Ronica Hathaway

[Ronica Hathaway @RangerCM]

@TheRabbitHole @elonmusk Average height of a tsunami swell

[Ronica Hathaway @RangerCM]

@itsme_urstruly Look up the yellow headed blackbird 😅

[Joey Mannarino @JoeyMannarino]

Rest in Peace, Scott Adams.

We will love you forever.

[Owen Gregorian @OwenGregorian]

Researchers uncover surprising limit on human imagination | Christy DeSmith, Harvard Gazette

Human beings can juggle up to 10 balls at once. But how many can they move through the air with their imaginations?

The answer, published in Nature Communications, astonished even the researchers pursuing the question. The cognitive psychologists found people could easily imagine the trajectory of a single ball after it disappeared. But the imagination couldn't simultaneously keep tabs on two moving balls that fell from view.

"We set out to test the capacity limits of the imagination, and we found that it was one," said co-author Tomer D. Ullman, associate professor in the Department of Psychology. "I found this surprising, so I can understand if others do, too."

Ullman, who heads Harvard's Computation, Cognition, and Development lab, has a long-time interest in what is known as intuitive physics. Think of the brain conjuring a ball as it rolls downhill, or sounding the alarm over two objects on a sure-fire collision course.

"How do we interact with the physical world around us?" wondered Ullman, who is also affiliated with the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence. "I subscribe to the theory that the brain may be running mental simulations, kind of like a video game."

These couldn't be perfect simulations of physical environments, right down to the level of atoms and molecules. So Ullman's lab has worked to understand what kinds of hacks and workarounds make mental simulations possible.

"The human imagination is just really cool, and we find a lot of people are quite interested in how it works," he offered.

A sizable body of research has explored the capacity limits of human perception, or how many objects the brain can track in a visual scene. "Maybe you're a parent watching multiple kids, or maybe you're a lifeguard on duty," Ullman said. "Obviously you can't keep track of everything."

Neuroscientists, psychologists, and computational modelers have found visual tracking is limited to just a handful of moving objects. But few have explored the imagination's capacity limits.

In the new study, online participants were shown an animation of a bouncing ball, as if on a racquetball court, before it vanished. Others saw two balls ricocheting at completely different cadences before both disappeared. Designing the experiments with Ullman was lead author Halely Balaban, an assistant professor of cognitive psychology at the Open University of Israel.

Also devised were two computational models to explain how the imagination might follow these invisible balls to their moment of impact. The first model posited that multiple objects would be moved in parallel, while the second envisioned independently moving each ball in more of a serial fashion.

Ullman and Balaban found their online recruits were pretty good at predicting when a single invisible ball would have hit the ground. But people fumbled at tracking two.

"It was harder than any of us expected," said Ullman, noting how reliably the exercise produced laughs.

Based on past findings, the co-authors originally thought the imagination could probably track about three or four objects. There were also intuitive reasons to think the mind's eye could move multiple objects in parallel.

"If I close my eyes right now, I can see a tower of blocks falling down," Ullman noted. "It doesn't feel limited. People feel like they should be able to move more than one."

In fact, a follow-up experiment found people were slightly better at tracking two balls that moved in tandem before disappearing. But performances still paled next to a yet another follow-up, in which study participants tracked two balls that remained visible until impact.

When it comes to tracking objects that have disappeared, the researchers found, the human imagination relies largely on a serial model, moving each piece one after the other.

A separate follow-up tested whether people might be conserving mental energy by employing a serial model. After all, running a simulation via the parallel model would require more effort. Imagine a computer running multiple simulations at once.

"We offered participants a bunch of money if they could get this right," Ullman explained. "But that didn't seem to matter."

For Ullman, the findings open an exciting frontier. "There has been decades and decades of work on how the mind uses clever tricks to keep track of what's in front of you," he said. "But there's been so little on the tricks and limitations of the mind's eye. I could imagine a lot more work to do here."

Read more:

https://t.co/0VbuSwA0x5

[Ronica Hathaway @RangerCM]

@LaNativePatriot The mountain’s out!

[Ronica Hathaway @RangerCM]

@_LadyPatriot @LaNativePatriot Same

[Maggie Rothenberger @MagpieReids]

I was kindly invited to share some poetry on theme of small beginnings at @ComefordCollege’s information night last night! Here is the set of three sonnets I wrote for the occasion.

[Ronica Hathaway @RangerCM]

@5solas https://t.co/rLbfzccDj6

[Sean Higgins @tohuvabohu]

Want more wisdom, knowledge, and blessing?

It is wise to fear the Lord. Those who know Him better love better. He makes His people fruitful in obedience.

But all that works the other way, too.

We fear Him UNTO wisdom. (Proverbs 1:7)
We love Him UNTO knowledge. (Philippians 1:9-10)
We obey Him UNTO fruitfulness. (Think Deuteronomy 28:1-6)

START with fear, love, and obedience and see what He will give.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

The rest of the essay is here. 2/2 https://t.co/lKP9iNEgH0

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

May 2020, I sneezed while in line outside the market.
And the suffocation cloud descended.
On RACE TRACK. Link below.

[Seth Dillon @SethDillon]

Watch this short documentary to go behind the scenes of a dangerous comedy site that "amplifies far-right rhetoric and disinformation . . . to stir up right-wing outrage" (SPLC).

[Ronica Hathaway @RangerCM]

@elonmusk I streamed it live for my 2nd grade class. One of the kids had been studying about it at home and talked us through the whole thing. 😊. So exciting for them.

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

Yes. This here is the single best video on the internet right now… ⚡️🇺🇸

[🇺🇸 Pismo 🇺🇸 @Pismo_B]

Native Americans to Libs & D🐀s, why they voted for Trump 🔥🔥🔥

[Zachary Levi @ZacharyLevi]

Though not my normal practice, I deleted a recent post. I did this because the recipient politely asked me to. They said they felt unsafe with the attention it was bringing them, and because I care about them and sincerely don’t want anyone to feel unsafe, I accommodated their request.

Below I’m going repost the majority of my deleted sentiment, as I still think it’s worth giving a read, especially if you believe that I’m somehow trying to redefine the term “woke”. Which I am not.

I was asked what I thought the word meant. Right now. In 2024. Not what its original intent was. Not what Merriam Webster has it listed as. What my PERSONAL take on it is, based on how it has evolved over these last few years. It may have started as something as simple as being aware of social injustice and discrimination, but with it came hardline orthodoxy and the need to comply with certain socio-police ideologies. And if one didn’t toe that line, they were vilified and cancelled. It may have started as an attempt to awaken people, but it quickly became a bludgeon to force people to agree with all of its implied tenants at the risk of being ostracized from society.

And that’s all shame and guilt based behavior. We should be able to present new ideas, and have those ideas challenged, all while maintaining humility and grace throughout the process. I’m not interested in arguing with anyone. I’m interested in a respectful exchange of ideas. A discussion that may well have multiple points of view. I have never, ever professed to be 100% correct about anything. Because NO ONE is. We’re all just doing the best we can with the tools and information available to us at the time. 🙏

[Zachary Levi @ZacharyLevi]

Hey Kris-Kross. While I appreciate you caring about my energy, please respect the fact that I’m a grown man who knows himself quite well, and I’m just peachy. I have loads of energy. Always have. Particularly when it comes to stuff like this. I love people. ALL people. Even one’s that may be disingenuous with their outrage. God is seeking all of our hearts, and every day I pray that God would use me as a conduit of his light, life, and love. A conduit of his will, and an extension of his grace. I have boundless energy to do just that.

Moreover, I’m never just posting for the sake of the person I’m interacting with. I’m posting these thoughts and opinions in hopes that other people, such as yourself, may also see them. That if these thoughts truly have any merit whatsoever, they would bless others in their pursuit of truth and understanding. And hey, they may not. But as they say, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. 😉

[Chrissie Mayr🇺🇸 @ChrissieMayr]

So if Joe Biden got 81 million Democrat popular votes in 2020

…and Kamala got 66 million Democrat popular votes in 2024

…and Trump didn’t grow his popular vote total from 2020-2024

That means there are 15 million sexist/racist democrats who refused to vote for Harris OR they cheated in 2020

[Byron York @ByronYork]

It was.

[Big Fish @BigFish3000]

Nicole Shanahan’s parting gift to the @TheDemocrats is a knife in their backs. 😎