Faceblindness: ysabetwordsmith

Faceblindness

I came across this fascinating book about faceblindness. It turns out that some people have little or no ability to recognize human faces and tell people apart.

I can sympathize; I'm not very good at remembering names and faces. I guess you could call me face ... myopic. I have no trouble with close friends and family members. Casual acquaintances, however, may or may not register. Introduce two or more people to me at once, and chances are I won't remember any of them. I can spend 9 months seeing the same 25 people in a room every day, and never learn to recognize all of them. Changes in a person's hair, glasses, or other features can cause me not to recognize them. It isn't personal; this simply isn't data that my brain is good at storing.

People frequently get pissy if you don't recognize them. Fortunately, I'm social teflon; I don't really care. I also tend not to care if someone doesn't come up and talk to me if we casually pass in public, or if someone doesn't invite me to an event. It just doesn't register on my radar as a significant occurrence. (Occasionally in junior high, someone would come up to me, all tearful about what a heartless bitch I was ... because I wasn't upset about not being invited to a party she'd counted on me being broken-hearted at not being invited to. I was startled the first time, and replied "What party?" Subsequent occasions I just laughed.) On the other hoof, I get along well with other folks who often forget names and faces: I'm distinctive enough in appearance that most people can spot me, and I'm not easily offended by mistakes.

Anyhow, this is fun material for alien interactions. I had one race that just could not tell humans apart. The first contact crew solved that by having every human wear a different scarf -- one crewmember happened to collect them and had a drawerful of exotic scarves. But you always had to have that scarf, or they wouldn't know who you were.

The obverse is also interesting, when aliens can identify something easily that humans can't. Another race breeds only during peak monsoons that occur every few years. They're amphibious and colorful. Individuals born in the same generation have a characteristic appearance; they can tell at a glance which generation someone belongs to. This is difficult for humans to do, which is awkward, because age is a very big deal in that culture. The way the language is designed, you can't talk to someone unless you know whether s/he is younger than you, older than you, or the same age.

padparadscha

March 8 2008, 07:34:48 UTC 13 years ago

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Prosopagnosia? I remember reading about that and wondering about myself. I think I'm on the short side of normal, but I've had problems more often. I worked in clothes retail once and discovered a problem--I would send people into a dressing room and they would try something on, and when they came out I WOULD NOT RECOGNIZE THEM. It got embarrassing a couple of times.

I also get very crabby while watching movies that consist of a load of men wearing suits. I can never tell them apart. A few times I've been frustrated when we're supposed to be shocked when someone's identity is revealed, and I'm not sure who it is. I wish they'd all wear name tags.

ysabetwordsmith

March 8 2008, 17:52:34 UTC 13 years ago

Those are similar to problems I sometimes have. I can't always recognize characters onscreen, especially if there are many characters with similar dress or other features.

Hmm. I suddenly wonder if low face recognition is more prevalent among alternative cultures -- because one tip I've heard repeatedly for attending conventions as a professional is that you should choose some distinctive item and wear it every day of the con, like a scarf or a special hair-clip. It helps people identify you. The trick works, too.

christinaathena

13 years ago

daev

March 8 2008, 08:16:06 UTC 13 years ago

I had one race that just could not tell humans apart.

Oh they should totally say, "I'm not speciesist! It's just that all of those people look alike. Honestly, some of my best friends are human!"

March 8 2008, 17:25:44 UTC 13 years ago

I thought about that, but it doesn't quite fit. They really aren't speciesist, though I have some other aliens that are. These just don't have the capacity to identify individuals in a way that works well on humans.

ideealisme

March 8 2008, 14:05:26 UTC 13 years ago

I don't have that, though I have spoken to people who do. It's interesting the way the brain works. Sometimes I wonder if the bestowing of one attribute means the removal of another. Like Mozart being the greatest composer ever but lacking the money management module :)

I've always felt that pure genius often exists in a narrow context - you need more brain focused on the area at hand and less on maintaining a job, cleaning a house and childery. Maybe that is why women historically have been less represented in the genius stakes - the phallocracy and their own contemporaries refused to coddle women of genius and let them off the hook of their more minor duties?

I don't get irritated if people don't recognise me, but my irritation level always increments by one each time I have to spell my name for someone over the phone and they ask me again and I spell it again - for some reason that drives me furious to distraction.

March 8 2008, 17:41:56 UTC 13 years ago

You're close. The soul comprises a massive amount of data, more than can be downloaded into a human body. So you pick and choose what you think you'll need in that life. Part of what makes "genius" is the selection of mental coprocessors that make doing certain things extremely easy: frex, almost all humans have the face-recognition coprocessor, and faceblind people don't. One of my extra coprocessors is a language engine, which when added to the standard human language wetware boosts my capacity considerably. If you stack a lot of related coprocessors together, genius frequently results. Another key aspect of genius is that stacking effect, not just with coprocessors, but in terms of not selecting perks in other areas, and taking just the bare minimum there.

It really is a lot like certain roleplaying games that use point-based character generation. Those are polygenetic, meaning that multiple people came up with that idea, although later generations of games are often inspired by earlier ones. And part of the inspiration was the observation of how incarnation works. Some people do get a bigger "pool" of points to start with, and some people just get lucky; but the pattern of balanced generation is valid. People who are brilliant at one or two things tend to be mediocre or wretched at a lot of other things.

Furthermore in each life, you have a finite amount of time and energy, which you can allocate to such categories as self-maintenance, family, career, spirituality, and so forth. The more of that you concentrate in one area, the less developed the others will be. Even if you have coprocessors that give your great "gas mileage" on your energy use, there's only so much time in the day. And if you've got access to time-stretching abilities, then you clearly put something into the Magic category!

shadesong

March 8 2008, 15:26:17 UTC 13 years ago

My husband is largely faceblind; I've gotten accustomed to being at his elbow at parties saying, "Adam, you remember David..." so he can say "Of course! David! Hi."

reileen

March 8 2008, 17:58:46 UTC 13 years ago

Anyhow, this is fun material for alien interactions. I had one race that just could not tell humans apart. The first contact crew solved that by having every human wear a different scarf -- one crewmember happened to collect them and had a drawerful of exotic scarves. But you always had to have that scarf, or they wouldn't know who you were.

The obverse is also interesting, when aliens can identify something easily that humans can't. Another race breeds only during peak monsoons that occur every few years. They're amphibious and colorful. Individuals born in the same generation have a characteristic appearance; they can tell at a glance which generation someone belongs to. This is difficult for humans to do, which is awkward, because age is a very big deal in that culture. The way the language is designed, you can't talk to someone unless you know whether s/he is younger than you, older than you, or the same age.

This is very interesting, and going through the Choissier books, it delves into a lot of social theory that could be very fun to play around with in a fictional world. :D

Seriously, I never got why this one woman in a random Amazon review I saw said that she could never read sci-fi or fantasy books because "those genres don't deal with the world we live in." Okay, first off, I read mostly for escapism, so in fact I prefer my books to not be set in this weird and wacky world we live in, but secondly, it's the otherworldly nature of fantasy and sci-fi that allows for authors to play around with social mores, ideas, etc. that could never be possible in this world. It can introduce questions and thoughts that force us to look hard at our world and see the problems in it, and thus come up with a possible solution. I'm not saying that all fantasy and sci-fi does that, but it's a very powerful medium for communicating...what's the phrase...non-standard thinking, I suppose.

March 8 2008, 20:10:47 UTC 13 years ago

I can understand that woman's perspective, as I tend to have the exact opposite. I don't often like to read books that take place in my own culture in the present day. I can enjoy some, if they're well-written, but for the most part, I prefer genres such as sci-fi or historical fiction, or fiction from another culture.

March 8 2008, 20:00:07 UTC 13 years ago

I have a moderate degree of face-blindness. I've been known, on occassion, to not recognize my own brother, despite living with him, if I see him in a context I didn't expect to. I tend to recognize people more by voice, overall body shape, and sometimes things like their walk or stance, if those are distinctive. Faces alone? All I see is "a face".

March 8 2008, 20:29:58 UTC 13 years ago

This is difficult for humans to do, which is awkward, because age is a very big deal in that culture. The way the language is designed, you can't talk to someone unless you know whether s/he is younger than you, older than you, or the same age. I suspect they'd find someway of resolving that issue. Perhaps using the "speaking to elder" forms when unsure? I'm assuming that that would be considered more polite than "speaking to younger" or "speaking to equal"?

How would that culture deal with relativistic effects, if they have space travel? Or would they simply take "younger" to mean "born in a later generation" rather than actually "having fewer years"?

March 9 2008, 03:33:48 UTC 13 years ago

Let's see ... yes, younger-to-elder is the more polite form; but if it's not correctly applied, then it's rude (in a sarcastic smart-ass way, kind of like saying "Your Majesty" to a commoner). They'd probably choose the [age]-to-group mode in case of uncertainty. It makes them edgy the way humans don't really like it when they don't know the gender of someone they're addressing.

How would they deal with relativistic effects? Probably badly. I know that one of the big, awkward socioreligious divides is about how they deal with sports. No biological function is perfectly uniform. There are always a very few individuals who mature earlier or later than their agemates. One paradigm places biology above culture: you take on the role of an adult or an elder when your body undergoes metamorphosis. The other paradigm places culture above biology: you take on the role of an adult or an elder when your agemates do so, even if your body is out of synch with them. Neither solution is perfect; each has different advantages and disadvantages. There is no perfect solution because the biology and culture are so tightly linked.

As it happens, most interstellar travel in that setting doesn't have relativistic problems of significant scope. But there are accessible bandwidths that have tremendous timebending effects. I don't think these aliens would willingly put themselves out-of-phase with their agemates -- but that does open up some fascinating opportunities for garish accidents. Thanks!

Hmm...

Re: Hmm...

wyrmwwd

March 8 2008, 21:06:10 UTC 13 years ago

This is interesting stuff. The human brain is amazing. I know someone who always sees the number "5" in a certain color. If you change the "5" to a "6", it literally changes color for her as you do it. It is one of the most fascinating things I have ever heard of.

Here is an idea for you. Maybe a language that is written in different colors to denote different meanings. I just thought of that right now.

March 8 2008, 22:28:10 UTC 13 years ago

Yep, I've got at least one language that color-codes written material like that.

haikujaguar has one that actually encodes color-references into the grammar to morph the connotations of words. Check out her Eldritch material. It's really cool.