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So how do [young] scientists actually get started in the real world? Oh lordy. You might as well ask What does a cloud look like?

Young Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a Camelus dromedarius?

Aged Polonius: By th' mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.

Young Hamlet: Methinks it is like a Mustela lutreola

Polonious: It is backed like a weasel.

Young Hamlet: Or like a Balaenoptera musculus

Polonious: Very like a whale

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🤣Also, this is how merciless teases of 'doddering old fools' get started. (Oh Polonius, if you'd had a single thought of your own, you'd have been so dangerous.)

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founding

This was mind-blowing (and amazing!) and provided a fantastically fun science interlude for my kids. I can't wait for season 4! And thank you for the reminder that perception isn't just about our physical world, but also about what we can assume about reality in human action and relations -- I always need more reminders.

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Hooray! Thank you. :)

"...perception isn't just about our physical world, but also about what we can assume about reality in human action and relations"

Yes, this side of things is deeply interesting - and so difficult to approach. You often can't intellectualise yourself into fully understanding different human agency as a solo-thinking human being because it requires you to not be You Thinking Like You Normally Do, or simply to Not Be You. And even when we get other perspectives from other people and learn new ways to see and think, we're *still* seeing and thinking with the old "software" we always had, riddled with biases and the neurological equivalent of dead code..

Using empathic curiosity to apprehend and ask questions about different human perspectives of reality might be the biggest challenge of all - unless there's actually a level of scientific reality that the human mind simply isn't designed to comprehend (which at least seems possible, considering how non-intuitive stuff like quantum physics is), in which case, massive ruh roh for humanity and I think that's where we come off the rails completely.

OK, that got a bit deep. Here's some low bird humour to compensate: https://twitter.com/adriawildlife/status/1483531303052058626

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founding

I like the depth! I will refrain from inflicting my own Wall of Words back and instead share this interview with a particle physicist who is also a speculative fiction writer. I read it and thought of you *immediately.* "I believe scientific inquiry is more like a dance than a distancing. For me, I feel that the place where you can really be a participant observer in the universe is in science fiction or speculative fiction. Here, you are dancing with the ideas of science, but you are also engaged with what it means to be human and alive."

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/transcending-boundaries-an-interview-with-vandana-singh/

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Ahhh, this is so good. It's so good I need to make some notes. Thank you!

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Thank you for another quirky excursion around your brain!

There's an Ames room that you can wander around in the Cité des sciences in the Parc de La Villette in Paris, very popular with camera-wielding visitors. It has a different construction, as illustrated on this page:

http://figuresambigues.free.fr/ArticlesTheorie/chambre-d'ames-1.html#axzz7IJeTZEVg

The "European-style Ames room" has two depths, rather than a sloping back wall, which presumably means that characters can move around more within their half without destroying the illusion?

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Oh, fabulous. Thank you, Mike! This is a little like one of the illusions that Zach King uses in his trickery video, with a split room effect - but I didn't know this was a way to do an Ames Room as well. Wonderful. (Now I'm wondering, just how many different ways are there to physically render up an Ames Room? Hmmm...)

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Update: there's now an entire museum in Paris dedicated to visual illusions:

https://museedelillusion.fr/en/

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Loved this article. Got completely absorbed into it.

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