The Amazing Mind

Gr3a7. N0w 1 am par7 0f an07h3r gr0up 7ha7 can d0 amaz1ngly p01n7l355 m3n7al 3x3rc1535 w17h 3a53.

Interesting.

I'm doomed! I'll never be able to retire, I guess.

Interestingly, this was in my FB account this morning. This was after I saw the girl spread out on the tracks.

Yes it is scary. Too bad they don't write legalese this way. At least then we could avoid reading between the lines.

Never. It is still too understandable for lawyers to use.

I think the principle is overstated. Having the first and last letter "correct" and the other letters included in between provide important clues to what the word is by eliminating a lot of alternative possibilities. Take "bcuseae." How many words are there that are 7 letters long, begin with a "b," and have these particular letters following it? (People who are good with anagrams, help me out here.)

It took me about twice as long to read this message as it would to read if if it had been spelled conventionally (and that, after a couple of stiff coctails). I had the most trouble with "sgtrane," because, I think, the spelling was more suggestive of a plausible and forceful phonemic alternative than the other letter-clusters presented. "Hmuan" is an example of a letter-cluster that doesn't suggest many alternatives besides "human," because "hmuan" isn't a forceful phoneme, and there aren't many plausible alternative interpretations.

The scheme of interpretation that involves recognizing that all the letters of a word are present but not in the right order is tipped off with the first words, "fi you cna raed tihs," which reminds me of reading Robert Burns' Scottish poetry. I can't say that I consciously diagnosed the peculiar presentation, but I got an intuitive sense for what was going on. I don't think that this justifies the conclusion that the mind "[simply] does not read every letter by itself, but the word [simply] as a whole."

"Simply" verges into "unambiguously," "unambiguously" verges into "unqualifiedly," and unqualifiedly verges into "absolutely." Language oversimplifies, and this is one of the tricks language plays on us. Simple statements nudge us toward absolutisms. I'm not ready to assent to the proposition that we simply and absolutely read words "as wholes." I'm not even sure how to interpret the phrase "as a whole" in this context.

One doesn't have to be conscious of rules for the patterns contained within them to affect one's subconscious as a conditioning schedule. Go with the flow, man. I see "bcuseae," "fi yuo cna raed tihs," and "hmuan," and they're close enough to typos and Scottish poetry I've seen in the past to trigger associations with "because," "if you can read this," and "human," to make the phenomenon not-so-amazing. In other words, I've encountered enough near-mistakes in language that reading an extended passage of them doesn't support the extravagant conclusion of the Cambridge research. Try this exercise with "i uoy nac dear isht." The presence of each letter is somewhat important, and this is somewhat close to reading "each letter by itself."

If you place every oversimplification end-to-end, they'd reach from here to Delusion.

The human brains are fairly consistent in interpreting some symbols into words without obvious clues related to syntax or morphemes.

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One of the following shapes is called Bouba and the other is called Kiki. When asked to guess which is which, people are very consistent in assigning the names.

Here is another rendering ..

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You know which one Kiki is, and you know which one Bouba is, right?

What makes this one interesting is that it is consistent across languages and cultures. (At least American English, Spanish, and Tamil.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

I'm not sure "read" is quite the right word

After a few adjustments of the decoder ring,I think I got it

Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine.

No Problem!

I have seen this before using jumbled letters only. This passage without spaces was still readable and quite dumfounding.

Y0UR M1ND 1SR34D1NG 174U70M471C4LLY

W17H 0U7 3V3N7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17,B3 PROUD!

So what price punctuation?

Try understanding this without punctuation; Bill where John had had had had had had had had had had had the teachers approval.

Interesting, many thanks for posting.

Here's an example:

I wnet ot teh stoer adn bouhgt a comptuer.

Here is that same example scrambled a little differently (but not any more scrambled):

I newt to het toser nad houbgt a pouctmer

In that last sentence I didn't preserve first and last letters, which are important letters the brain keys on. It could still be read, but it was harder. Here's an example that is even harder:

newt resot dan pocutrem I a ot het gbotuh.

In the sentence above I've removed word order. As I progressively strip away familiar language structure features, notice the reading becomes harder to decipher. This is because it is our past experience with language that informs our word guesses while reading. As the scrambled text moves further and further from traditional language structure, our guesses become worse.

So yuo see, raeidng hsa littel to do wtih exact spellnig, 0r 3v3n 3xac7 l3773rs. It mostly involves guessing the word that comes _____.

Cognition is a fascinating subject and well worth reading about if you have the time.

You make a good point. That probably explians why prrof reading is so difficult when sometimes the erroors are blatent. We don't read so much as elide. Kinda like texting.

I believe that blackberry 10's text entry system is based on a similar concept: the algorithm guesses what word will come next and presents it as a choice associated in some way with one of the keyboard letters. I haven't seen it myself but the reviewer I read seemed very impressed.

Has anyone here seen it?

I'd also like to add a vote of "welcome back" Roger!

Welcome back!

It has been a long time.

Some people say they are leaving and return pretty quickly. I would think that the longer someone stays away the less likely they are to return. May I ask what has brought you back?

Nice explanation Roger. That was, also, my opinion about the "validity" of this "message". (See my post below.)

I guess even at 86 yreas my mnid is advioing Altzheminers- read it as fast as normal-scary

A friend of mine recently had a brain scan and the docs told him that he had, "Brain shrinkage consistent with onset of Alzheimer's." So I forwarded the test and friend reported that his brother read the "Numerically scrambled script" with fluid ease.

So, perhaps brain shrinkage is a more advanced warning? Or, a sample of one proves nothing?

More study needed!

It would probably be more telling if we knew if your friend could read the 'scrambled script'.

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While I suspect being able to read the script is probably not a useful indicator of high intelligence nor of a lack of affliction with any degenerative mental conditions, I think having a person's sibling read the test is probably even less likely to be a useful indicator for that person.

As you can see, in this "message" only a few letters have been replaced by numbers, which btw are very similar (as "images") to those letters. So, it's really easy to read it. I don't believe that only 55 people out of 100 can read it. As far as someone can read and has an average IQ, I think that he'll be able to read this message easily. So, I don't think that someone should be 'flattered' if he can read it. (I had, also, received this message via an e-mail some years ago. It is one of the many rather useless messages that roam in the internet. But, ok, it's fun.)

The 55 out of 100 could be reasonable or even on the high side.

It all depends on the sample.

If you consider all the people alive on earth currently including infants, the blind, and people otherwise not fluent in reading English, 55 out of 100 might be right in line.

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If you consider all the people, alive or dead,....then 55 out of 100 is way too high.

Ha, ha... Yeah, that's right...

(I supposed that the author of this message meant that it can be read by 55 people out of 100 who are able to read a text in English...)

It says the next message which was not posted.

Looks like the next message is one with the first and last letters of each word correct and the others mixed up.

http://www.facebook.com/TruFem/posts/434981499927234

The format presented for the first message also explains why the version given by the OP has several spaces missing which was something that threw me a bit on my first read through.

'...It says the next message which was not posted....'

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er...what?

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Perhaps in the next message, you can comment on this message (this message that I am now writing), which notes that your previous message, which claimed that a prior message 'says the next message was not posted' must be an erroneous message, since prior to your previous message, no message in the replies mentions 'the next message'.

Oh wait, you aren't talking about the message to which I replied, but to the original post.

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I'd still say the logic holds, (aside from readability) all that is needed is 55 literate people out of 100 polled to have seen the next post.

It is interesting.

Isn't it simular to speed reading, where they read only sections of what they read and extrapolate the rest.

I'm thinking of the sampling rate of music played back on a CD player where a logic circuit replaces missing information as being a similar process that happens in our brain.

Imagine that! The brain has amazing ability to function And to think it all came about because of a Big Bang billions, tens of billions, trillions of years ago.

When our brain funcitons as it does; and we really have little understanding of how it works, or its capacity to operate, it is very hard to believe that it just developed and became better over ....ions of years.

There was a Designer which put the components together.

You realize that 'there was a Designer' doesn't solve the problem have suggested.

If you believe it took some intelligence to bring about intelligence, because 13 billion years is an insufficient time (in the opinion of your intelligence) for intelligence to have evolved in the universe; then you are still back at the same question.

Even if your Designer had a DEsigner, who had a DESigner, who had a DESIgner, who had a DESIGner who had a DESIGNer, who had a DESIGNEr, who had a DESIGNER, who had a dESIGNER, who had a .....

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at some point you should realize that suggestion isn't a solution, you are just kicking the can a little further down the road (not necessarily in the right direction).

Ah. "We" are the designer. Now that solves everything.