| I have at times achieved some results in being invisable (usually
with my cost center manager :-)). I learned it while I was in school
in Boston.
In many cases, anonymity is the same as being invisable. You put
a bored look on your face and turn your thoughts to neutral, sort
of a white noise. Depending on how "aware" the person you want
not to notice you is, you can sometimes get by. It's sort of like
blending in with the surroundings.
My experiences are no wheres near that described in .0.
Tom
|
| When I was much(!) younger, I would have people, usually adults,
looking for me. I'd step into a corner, insist to myself that I
was invisible, over and over. Surprizingly, I was only "seen" about
20% of the time. It doesn't work like that anymore, maybe 'cause
I don't believe quite as deep.
|
| It is certainly possible that Lennie managed to make himself psychically
invisible, but I would say the chances are against it. Here is what I
think most likely happened --
We actually see very much less than we think we do. Rather we see some
pieces and based on a whole bunch of "rules of thumb" (heuristics in AI
terminology) and not-always-correct assumptions we fill in the gaps.
These rules and assumptions start entering into the process of seeing
right in the eye's retina, and continue to be used all the way up to
just before what we see (or what we think we see) enters consciousness.
Almost all optical illusions are based on situations, usually simple
ones, where those rules and assumptions are incorrect.
There is a terrific piece of film. It's been widely circulated but I
don't know who made it. I most recently saw it on the series
"The Brain" on PBS (a series I highly recommend).
It opens with a freeze shot: irregular black splotches on a white
background. It seems completely abstract, with no real content at all.
The film starts to move. Some of the splotches change their position.
Suddenly, the image is not abstract at all: quite clearly we see a
Dalmatian. Mind you, its not that we have "figured" out that there is
a dog there, or that the spots now look like the spots we would expect
to see on a dog, or that outlines we previously missed are now visible:
the dog is now *distinctly* visible, though if the film is frozen on any
one frame it disappears again. The dog is truly and actually invisible
(though not psychically so) when completely still, and visible only when
moving.
What is happening here? There is simply not enough information in any
one frame for the visual system to figure out how to organize the spots
and blotches. When the film rolls, however, there is suddenly a lot
more information. Which spots move? How do they move? Where do spots
disappear? All this provides additional clues for the visual system to
act on. Internal information about the way animals in general and dogs
in particular move is added to the interpretation system.
We don't *really* see a dog under any conditions -- we see a bunch of
features (clues if you will) which are interpreted as a dog. Knowing
that it is a dog, and putting that together with what we know about how
dogs should look produces the visual impression of a dog.
The same thing is happening here but the clues are more subtle so there
is more filling in to do.
Here's another similar example: We start again with a still picture.
This one is black with just six or seven white dots. That's all. When
it starts to move, a person walking is suddenly distinctly visible.
The picture is actually of a person dressed completely in black
walking against a black background, with small lights strapped to their
body at key points.
Here's the kicker -- the person appears even if what we are viewing is
not the film itself, but an animation (done by hand or by computer)
based on the film, of *just the white dots moving on a blank sheet*.
There is no person, but we see them anyway.
The analogy to your friends seems evident. The dim light left
relatively few visual clues as to the contents of the bed. Normally,
under these conditions there would still be enough clues to determine
that someone was in the bed. In this case, though, it just happened
that the clues were misleading: perhaps a pattern in the bedspread just
happened to line up right. When there are lots of clues available, a
few misleading ones are recognized as contradictory and are filtered
out early. In this case, though there weren't enough clues to cancel
out the ambiguity. So "Lennie" was invisible. When he moved, the
coincidentally bad clues shifted and he appeared.
This is a completely natural, ordinary (though unusual) illusion (note:
definitely *not* an hallucination).
Is there any significance to Lennie's possible psychic abilities?
Probably not. Is there any significance to Ingrid's psychic
sensitivity? I suspect so. As a sensitive, Ingrid is used to dealing
with the unexplained. She is therefore willing to consider the
possibility that something weird might be going on. Someone less used
to the unexplained would probably do their best to forget it ever
happened, and would likely succeed. Dull people -- dull lives.
Topher
|
| This is, unfortunately, very vague and very brief, as the details are lost in
the mists of time (having occurred in the early 70's):
My girlfriend and I went to visit a female friend of hers (Ms. X) at the
friend's apartment. She rented the place with 2 other girls, at least
one of whom was present when we visited. After some amount of introductions
and conversation, the topic turned to the boyfriend of Ms. X, "Fred". Both
Ms. X and her roommate marveled at Fred's ability to "sneak around",
move about undetected, "disappear", etc (some anecdotes were provided as
well). I nodded politely, marveled at it myself, and then conversation flowed
on to other things. Sometime later, we all heard the apartment door click.
Fred had just sauntered out of Ms X's bedroom, walked along a wall,
down a short hallway, opened the door, stepped through the doorway, and
then closed the door. At least 50% of his journey occurred within sightlines
of the four of us seated in the living room. He was moving perpendicular to
at least some people's sight-lines (IE, right in front of their eyes) and
parallel to mine (offset by 3 to 5 feet), but moving TOWARDS me (and
available to my peripheral vision). He was completely exposed for about
15 feet. To the best of my knowledge, Fred did not low-crawl out of the
apartment, yet nobody noticed his departure.
A variety of conventional and unconventional explanations are applicable
to this scenario, but one thing still strikes me, even after 15+ years:
Nobody noticed anything until multi-seconds AFTER the door click. Then
people were able to do some reconstruction: "Hey, didn't the door click
a few moments ago?"; "Shit, I think Fred just left."; (laughter) "It was
Fred." I was able to reconstruct a blurred image moving against the wall.
We were all able to remember selected fragments of the event, but none of
us was apparently able to consciously attune to the event while in progress.
I never did get to meet Fred ...
|