We must be damn near deaf

[Cognisant]

I was listening to some music on my ipad with my hand cupped next to the speaker to redirect the sound towards me and it occurred to me that it shouldn't be working quite so well as it was. Sound is a wave and a wave reflecting off of an uneven surface should become distorted, yet I couldn't really hear any distortion, so either my hand is just a really good reflector or something else is going on here.

I figured what I'm actually hearing is not raw audio but rather certain frequencies are being prioritised, kind of like how we see a rainbow as sections of distinct colour, these distinct colours don't actually exist it's just that our eyes don't see the visual spectrum in its entirety, if we did there would be an indivisible transition from one end to the other.

So despite the distortion I can make out notes and vocals just fine because my brain is only paying attention to the loudest sound in each frequency range, which makes me wonder what our music must sound like to dolphins with their brains and senses tuned for echolocation, I bet they hear all kinds of in-between frequencies that to us are literally indistinguishable.

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

You may be experiencing motivated auditory perception.

 

[TimeAsylums]

perception adjustments...

just like with the eyes' saccadic masking

Saccadic masking, also known as visual saccadic suppression, is the phenomenon in visual perception where the brain selectively blocks visual processing during eye movements in such a way that neither the motion of the eye (and subsequent motion blur of the image) nor the gap in visual perception is noticeable to the viewer.

You never really notice that blind spot or all the things you miss,

your brain [mind] just fills it all in and ties it all together,


just like what you described.


What's worse is if you apply it to the millions of cars on the road...and the people driving them. "I didn't see(perceive) him/her/etc!" could literally be true.



Same phenomena (perception adjustments) could be applied to "continuity" of consciousness as well (your brain [mind] just tying it all together in a neat bow) etc


see also: cognitive biases

 

[Brontosaurie]

no we don't only attend to the loudest sound in each frequency range (whatever ranges those would be; are we talking about the handful ones clearly given by the anatomy of our ears?). that's at best a gross exaggeration although i suppose it serves the purpose of raising your central point: stuff is different and still kinda the same, wowza

 

[Cognisant]

My point is that there's probably a lot we're not hearing, creatures that can echolocate can probably hear the distortion of sounds reflecting off different surfaces and what we use as sonar would only be a rudimentary version of that.

It might be possible to construct a device that takes high fidelity sound from a narrow range and extends it across the human hearing range thereby enabling the wearer to hear the reflective distortions in that narrow range, I'd be surprised if the human brain dosen't have enough processing power to perform echolocation if it was recieving the right kind of input.

It might also be possible to construct devices that communicate by sound in the frequency ranges we can't hear just as our current wireless devices communicate by radio, more bandwidth is always a good thing.

 

[Cherry Cola]

Aren't we blind mutes in the same sense though? :P

 

[Cognisant]

Yeah, radar signal analysis is a really interesting topic.

 

[Meer]

Audio professional here.

Sound is a wave and a wave reflecting off of an uneven surface should become distorted, yet I couldn't really hear any distortion, so either my hand is just a really good reflector or something else is going on here.

This needs some clarification. 'Distortion' can mean a lot of things. If what you're imagining is the waves becoming less coherent and different frequencies bouncing different directions and taking different amounts of time to reach your ears, you may hear some phasing in the sound. But, your hand and an ipad speaker are probably on a scale too small to hear reliably.

The most obvious difference you would hear is the resonance of your cupped hand.

I figured what I'm actually hearing is not raw audio but rather certain frequencies are being prioritised.

Sort of.

my brain is only paying attention to the loudest sound in each frequency range,

Sort of.

I bet they hear all kinds of in-between frequencies that to us are literally indistinguishable.

No.

Human music would largely sound the same to an animal with ultrasonic hearing. Mostly because human audio recording and playback devices are typically band-limited to the range of human hearing. Even then, there is very little information in those higher frequencies, usually it just needs to be there in the right proportion.

 

[Missfortune]

Yeah, radar signal analysis is a really interesting topic.

yes, it is indeed.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

I was going to make a new thread, but I don't think I have enough content:

In the same way, isn't it possible that there are other dimensions of perceptions humans have yet to develop an evolutionary tool to apprehend? Earth organisms weren't always visual or auditory creatures, and many still aren't, yet here we are with this vast expanse of reality.

It seems hard to imagine anything which we don't already comprehend.

 

[Missfortune]

Like magnetism? It would be pretty sweet to have a sense for magnetic fields like sharks. We have a good comprehension of it, at least on the macroscale though.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Interesting, I didn't know some animals had that, though I was aware of animal magnetism. Seems it's called magnetoception, yeah I guess that would be pretty cool for travel expeditions.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

Seems it's called magnetoception, yeah I guess that would be pretty cool for travel expeditions.

it might be possible to acquire it:

http://feelspace.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/

 

[TimeAsylums]

magnetoception

too cute not 2 post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2SoGHFM18I

 

[TimeAsylums]

It seems hard to imagine anything which we don't already comprehend.

Indeed.

Especially with all the ... "paths."

Mental Retardation?

Aspergers?

Synesthesia?

Pure Math geniuses?

Logic?

Intuition

Chemistry

Physics

etc

I'm sort of crossing borders here, but you get the point (multiple "intelligences," and I'm not speaking only of the common ones)

Nuff said

^We should really start using the phrase "Not Even Wrong" aronud here, lmfao.

 

[Missfortune]

Interesting, I didn't know some animals had that, though I was aware of animal magnetism. Seems it's called magnetoception, yeah I guess that would be pretty cool for travel expeditions.

pigeons are actually pretty cool. we have three different types of cone cells in our eyes, each with a different wavelength of maximum absorption, so we see three colors, namely red, green, blue. pigeons probably have 5 different types of cones, and can see in the UV range. they might look a lot more brightly colored to themselves than to us!


****i should have added that most birds are tetrachromats, so pigeons are unique among them.