optical illusion

[calimac]

All right, this is a genuine question, that arose in comments on a post at File 770 (no link because I want you to read this first). Consider the following photo of cast members of A Clockwork Orange. (If you've seen the movie, pretend you haven't, because I don't want knowledge of the relative importance of the characters to prejudice the results.)



I don't have a paid LJ account, so I can't create a radio-button poll, so just put answers in comments. Here's the question:
If someone captions this photo identifying one of the pictured as at "far left", whom do they mean?
(1) The guy leaning forward, whose head is consequently further to the left.
(2) The guy whose head is visible over #1's shoulder, but who is seated further to the left.
(3) It could mean either one. Be more specific.
(4) The head partially visible from behind in the lower left hand corner.
Remember, the question is not how you would caption it, but your guess as to what someone else might mean in captioning it.

I answered #3, and asked Mike Glyer, who wrote the caption, for further elucidation. But his answer wasn't "It's #1; I didn't realize there was any ambiguity about it;" he claimed that only some kind of obnoxious pedant would pretend there was any ambiguity, and that "Your average person" would know automatically that you go by faces, not by bodies. (Glyer has known me for over 30 years: surely he's figured out by now that I am not an average person. But if I really were being obnoxiously pedantic, I would have gone for #4, which is why I included that as an option.)

I'm struck by the attitude of not only not realizing that other people might find ambiguity in the wording, but of declaring that anybody who does is WRONG. The idea of changing the caption to "at left, leaning forward," didn't come up, because any other interpretation of "far left", even as uncertainty of what someone else might mean by it, was just WRONG. I'm reminded of the pop. vs. soda wars, in which your belief of the right word depends on where in the U.S. you live, and that both groups are heatedly convinced that the other word is utterly WRONG. "It's 'pop'! 'Soda' means soda water!" "It's 'soda'! 'Pop' is your father!"

I'm also reminded of this article by Michael Kinsley on mental functioning. Kinsley took a subtle mental functioning test including this question: "Janet is attacked by a mugger only 10 feet from her house. Susan is attacked by a mugger a mile from her house. Who is more upset by the mugging? Your choices are (a) Janet, (b) Susan, or (c) same or can’t tell."

"To me," Kinsley writes, "the answer is obviously (c): How can you possibly answer the question of which woman was more upset without knowing more about Janet, Susan, and the circumstances of their muggings?" But it turns out that 86% of a control group said (a). The group that Kinsley was a part of gave 71% to (c), but it was a group of people who, like Kinsley, are Parkinson's victims.

The point of the test was to see if Parkinson's affects not just muscular movements, but also your higher cognitive decision-making processes on a subtle level. "You might lose your mental edge," Kinsley was told when he was diagnosed. And maybe he has: his columns on politics once seemed to me almost invariably incisive and well-argued, to the extent that he was my favorite writer of the kind - I started reading Slate because he was to be the first editor - but much of his recent work has gone wonky. His criticisms of Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald in his review of Greenwald's book seemed to me, and many others, completely fallacious nonsense.

But I entirely agree with Kinsley about Janet and Susan. Without knowing more about them, the answer has to be uncertain. Just as, without knowing more of what was intended, the answer has to be uncertain as to which of two people whose bodies cross in a photo is further left. Are 71% of Parkinsonians, and the 14% of the rest of us, just more sensitive to ambiguity than "your average person"? If so, I'd call that a plus. What if you made an assumption and it was the wrong one?

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Fwiw, my immediate reaction was to say #1, but I agree that it's ambiguous.

The context of the question is all in these matters, I think. So, with this picture, going with the same question, it would depend whether the context limits answers to "members of the Beatles" (in which case the answer is Paul), "famous people" (in which case the answer is Brian Epstein), or "human beings" (in which case it's a toss up between the one abutting Epstein's lips and whoever was sitting 200 yards away in row G of the stands.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

In crowded group shots with no obvious rows, my feeling that going by the face rather than body makes sense, so applying that principle to this picture, I would agree with #1. But I also agree that that this particular photo is ambiguous, especially since they are seated in a row that runs from foreground right to background left rather than a row evenly across the picture. My preference in this case would be to name the three in the foreground of the picture, left to right, then say, "and N in back". The only reason to acknowledge the faceless bit of hair in front left corner is if it belongs to someone also significant.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

#1, the face furthest to the left.

(edit, after reading the cut and the other comments): Well, you know what they say about "ass-u-me".

[(Anonymous)]

My answer is #3, but if I can't get that specificity, I default to #1, because for me left to right in the image takes precedence over left to right in reality, as it were. (Definitely not #4, unless the caption specified that the person's face couldn't be seen.) I just asked two co-workers who passed by. One said #1, the other said #2.

-MTD/neb

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I would interpret that as meaning (1) because that's the individual that appears visually farthest left, but I don't know that I would caption it that way if I were doing it myself, because (3) is a strong second for me.

[andrewducker]

#2. But yes, #3.

[margdean56.livejournal.com]

My immediate assumption would be #1.

[(Anonymous)]

Your comments on soda bring back a moment fourteen years ago when I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. When we arrived at the little community of Falls Village, CT, my trekking friends and I decided to stop for dinner at an Italian restaurant before continuing on to our next campsite. The waitress asked what I'd like to drink: I said, "Just some pop." She gave me a strange look. I corrected myself to say, "Soda". She said, "Oh, I thought you said you wanted some pot!"

-MTD/neb

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I must admit that it didn't occur to me that there was any ambiguity either until you pointed it out. The caption is describing the photo, not the seating arrangements, and the person leaning over is furthest to the left in the photo so I'd automatically say #1. However, once you point it out, I suppose that to avoid ambiguity for absolutely anyone who might look at the photo, slightly adjusted wording for #3 wouldn't hurt.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Captions often describe seating arrangements. Often when a group photo has too many heads irregularly located to count heads left to right, they're divided into two groups, sitting and standing, even though some of the sitting people's heads may be higher up than some of the standing people's.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Yes, and if the caption is describing seating arrangements, it says that: "Standing (l to r):" "Seated (l to r):" If someone is sitting, they're sitting, even if their heads might be higher than the people standing so there is no ambiguity. (It never says "higher/lower")

That's not what this photo's caption did or needed to do. Visually, there is no question that the person leaning forward is at the far left *of the photo*. Think of it this way: if you were to draw vertical lines every quarter-inch in the photo, the person you’re claiming could be considered “far left” would not show up at the left for several segments of the photo, whereas the person leaning forward would.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"Visually, there is no question ..."

Well, you see there you - and Mike - are factually wrong. There is a question, because I had one. And at least two respondents to this post not only had a question, as I did, but were sure it would mean the other person.

The problem, as I stated in the post, isn't the reasoning by which you determine that #1 is furthest left, but the absolute certainty that there is no other possible reasoning, even in the face of undeniable concrete evidence that there is another possible reasoning.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Please note my wording - what I said was that there is no question that the person leaning forward is at the far left of the photo. It seems to me that your point is whether a caption that merely says "far left" could mean either the person at the far left of the photo or the person at the far left in the order of seating in the photo. And in my earlier response, I noted that for absolute clarity, I can see an argument for adding additional wording in the caption.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I note your wording, and I fail to see any difference between stating that the person is at the far left of the photo and a caption that states that they are [at the] "far left" [of the photo]. It's ambiguous either way.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Not sure how else to explain this. Cover up all of the photo except one inch on the left. The only person showing is the person leaning forward. That's what I mean when I say that the person is at the far left of the photo. The person behind that person is seated further to the left *in the room*.

I can understand that "far left" in a caption could mean either "far left in the crowd of people shown" or "far left when looking directly at the photo" and that some clarification might be helpful.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Then if there were some person who was mostly further to the right, but who was stretching an arm over to the left, they'd be the "furthest left." You didn't specify their face. (And that still leaves open #4, whose face isn't visible at all, but who is indubitably further left than anyone else, seated or otherwise.)

That person - with the stretched-out arm - could actually be #2. If he had his right arm visibly off beyond #1's head, would that change your reasoning?

If, as you're admitting, "far left" in the caption is indeterminate, then your claim that "at the far left in the photo" is not indeterminate is of no significance, as the caption does not state that that is its meaning.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

The average person uses faces as identifiers, not random body parts. While your main claim seems to be that other people aren't seeing your side of the argument, you are going to great lengths to explain why you don't accept their view either.

Clearly we are not going to agree on this issue. Done here.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If you're done, you're letting me have the final word.

I am NOT refusing to accept the other pov. What I am refusing to accept is that it is the ONLY pov. I said that it's ambiguous, not that it's definitely #2.

What "the average person" thinks is not relevant. As I already pointed out in response to Mike, not all people are average, and assumptions should not be made that they are. Consideration should be paid to people who think differently.

That #1 is at "far left" is certainly a possibility. But there is another possibility. So I pointed out the ambiguity to Mike, and was shot down by declarations of what the "average person" thinks and an insult to my own intelligence and honesty. It does not thrill me to see that line of argument pursued further.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The far left one is the one holding a glass of milk at the right side of the picture. He's to the left of all the others.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Since you describe him as being "at the right side", I must presume you know you are being snarky, but I have had experiences with people unable to tell the difference between "the left" and "his left", and lack of specificity here is another cause for ambiguity in captions.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I am not being purely snarky. My natural impulse would be to say that the one I refer to is "at the left," and it causes me a moment of confusion when such placement is described as "at the right."

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

I would automatically guess #2 but after further consideration I would say it's #3.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The guy leaning forward. (Head Guy seems more behind?)

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I would say that, with no other explanation, "far left" implies "the far left of the photo", so #1. I would, as I've seen others do, start off with "left (leaning forward)" and then do the other three.