we only see a 3d boundary sphere around us if we were in a 4d hypersphere, or a 3d boundary cube around us in a 4d hypercube?

The above is geometrically erroneous. Certainly a full rotation will bring you back to your initial position, regardless of the number of dimensions. But where did you get the idea that a sphere is the boundary of a hypersphere? Or that a cube is the boundary of a tesseract?

First, the boundary of a hypersphere is three dimensional without being a sphere just like the boundary of a sphere is two dimensional without being a circle.

Second, the boundary of a tesseract consists of eight cubes connected at right angles by their faces, like the boundary of a cube consists of six squares connected at right angles by their edges. If your axis of rotation within a hypercube is orthogonal to two of these boundary cubes, then a full rotation will turn you to face each of the other six boundary cubes in succession. If your axis of rotation has a different orientation with respect to the tesseract, then the results may vary in interesting ways.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Mon Oct 24, 2011 2:22 pm

Although this thread has been inactive for a while, I have still been actively researching this topic, as it is a keen interest of mine, and I have found some new information which I would like to share, and this seemed to be the natural place to put it.

I have found more people who have experienced the VRI phenomenon and have put it into their own words.

The following comments are in response to a RadioLab episode called "You Are Here" available at:

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

In it, Sharon Roseman describes how she has experienced the world getting "turned around" on her, just as I have my whole life.

In the comment list of that episode, there are others who talk about the same thing, here are some of their responses:
____________________

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.

____________________

mrb on the Unexplained Mysteries Forum came up with a way he'd like to demonstrate the phenomenon to others. In this post, http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=82537&view=findpost&p=3728180, he says:

Below is what I think would be a great way to demonstrate the phenomenon in a controlled setting, such as an art space or science hall. It is four identical rooms, each turned 90 degrees to the next. The visitor would enter the first room and experience what I call "imprinting", making the room familiar to him/herself. The second room would then be turned and the visitor would experience a simulated VRI, or an actual one. He/she would exit and by that point the exterior space (the exhibition hall) might be turned as well. It would force the issue, I think, by making the turn physical, and hopefully orientationally as well.

Image
____________________

I've been on other forums discussing VRIs over the past while as well, but am still looking for anyone who can come up with some way of explaining this as being possibly related to the existence of higher dimensional space, because to me, and others, that what it feels like. :)

When I read Alex Bogomolny's page about the tesseract at

http://www.maa.org/editorial/knot/tesseract.html

I thought there is the possible connection in there when he says:

"In 4D, a shape can be rotated around a plane."

"It must be understood that in 4D a 3-dimensional cube has neither inside nor outside. All points of a cube are as much exposed in 4D as are the points of a square in 3D."

"Vacuously, in a square there is only 1 square that contains a given edge. In a cube, every edge is shared by 2 squares. In a tesseract, 3 squares meet at every edge. Taken pairwise, squares through the same edge define three cubes. Detecting the three cubes seems akin to shifting a view point when observing the Necker cube."

"I found this observation useful when playing with the applet below. What is it about? Travelling in 4D may have a milder effect on a 3D body than turning it inside out. It may only change its orientation."

____________________

If there are actual higher dimensions of space, then what we are made up of and what we are looking at has those higher dimensions as well.

What would our experience of them be?

Possibly it would involve the ability to view our surroundings from more directions than we would think possible in only our perceived 3D space.

We would have all these extra angles to every part of us and so would the universe around us.

We wouldn't have to rearrange the fabric of space around us to see it from different angles, just view it from those other available directions, from those parts of our bodies that exist in those other directions. :)
____________________

There are so many great minds I've read on here that know so much more about 4D than I do, is there any way that we can make the connection to VRIs somehow work?

Thank you for all your thoughts on this. :)
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Sat Jul 28, 2012 3:52 pm

Here's a quote from the DImensional Baby Steps thread in the Higher Spatial Dimensions section of the forum:

Hugh wrote:
quickfur wrote:
Hugh wrote:[...] When I see the picture of a 2Der with a 1D line in front of it, I think of a 3Der being able to move around the vertical 1D line 360 degrees and see the exact same 1D line from any of those directions.

Is it correct that a 3Der with a 2D plane of vision in front of it, could be similarly encircled by a 4Der being able to move around the vertical and see the exact same 2D plane of vision from any of those directions as well?

Yes, that's correct. In 4D, rotation happens not around an axis, but a plane. (We like to think of rotation in 2D as happening around an axis, but actually that axis doesn't exist in 2D space; it's protruding into our 3D space. Rotation in 2D happens around a point.) So given any 2D plane, one can go around it in 4D in much the same way as we can walk around a pole (i.e. vertical line) in 3D.


Okay, thanks quickfur! That's great to hear!


So along this line of reasoning, is it possible that the 3D world that we see around us is just a 3D "slice" of a 4D world around us, and is it possible to see our vision of it from different angles through VRIs because we are actually 4D ourselves?
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby gonegahgah » Sun Jul 29, 2012 9:30 pm

Hugh wrote:So along this line of reasoning, is it possible that the 3D world that we see around us is just a 3D "slice" of a 4D world around us, and is it possible to see our vision of it from different angles through VRIs because we are actually 4D ourselves?

The brain is an incredible thing and it is my belief that dimensions are a human construct so to me it is merely whether your definitions of dimensions agree - or are agreed upon - with those of the other you are conversing with. I'm starting to see, with what I am exploring, that the notion of left-right is in some ways a construct of our human brain. We experience things as left or right because our brain tells us they are left or right. In my examples, where I have the 2Der rotating to take in a 3D vista, the 2Der has no conception of left or right and when they rotate left or right in our world, it matters not to them whether their turn is really left or right; just that they are opposite. When 'actually' turning left their computer screen could tell them that they are instead turning right - and vice-versa - and they would be none the wiser. It would not effect their movement at all; they would just turn the opposite direction - as we express it - to achieve the same thing.

An interesting idea might be worth exploring to give some pointers perhaps to VRI. Our human eye does a rather neat trick already. The vision that falls onto our retina is actually upside-down and our brain flips this to make things appear right way up. Now, if we were to take a human adult and take their eyeballs and rotate them 180deg in their sockets then the part of their eye that is used to seeing the sky would now be seeing the ground; and the part of their eye that is used to seeing the ground would now see the sky. I'm fairly certain that our brain - apart from being confused - would now see the world as being 'wrongly' upside-down; 'wrong' perhaps not being the absolute way to look at things. The brain is a fairly elastic thing; and it may even be that, after awhile, it while re-wire and suddenly the picture will flip to being the correct way up again. These things get harder as we get older but it is not necessarily impossible.

If you were to repeat this with a fetus that has developed eyes - I don't condone such a thing - then it is quite possible that the infant's brain would never experience this modification and they would simply see the world as the right way up; and not upside-down as the adult would probably experience...

But, if we are talking about certain facets of extra dimensions then there are some interesting definitions that provide for unusual scenarios. For example I saw a new episode of Fringe on television which had me thinking a bit about the 'observers' in the story. To my mind, these 'observers' are in some respects what we would think of as 4D characters. They see across time as we see across space and can move in and out of our universe it would appear. So obviously they have retinas (or less exciting; psychic abilities) that extend through time. But, one of the tricks is that not only can they see across our time; they can also act across our time.

For example, if we scan across a shelf of chocolate bars we can look back and forth and finally choose one. These 'observers' seem to be able to scan backwards and forwards across time while standing in one spot and can then select a person and push them slightly somewhere else; which to us changes our history. For there to be movement means that you have to have time. For these observers to be able to scan back and forward across our time and choose where to act in our time means that they actually have their own time dimension which is independent of ours. Otherwise, they would just be prescient and could only act to change what is coming up and not the past.

So Fringe provides us with characters that are 5 dimensional - 4 spatial dimensions and 2 time dimensions. Cool hey?

So you could probably characterise VRI as four dimensional, or you could even characterise it as two dimensional with extra-connectedness where the brain can re-decide what is left or right, or even as one dimensional with extra-extra-connectedness where the brain can re-decide what is forward-back and left or right. Characterising it as 4D is much cooler though; I'm sure you would agree.

So my answer is that we need to simply characterise what 4D is and if you can provide a sound characterisation that explains VRI in four dimensional terms then the ability is four dimensional within the terms of that logical definition. As a scientific principle it can be difficult to nail anything down to absolute definitions; with different definitions abounding. From what I understand, even our engineers and scientists tend to talk in a completely different language when referring to areas of cross-over; and that these two camps can tend to look on each other with scorn at times. It's quite incredible.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Thu Aug 02, 2012 5:23 am

gonegahgah wrote:So my answer is that we need to simply characterise what 4D is and if you can provide a sound characterisation that explains VRI in four dimensional terms then the ability is four dimensional within the terms of that logical definition. As a scientific principle it can be difficult to nail anything down to absolute definitions; with different definitions abounding.


I'd like to try and work with the definition of 4D being 4 spatially orthogonal axes.

I really appreciate the points you made in here, and the work you are doing in the Dimensional Baby Steps thread.

I like your attempts to understand 4D with the picture you posted of the 3D slice viewpoints of the 4D room.

May I suggest considering another way of looking at things as a possibility...

Perhaps the extra degrees of freedom along Ana-Kata allow for the viewing of the whole room slice from other directions instead, something like this:

Image

Just like with a VRI. :)
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Sat Aug 25, 2012 12:39 pm

This is a quote from Keiji from the Dimensional Baby Steps thread about VRIs:

Keiji wrote:On the subject of VRIs, I used to have a lot of trouble understanding them when I first read about them on this forum - but by now they happen very often, usually when I'm in my room and it's dark, I'll suddenly feel like I'm in a different room or the house is pointing a different way, and have to reorient myself. :|

I also play Minecraft a lot, and I'm not sure if reorientation in 3D video games is relevant here, but in my latest world, I used to have a staircase where, every single time I travelled up or down it, I would rotate round 540 degrees, and think I rotated 720 degrees. The result was that the route to spawn on the surface was in one direction, while the route to spawn in my tunnel was in the completely opposite direction! Even after realising that, I still never interpreted it right, and found it very difficult to imagine both routes going in the same direction. Eventually I rebuilt the staircase though, so it doesn't happen any more.


Hi Keiji, it's great that you have become more aware of the occurrence of VRIs! :D

Isn't it weird to feel like the "house is pointing in a different way"?

Have you been able to discern whether it is a 90 or 180 degree flip from how you normally see it?

Have you been able to see it the 4 different possible ways? There are 2 different 90 degree flips that will be to the right and left from normal, and the 180 degree flip that will turn the house all the way around to the opposite direction.

When you first realize that a VRI has occured, and then it flips back to normal, have you attempted to cognitively do the VRI flip back to its other position immediately to see if you can go back there again? This is easier to do while the other orientation is still fresh in your mind's eye. The first time that I ever did the flip by choice was under these circumstances... and I realized that we have the ability to look at our surroundings from any of those other directions if we so choose.

Also, have you attempted a VRI in a movie theatre yet? Earlier in this thread you said you didn't go to the movies very much but has that changed? The theatre is the easiest place for me to consciosly do the VRI flip, and now that you're more aware of the flip, it would be great if you could attempt it there yourself. The 180 is the easiest to do, just think of being in another theatre that faces the opposite direction and it may happen quite easily. The 90 degree flips to the right or left are a bit harder but are achievable with concentration, awareness and practice. Every time I go to the movies I have a fun time flipping the theatre around to each of the four orientations by choice. :D

As far as doing VRIs in video games, yes it happens frequently for me, just as also while watching TV. I can be watching a football or hockey game and flip the field or rink around to the four different orientations as well.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Keiji » Sat Aug 25, 2012 2:32 pm

Hugh wrote:Isn't it weird to feel like the "house is pointing in a different way"?


It reminds me of when I was a child, when on holiday I would wake up and not have a clue where I was. Actually, perhaps the fact that I wanted to experience that feeling again subconsciously made the VRIs happen?

Have you been able to discern whether it is a 90 or 180 degree flip from how you normally see it?


I'm not actually sure, to be honest, even after thinking about it really hard. It's like trying to remember a dream, you know certain facts, but not the details. I know I've done a bunch of VRIs, but I have no idea whether any of them were in any specific direction.

When you first realize that a VRI has occured, and then it flips back to normal, have you attempted to cognitively do the VRI flip back to its other position immediately to see if you can go back there again?


Actually yes, I pretty much always try to do this. It's very weird, because different "landmarks" in my room - bed, door, window, computer, wardrobe etc. - move around to relative positions they shouldn't be from each other.

Also, have you attempted a VRI in a movie theatre yet? Earlier in this thread you said you didn't go to the movies very much but has that changed?


Ahaha, nope!
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Sat Aug 25, 2012 4:49 pm

Keiji wrote:It reminds me of when I was a child, when on holiday I would wake up and not have a clue where I was. Actually, perhaps the fact that I wanted to experience that feeling again subconsciously made the VRIs happen?


It's possible. I think children experience VRIs often, but as we grow older we tend to lock into a normal viewpoint for each of the places we visit. We feel comfortable in one of the four viewpoints, so our brain automatically flips us to that one whenever we visit there.

It is interesting that the transition between two normal viewpoints sometimes involves a flip. For example, there is a road that I travel on that I normally see one way, but the place that it takes me to I normally see 180 degrees turned around from the relative direction of travel on this road. So what happens is that as I near the destination, I experience a 180 degree VRI, every time in the same spot. Then after leaving there, and taking the road back home, there is another 180 degree VRI to flip things back to normal again on that road. There are other places that I travel to where similar flips automatically occur.

Keiji wrote:I'm not actually sure, to be honest, even after thinking about it really hard. It's like trying to remember a dream, you know certain facts, but not the details. I know I've done a bunch of VRIs, but I have no idea whether any of them were in any specific direction.


If you're interested in exploring this more, try to be more aware of exactly which direction your bearings are before and after the flips. Think about which direction you normally go to enter certain buildings. Point in that direction and think, " normally I enter my house from this direction". Get a strong sense of where everything is located around you, for several blocks, for even further if you can. Another person that I know that experiences VRIs lives in Denver Colorado, where the mountains are located in the West. Normally she sees them in the West, but occasionally she has seen them in the North, East and South because of VRIs while traveling around Denver. Of course the mountains are actually still to the West of Denver, but because the whole perceived viewpoint has done a 90 or 180 VRI, they are perceived to be where North, East or South normally are.

Keiji wrote:Actually yes, I pretty much always try to do this. It's very weird, because different "landmarks" in my room - bed, door, window, computer, wardrobe etc. - move around to relative positions they shouldn't be from each other.


Are you sure that this happens? A VRI doesn't change the relative positions of the objects to each other within the viewpoint itself, only the entire viewpoint positions get rotated as a whole. For example if the door is on your right, window is in front of you, computer is on your left and wardrobe is behind you, and you experience a 180 degree VRI, the door will still be on your right, the window will still be in front of you, the computer will still be on your left and the wardrobe will still be behind you, it's just that the door will be where the computer was, the window will be where the wardrobe was, the computer will be where the door was, and the wardrobe will be where the window was. It's just like if someone picked up your room and turned it around 180 degrees from where it was, but everything within the room stays the same. :)

Keiji wrote:Ahaha, nope!


It would be great if you did try a VRI there Keiji and succeeded! Many people come out of a movie theatre and start walking the "wrong way" to exit the building. Then they realize things got flipped around during the movie, their brain flips everything back to their normal viewpoint of how they see the lobby and parking lot, and they head in the "right way" to get to their car.

Most shrug off such an experience as a simple confusion, but when one studies, experiments with and understands what happens with VRIs, there is a lot there to think about, especially when it comes to the possibility of it involving higher dimensions of space.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Sun Aug 26, 2012 6:56 pm

I have transferred this conversation over from the Dimensional Baby Steps thread because it involves discussion about VRIs...

Hugh wrote:We think of what a 2D being sees around itself (a 1D infinitely thin line) and realize how limited that it would be in projecting what is actually around it.
Could it be that we see only a limited 3D slice around ourself of a higher dimensional universe?
If there was a 4D universe around us we'd only see a 3D slice of it right?

gonegahgah wrote:That is an interesting thought but I would tend to say that by direct analogy to the 2Der seeing a 1D line before them; we only see a 2D plane before us.

My thoughts are that a 1D line cannot be seen at all, even by a 2D being as it looks "edge on" along the plane of its existence. Infinite thinness cannot be seen. A 2D being looking around itself sees zero dimensions, two less than it actually is. Could we have a similar limitation to our view and not fully realize it?
Hugh wrote:If we are actually 4D ourselves, how would we view that 4D space around us?
3D stays 3D in 4D as well, this is important to think about.
If a 4D being has a 3D viewpoint, it would see 3D around itself, in 3D.

gonegahgah wrote:But 'around' is different to 'before'. A 2Der sees a 1D world before their eyes but a 2D world around themselves.
We see a 2D world before our eyes but a 3D world around ourselves.

It usually appears to be only 3D, yet there are times when other dimensions of it seem to be seen. The whole idea of this thread is that VRIs allow us to see light from objects from many more directions than should be allowed if space was only 3D.
Hugh wrote:So where do the other directions come in... ana and kata?
Well, my way of thinking is this... A 4D being sees a 3D slice of the 4D universe all around itself (it's limited in vision just like the 2D being is)...
So the extra directions allow it to see that 3D slice around itself from the other directions that are available.

gonegahgah wrote:This is where I've been saying that a 4Der doesn't just have ana-kata in my approach; a 4Der has towards ana and towards kata. They have a whole 180° towards both of these.
So where you mention flipping; I mention rotation.
If you were seeing in the space, that I could fit 16 people, 64 people instead, when I can only see 16, then I would think you were seeing 4D as I picture it to be.
My picture of 4D is that things need to be able to move in and out of our 3D space without our understanding why; not just our world flip around as it is.
As in the introduction, if a 4Der put a 4D fence post sideways through our world we would only see a cube and not the whole post.

Do you see objects floating in the air for no apparent reason? This would be my test of if your 4D matched the type of 4D I'm espousing.

You're assuming that we are only 3D. If we are actually 4D ourselves, with limited 3D viewpoint vision, we wouldn't see things mysteriously popping in and out of existence, we would always be able to see a 3D slice of everything 4D with our limited 3D viewpoint vision of them.
Hugh wrote:All this talk about a 4D being seeing 3D as "flat" is, in my way of thinking, the wrong direction to think in... it would see 3D as it is, in full 3D, as we see the world all around us.

gonegahgah wrote:With your model; yes. With my model; no. Hopefully this will become a little more 'intuitive' with some of the next pictures.

I'm looking forward to seeing them gonegahgah, and I do appreciate the effort and time that goes into making them.
Hugh wrote:Like Aale de Winkel said earlier, 4D vision isn't x-ray vision, it's just seeing the light rays coming from more directions.

gonegahgah wrote:But, the doesn't mean that they flip directions. When we move our vision the image changes smoothly.
So in my model the 4Der's view would change smoothly as they turn their head in all direction. It doesn't suddenly flip.

What about with a Necker Cube type of flip? We have a knowledge of 3D, so when we look at a 2D image of a Necker Cube, we can see the 2D image flip from one perceived 3D orientation to another. Perhaps this instant type of VRI flip that people experience of our 3D viewpoint is a 4D example of this, and we find ourselves getting turned around in orientation instantly because of it, because we may actually be 4D, in 4D space.

Earlier I posted a link that explained how to build Rudy Rucker's 3D Neck-A-Cube, which he says helps to allow people to visualize the Fourth Spatial Dimension. It's easy to build and visualize with. Here's the link:

http://128.143.168.25/classes/200R/Projects/fall_1999/fourdim/how.html

Here's the link from that same paper to a larger size version of the Neck-A-Cube which you can print out on paper, cut out with scissors, and experiment with yourself:

http://128.143.168.25/classes/200R/Projects/fall_1999/fourdim/app.html

I'd highly recommend trying this experiment yourself gonegahgah, and would be fascinated to hear your thoughts on it!

The interesting thing for me is that the 3D type of instant reversal you see is similar to the VRI, except that it happens with you in the Neck-A-Cube yourself! :)

Hugh wrote:So if we think that if we're 4D, and we're looking at a 4D table in front of us, but that we are limited in our vision and only see the table in 3D in front of us (a 3D slice of it), then the fact that we can use VRIs to cognitively see it from a different 90 or 180 degree direction, to me, shows that those directions that the light is also coming from actually do exist. :)
Like I've said, I truly wish that I could show each of you exactly what a VRI is, and let you perceive it fully, to see the potential that it has in explaining the possible existence of higher dimensional space.

gonegahgah wrote:Hmmm, it would probably be very confusing to start off with.

VRIs certainly can cause confusion, but at the same time they are awesome to control.

Up in space astronauts get to learn how to do VRIs at will easier. 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”

That's the feeling that I get with VRIs here on Earth, only I'm limited to flipping around the walls. :)

gonegahgah wrote:If what you have is a form of 4D vision then it is, by my model, a very limited and rigidly aligned model that can't escape the bounds of our 3D space.

We perceive it to be 3D space, but our perception of the space around us may be more limited than we realize, and it may contain higher dimensions... Do you believe that is possible?
gonegahgah wrote:The model I'm looking at doesn't have the rigid alignment to our 3D space and movement can exist out of our 3D space. Hopefully, as I say, some of the following pictures will give a better impression of what I'm defining as 4D vision.


Thanks again for your work in trying to help us understand 4D gonegahgah. I'm truly hoping that somewhere down the line that there may be a way that we'll find the VRI experience is a part of it.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby gonegahgah » Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:10 pm

Hi Hugh. Personally, I don't really believe in higher dimensions. I don't believe in the higher dimensions of string theory with these extra dimensions that are somehow very short, very curled, and uniquely special in that they have some unknown mechanism to prevent us crossing into them. I also don't believe in higher spatial dimensions because we would experience unusual phenomena such as magically suspended objects; that we don't experience. I don't believe, as our science does, that time is somehow a dimension on the same par with the spatial dimensions. I don't even really believe that there are individual dimensions - ie x, y and z - per se. So, I'm a bit of a non-believer overall.

I do believe, however, that there are things that can be considered to be extra dimensions necessary for our calculations. To calculate movement we have to not only take into account our speed vector; as we don't simply just move in a straight line at a constant rate. We also have to take into account gravity and magnetism. We also have to take resistance and other forces into account. We even seem to have to take into account adjustments due to relativity and localised gravitational variations if we want to be totally precise. So, with respect to our calculations, these other facets are extra dimensions that need to be taken into account. To my mind these various factors could be classified as dimensions.

Pretty boring; I know :\

I was looking at those links you gave. I must admit I can't find anything really VRI related there and the experiences expressed there don't seem to match VRI.
Perhaps you can quote particular passages that you think support VRI as 4D?

I recall you speaking about 3D shapes not being flat in 4D. My definition of flat is a surface that before your eyes appears that it would be the same distance - allowing for perspective - from your eyes for each point on its surface, when you look at it face on. Of course, if we look at a big square via it's centre, the corners will be further away from our eyes than the centre is, but that is a matter of relative size. We still recognise the square as flat and that all the corners are the same distance from our eyes.

A 4Der, likewise, sees all the corners of a cube, when they are looking at it flat on, as being the same distance from their eyes at the same time; when they are likewise looking at it face on. They don't see some corners as being at the back and some corners as being at the front for a cube - as we do. So I define a 4Der's cube as being flat to them, a 3Der's square as being flat to us, and a 2Der's line as being flat to them.

I would use a 2D analogy but if you can't allow them to have 2-space - like we have 3-space and a 4Der has 4-space - then that just would not help unfortunately.
I don't think I can squeeze the 'spatial 4D', of the main section here, down to only the 4 perspectives that your version has.
Mine, and I assume this site's, has a whole extra 360° of perspective and not just 4x~0° of perspective of VRI.

Thank you for following my pictures. I am trying to help people and myself and also to contribute to developing 4D further if I can.
The pictures can take a lot of work; but they do help me to visualise and understand 4D space with more clarity.
Sometimes, no matter how much someone explains things for us - including all QuickFur's help for me - we just have to nut some things out to discover things more clearly ourselves.
The best educators in the world can lead us to water but we won't necessarily work out how to drink it still. If we can, we may than begin to swim in interesting worlds of thought. Though, everyone's path is different.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Thu Aug 30, 2012 3:39 am

gonegahgah wrote:Hi Hugh. Personally, I don't really believe in higher dimensions. I don't believe in the higher dimensions of string theory with these extra dimensions that are somehow very short, very curled, and uniquely special in that they have some unknown mechanism to prevent us crossing into them. I also don't believe in higher spatial dimensions because we would experience unusual phenomena such as magically suspended objects; that we don't experience.

We would only see magically suspended objects if we ourselves were only 3D, existing in a 4D universe. This would be unlikely though, because we're made up of the same stuff as the universe, so whatever number of dimensions the universe has, we have the same number too. If the universe has four spatial dimensions, then so do we, wouldn't you agree?

We look around ourselves and see a 3D world, and think, how can there be more, we can only see 3 dimensions of what is around us? But when we try to work out the physics of how the universe works with 3 dimensions, it doesn't all add up. There is "the missing mass of the universe" problem, dark matter, dark energy etc., where is it to be found? What about if it were located in existing higher dimensional space? What if there is more space than we realize, more stuff than we realize? Do things work out better with the physics? Yes, they do. Check Michio Kaku's quote from my Oct 10 2005 post on the first page of this thread. If higher dimensional space exists, we can explain how the universe works. What we need to find is evidence of this higher dimensional space, if we can.

gonegahgah wrote:I don't believe, as our science does, that time is somehow a dimension on the same par with the spatial dimensions. I don't even really believe that there are individual dimensions - ie x, y and z - per se. So, I'm a bit of a non-believer overall.

I would say that there is a minimum of 3 spatial dimensions to us, because we can put 3 orthogonal axes together in our space... Mathematically we call them x, y and z... I believe they exist...
gonegahgah wrote:I do believe, however, that there are things that can be considered to be extra dimensions necessary for our calculations. To calculate movement we have to not only take into account our speed vector; as we don't simply just move in a straight line at a constant rate. We also have to take into account gravity and magnetism. We also have to take resistance and other forces into account. We even seem to have to take into account adjustments due to relativity and localised gravitational variations if we want to be totally precise. So, with respect to our calculations, these other facets are extra dimensions that need to be taken into account. To my mind these various factors could be classified as dimensions.

For the purposes of this thread though, I'd like to keep the usage of dimension to mean a spatial dimension.
gonegahgah wrote:I was looking at those links you gave. I must admit I can't find anything really VRI related there and the experiences expressed there don't seem to match VRI.

I'm curious if you built the 3D Neck-A-Cube with paper and actually were able to see the 3D perceived cube instantly flip just like a 2D Necker Cube does. It was designed by Rudy Rucker to help one envision 4D space. The amazing thing for me is that there is implied a connection between an instant perceived flip and higher dimensional space.

When a 2D Necker Cube is perceived to instantly flip it does so in 3 perceived dimensions. It is possible for the 2D image to flip in 3D perceived space.

My idea is that when we experience a 3D flip of our perceived 3D viewpoint with a VRI, it is because of the existence of at least 4 spatial dimensions, to ourselves, and the space around us.
gonegahgah wrote:IPerhaps you can quote particular passages that you think support VRI as 4D?

Well, this whole thread has various ideas that attempt to explain it, but I'll try at the end of this post to explain things in a new way.
gonegahgah wrote:I recall you speaking about 3D shapes not being flat in 4D. My definition of flat is a surface that before your eyes appears that it would be the same distance - allowing for perspective - from your eyes for each point on its surface, when you look at it face on. Of course, if we look at a big square via it's centre, the corners will be further away from our eyes than the centre is, but that is a matter of relative size. We still recognise the square as flat and that all the corners are the same distance from our eyes.

A 4Der, likewise, sees all the corners of a cube, when they are looking at it flat on, as being the same distance from their eyes at the same time; when they are likewise looking at it face on. They don't see some corners as being at the back and some corners as being at the front for a cube - as we do. So I define a 4Der's cube as being flat to them, a 3Der's square as being flat to us, and a 2Der's line as being flat to them.

The way I see it, having access to 2D allows the viewing of full 1D from new directions.

Having access to 3D allows the viewing of full 2D from new directions.

Having access to 4D allows the viewing of full 3D from new directions.
gonegahgah wrote:I would use a 2D analogy but if you can't allow them to have 2-space - like we have 3-space and a 4Der has 4-space - then that just would not help unfortunately.
I don't think I can squeeze the 'spatial 4D', of the main section here, down to only the 4 perspectives that your version has.
Mine, and I assume this site's, has a whole extra 360° of perspective and not just 4x~0° of perspective of VRI.

Here on Earth, the perceived "down" axis is very strong because of the perceived direction of gravity, so VRIs on Earth allow one to see 4 possible orientations of the 3D viewpoint that one currently has, so one can only flip around and interchange the walls with each other.

But up in space, one is not limited by the perceived direction of gravity, so one is free to do VRIs to any of the possible 3D viewpoint orientations possible. One can do VRI flips to interchange the perceived walls, ceiling and floor with each other. There are 24 different 3D viewpoint orientational VRI flips possible up in space. Think of dice, taking a single die and rotating it to all the different orientations. The number 1 on top, with four different orientations, then the number one on bottom, there's another four... etc... 4 orientations X 6 sides = 24.

One can perceive oneself floating in the space station "upright", "above" the Earth, then experience a 180 degree VRI and suddenly the whole world turns around in an instant and you now perceive yourself to be floating in the space station "upside down", "below" the Earth. It happens all the time to astronauts, They see someone float by upside down in the space station and then perceive that they are actually the one who is "upside down" after a 180 VRI flip. 90 degree flips are also common up there.

Here on Earth it's the same 90 or 180 degree VRI, except the perceived up/down axis stays the same.

This is essentially why VRIs became much more noticed by scientists when mankind started to do space travel. When people are getting flipped out because the perceived ceiling just became the floor that was more shocking than here on Earth when North just became South and East just became West. It's the same 180 degree VRI, just along a differently perceived axis.
gonegahgah wrote:Thank you for following my pictures. I am trying to help people and myself and also to contribute to developing 4D further if I can.

Me too. :)

Your interest in trying to understand how VRIs may be 4D related has sparked me into coming up with some more thoughts, and I thank you for that. :)

Take a 1D line in 1D space, There is only one way for it to be oriented in that space. Forward is always forward and backward is always backward in the same region of space.
Put that 1D line in a 2D plane. It can now move around in 2D, and it could find itself taking up the exact same spot, but turned around 180 degrees in that plane. Forward and backward within the same region of space can be experienced in a 180 degree opposite direction in that higher dimensional space.

Take a 2D square in 2D space, There is only one way for it to be oriented in that space. Forward/backward and right/left are always the same, within the same region of space.
Put that 2D square in a 3D cube. It can now move around in 3D, and it could find itself taking up the exact same spot, but turned around 180 degrees in that cube. Forward/backward and right/left within the same region of space can be experienced in a 180 degree opposite direction in that higher dimensional space.

Take a 3D cube in 3D space, There is only one way for it to be oriented in that space. Forward/backward, right/left and up/down are always the same, within the same region of space.
Put that 3D cube in a 4D tetracube. It can now move around in 4D, and it could find itself taking up the exact same spot, but turned around 180 degrees in that tetracube. Forward/backward, right/left and up/down in the same region of space can be experienced in a 180 degree opposite direction in that higher dimensional space.

This is exactly what a VRI allows one to do, is to see the same whole 3D viewpoint from a 90 or 180 degree opposite direction.

I chose the avatar of a tetracube because it represents to me what I experience of my surroundings on a daily basis with VRIs.

There are all these other directions and "cube viewpoint orientations" that I can flip to, just by thinking it. The room that I am in has more dimensions than just the 3 that I can see at once.

When I think of a 4D being with a limited 3D viewpoint of the space around itself, it sees everything around itself as it looks all around itself, but it only sees a 3D slice of everything, it can't see all 4 dimensions at once.

In order for it to see in that fourth perpendicular direction, it has to see everything around itself from another, new perpendicular direction, so everything around itself is viewed from that new perpendicular direction, and it is seen from a different 90 or 180 degree direction, which is possible in that higher dimensional space. :)
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby gonegahgah » Sun Sep 02, 2012 12:20 pm

Hugh wrote:In order for it to see in that fourth perpendicular direction, it has to see everything around itself from another, new perpendicular direction, so everything around itself is viewed from that new perpendicular direction, and it is seen from a different 90 or 180 degree direction, which is possible in that higher dimensional space. :)

When we turn around we are not limited to flipping in 90° intervals from front to right to back to left. We can rotate a full 360° spinning in a circle.
Why would a 4Der be limited to flipping only in 90° intervals from here to ana to reverse to kata.
Why can't they rotate a full 360° spinning in a circle through the 4th direction; just as we can spin a full 360° in a circle through the 3rd direction.
Why does the 4th direction only allow this non-continuous, non-flowing, but sudden flipping from 0° to 90° to 180° to 270° back to 360°; or only from one of these to another?
What happened to all the angles in-between? Where did they go?
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Sun Sep 02, 2012 2:15 pm

gonegahgah wrote:
Hugh wrote:In order for it to see in that fourth perpendicular direction, it has to see everything around itself from another, new perpendicular direction, so everything around itself is viewed from that new perpendicular direction, and it is seen from a different 90 or 180 degree direction, which is possible in that higher dimensional space. :)

When we turn around we are not limited to flipping in 90° intervals from front to right to back to left. We can rotate a full 360° spinning in a circle.
Why would a 4Der be limited to flipping only in 90° intervals from here to ana to reverse to kata.
Why can't they rotate a full 360° spinning in a circle through the 4th direction; just as we can spin a full 360° in a circle through the 3rd direction.
Why does the 4th direction only allow this non-continuous, non-flowing, but sudden flipping from 0° to 90° to 180° to 270° back to 360°; or only from one of these to another?
What happened to all the angles in-between? Where did they go?

Where are the angles in between the perceived flip of the 2D Necker Cube in 3D?

Image

The red dot is perceived to be either inside or outside the 3D box at any one time, it can't be in between the viewpoints.

It's the same 2D box but it is viewed in different 3D orientations.

VRIs are a Necker Cube type of instant flip.

It's the same 3D viewpoint but it is viewed in different 4D orientations.

Just as it can be shown how a 2D Necker Cube is perceived to flip in 3D space, it would be awesome to show diagrams of a 3D Necker Cube flip in 4D, and how exactly the VRI would be possible in 4D space. :)
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Sun Sep 02, 2012 2:47 pm

Since my Oct 24, 2011 post earlier in the thread, there have been more VRI related comments about the RadioLab episode called "You Are Here" available at:

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

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.

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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.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Sun Sep 02, 2012 3:11 pm

Hugh wrote:Just as it can be shown how a 2D Necker Cube is perceived to flip in 3D space, it would be awesome to show diagrams of a 3D Necker Cube flip in 4D, and how exactly the VRI would be possible in 4D space. :)


Image

Let's say one is 4D, with a limited 3D viewpoint of one's surroundings, and is in the middle 3D cube viewpoint "F" within the 4D space of the tesseract above.

I'm thinking that a 90 degree Necker Cube type VRI flip from the middle cube F would reorient one's 3D viewpoint to an adjacent cube, like A, B, C, D, E or G, and a 180 degree VRI would reorient one's 3D viewpoint to the opposite cube H.

I'd like to hear of any other possible ways to show a 3D Necker Cube flip in 4D, just like the earlier 2D Necker Cube flip picture in 3D. :)
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Mon Sep 03, 2012 1:52 am

Another interesting thing to think about is that the above picture is of the unfolded tesseract...

Here's how it kind of looks folded up in 4D space:

Image

It's fascinating to think of a 4D being with a limited 3D viewpoint, made up of 4D stuff within the 4D space of that folded up tesseract. :)
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Mon Sep 03, 2012 1:25 pm

gonegahgah wrote:Image

...The left will always fall to our left and the right will always fall to our right.

...The key thing with this view is that anything in front of you stays directly in front of you even as you rotate into the ana or kata directions.


This is an interesting picture you've created from the Dimensional Baby Steps thread gonegahgah.

I hope you don't mind that I'm responding to it in here, but it has a possible relevance to the VRI.

The key things from my perspective is that you said that forward stays in front of you and left/right stays the same relative to you as you rotate through ana/kata.

This is similar to the VRI flips. What is in front of you stays in front of you and what is to your right and left stays to your right and left.

What happens with VRIs is that there is a perceived rotation though, and this fits in with the rotation shown with your picture.

It seems that at times when the ana/kata rotation is at 90, 180 and 270 degrees that there is a lining up of axes that might enable somewhat of a perceived Necker Cube effect.

Again, the idea here in this thread is that it is a 4D being experiencing this VRI, there isn't any actual rotation involved, but the perceived possible angles that the light can reach the 4Der's eyes is from more directions than what would be available in only 3D.
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby gonegahgah » Mon Sep 03, 2012 10:50 pm

From what you've explained in your last post here Hugh I'm gathering that the following animation would probably suit your VRI better:

Image

This animation was meant to be for the locate view but having done it I now think the locate view would be slightly different; but it may still be useful for your example.

If I'm correct in my understanding, then your 4D interpretation doesn't actually add any extra space to our existing universe.
In otherwords, the space is the same but it is just four different orientations of our existing universe.

My understanding of spatial dimensions - and the meaning of it at this site I think I gather - is that extra spatial dimensions actually add more space.
I know referring to the 2Der is pretty futile but still at this site the thought is that a 2Der has only height x forward space, that we have height x forward x 1 sideways space and that a 4Der has height x forward x sideways 1 x sideways 2 of space. As I say, for example, a 2Der has 2x2=4m2 of space, we have 2x2x2=8m3 of space, and a 4Der has 2x2x2x2 = 16m4 of space. You don't accept that a 2Der has their own space at all so I hesitate to use them in our discussions.

I do have to ask, do you believe that your 4D is the same one as our 4D?
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Tue Sep 04, 2012 2:20 am

gonegahgah wrote:From what you've explained in your last post here Hugh I'm gathering that the following animation would probably suit your VRI better:

Image

This animation was meant to be for the locate view but having done it I now think the locate view would be slightly different; but it may still be useful for your example.


Thanks gonegahgah, it does look and feel more like what the VRI does, spins our 3D viewpoint into differently perceived orientations.

gonegahgah wrote:If I'm correct in my understanding, then your 4D interpretation doesn't actually add any extra space to our existing universe.
In otherwords, the space is the same but it is just four different orientations of our existing universe.


My idea is that we can only see a 3D slice of the 4D universe at a time. If our universe actually is 4D, then it would indeed have that extra space.

Take a 2D square confined to a 2D plane universe. There is movement in 2D allowed for the square along the plane, but that's all. If you add another dimension to the 2D universe and make it 3D, then that square can now move around in full 3D, even though it would still be a 2D square. It would now find it possible to position itself in the same space within the original 2D plane, but turned around "the other way" within it. If it did not have access to 3D space it couldn't do this.

Similarly a 3D viewpoint of a 4D being with access to 4D space would find it possible to position itself in the same space turned around "the other way" within it. If it did not have access to 4D space it couldn't do this.

Your picture shows a 3D viewpoint with access to 4D space turning around within it, through degrees of kata with everything staying the same within the 3D viewpoint, relative to what is within it.

As you said in the Dimensional Baby Steps thread; "I'm thinking that this would actually generate quite a confusing landscape for us 3Ders."The VRI sure does cause confusion for the 3D viewpoint. What used to be perceived to be one direction becomes another. People talk about getting lost because they got "turned around", or their world got "turned around"... It truly is like being in a whole new world with every VRI. :)

gonegahgah wrote:My understanding of spatial dimensions - and the meaning of it at this site I think I gather - is that extra spatial dimensions actually add more space.
I know referring to the 2Der is pretty futile but still at this site the thought is that a 2Der has only height x forward space, that we have height x forward x 1 sideways space and that a 4Der has height x forward x sideways 1 x sideways 2 of space. As I say, for example, a 2Der has 2x2=4m2 of space, we have 2x2x2=8m3 of space, and a 4Der has 2x2x2x2 = 16m4 of space.

You don't accept that a 2Der has their own space at all so I hesitate to use them in our discussions.


I don't remember saying that a 2Der doesn't have space, where did I say that? I think what I said was that a 2Der has a limited viewpoint of the space around itself, to a huge degree...

It looks along the plane of it's 2D universe, "edge on", which is an infinitely thin 1D line, which, as far as I know, can't be seen at all because it has no thickness...

So even though it can move around in 2D, it can't see any of it, because it looks at everything "edge on", so it sees nothing, which is zero, which is 2 dimensions less than what it actually is.

It's interesting to me that humans think of themselves as 3D, which is only 1 dimension up from a 2Der, yet we see a full 3D world around us.

What if there is a similar limitation to what we see of what is around us?

gonegahgah wrote:I do have to ask, do you believe that your 4D is the same one as our 4D?


If it is 4 orthogonal spatial axes, then yes, the same.

Hey gonegahgah, do you know that 2D Necker Cube picture that can be seen in different 3D orientations?

Image

Do you think it would be possible to create a 3D Necker Cube picture that can be seen in different 4D orientations that is similar in design?

Rudy Rucker's Neck-A-Cube is one example, but I'm looking for something that shows it more vividly, and with more orientations...

Your pictures are great by the way, you're really gaining more skills in presenting your ideas!
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Tue May 21, 2013 3:10 am

These quotes are from another thread on this forum called "Parallel Worlds".

http://teamikaria.com/hddb/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1771

I have put them here because they deal with the subject of VRIs, which I like to discuss in this thread, to keep it all together.

illyana wrote:Does anyone have any thoughts on how the theory of parallel worlds can play into the fourth dimension? I've searched the internet and found precious little on a connection between the two. Yet if 2D is a series of parallel 1D lines stacked together to form a plane, and 3D is a series of parallel 2D planes stacked together to form a cube, shouldn't the fourth dimension hold a stack of parallel 3D worlds? Does anyone have any information or ideas on this?


Hugh wrote:With Visual Reorientation Illusions (VRIs), one has the experience of being in multiple 3D parallel worlds, each at right angles to each other, and each with its own individual orientation.


gonegahgah wrote:Hi Hugh. I haven't been on here of late. Just too busy.
I would suggest that this VRI is an example of a rotated & mirrored (+/-) set of four 3D spaces with each identical to each other except for different mirroring/rotation combinations.
I think that saying four spaces - for VRI - is a little more accurate than saying 'multiple'; and as long as they remain identical to each other while differently oriented.
This was one of the differences that I had been meaning to offer to you to explain the difference between your VRI 4D and the spatial 4D understood here.
The spatial 4D, generally discussed at this site, has a full 360° of rotation; not just 4 aspects of that rotation.
If you were limited to only flipping 90° at a time, in the spatial 4D here, then you would get a similar effect to your VRI.
In a true 4D space you would not be limited to this 90° flipping.
Having thought of this, but not having had a chance to express it to you yet, I hope this helps you to understand the difference better...
Cheers.


Thanks for your reply gonegahgah, nice to see you back! :)

Okay, first, let's look at this 2D Necker Cube image:

Image

It is interesting to think about what is actually happening as your mind flips the perceived 3D cube around in 3D space so that the 2D yellow face square switches from the back face of the cube to the front face.

If the red dot is "inside the box" then the yellow face is the back face of the cube.

If the red dot is "outside the box" then the yellow face is the front face of the cube.

Why is there only 2 possible orientations of the 3D cube? Why not a whole range as you say?

If this is happening in 3D space then there should be a whole 360 degrees of freedom for the turn to take place as you say right? But there isn't a full range perceived. There are only the two orientations.

This is what I think is happening with our perceived 3D space around us with the VRI flip in actual 4D space.

There is an instant Necker Cube type of flip from one orientation to another that happens, that's just the way it is, just like the above picture.

Keep in mind that with the VRI, one doesn't change one's direction of viewing, it stays the exact same, that's why what one is seeing stays the exact same.

Just as when one does the Necker Cube flip of the 2D square in 3D space one sees the exact same thing but in another orientation, I'm thinking that when one does the VRI flip of our 3D viewpoint in 4D space one sees the exact same thing but in another orientation as well.

It's like being inside a 3D Necker Cube! :)
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby gonegahgah » Wed May 22, 2013 2:53 am

Hi Hugh,

Could you show me your picture, with the 4 orientations that I've seen you show previously, again?
I should look for it myself by time is a little squeezed...
I would like to have a look at it to see how the two perpendicular views fit into things?
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Wed May 22, 2013 3:30 am

gonegahgah wrote:Hi Hugh,

Could you show me your picture, with the 4 orientations that I've seen you show previously, again?
I should look for it myself by time is a little squeezed...
I would like to have a look at it to see how the two perpendicular views fit into things?


Hi gonegahgah, here is a picture that was made by mrb on the Unexplained Mysteries Forum.

This is what mrb said about making this into an exhibit to explain VRIs to people:

Below is what I think would be a great way to demonstrate the phenomenon in a controlled setting, such as an art space or science hall. It is four identical rooms, each turned 90 degrees to the next. The visitor would enter the first room and experience what I call "imprinting", making the room familiar to him/herself. The second room would then be turned and the visitor would experience a simulated VRI, or an actual one. He/she would exit and by that point the exterior space (the exhibition hall) might be turned as well. It would force the issue, I think, by making the turn physical, and hopefully orientationally as well.

Image

This is how people who experience VRIs see their world, as four possibe identical orientations.

We normally get used to one of the viewpoints for any particular space, but at times, we can see any one of the other three.

Usually our brain flips our viewpoint automatically back to the one that we are used to.

With practice, one can learn how to flip our viewpoint from one to another and back again.

Keep in mind that it isn't only the room that we are in that does the rotation, but the whole universe with it as well.

Here is a picture that I came up with to show the 4 possible orientations here on Earth.

Image

Here on Earth we only see 4 possible viewpoints because of the strong perceived direction of gravity along the up/down axis, but up in space, astronauts can also use VRIs to rotate along any of the 3 perceived axes as well, leading to 24 possible viewpoints of the same space.

Another thing to consider is the avatar that I use.

Image

I like to think that if I were actually in that 4D space, and made up of that 4D space myself, but only limited to a 3D "slice" viewpoint of that space, that there would be all those viewpoints available of that space, and there would be many Necker Cube type flips that would take place in there, as I look at the same 3D viewpoints from different directions within that 4D space. :)
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Fri May 24, 2013 7:52 pm

Hi gonegahgah,

I've taken four pictures of your gif image that you used to help illustrate the VRI and put them all into one picture:

Image

Does this help to illustrate how the VRI may be 4D related in an easier way?

Compare it to this picture, which is what people experience with VRIs here on Earth:

Image

If we are actually 4D, is it possible that this might be the actual experience people could have of their 3D viewpoint in 4D space with VRIs?
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:10 am

My daughter and I made a video tonight to help explain the VRI Flip experience. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8OgqCvBDqk
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Thu Mar 13, 2014 8:26 pm

Put together another video to explain the VRI Flip, this time in the setting of downtown Toronto. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg2F44h9ilU
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Re: Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

Postby Hugh » Sat Mar 15, 2014 10:29 pm

Made another VRI video today, this one is about how VRIs can be experienced at a movie theater.

If you'd like to attempt a VRI, this is the easiest place to do so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xETQaPrDeQQ

All comments and thoughts are welcome. Enjoy! :)
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