
A tool that lets you hear both Yanny and Laurel - collinmanderson
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html
======
corey_moncure
I think what's going on here is that the context of the sonic character of an
individual's voice is crucial to the brain's processing of the phonetic
content of utterances.

I spend my whole life listening critically to things. I was 100% YANNY on two
sets of headphones and signal amplification paths. When I moved the slider bar
about 1.5 notches to the left, LAUREL sort of "came into focus", and I felt
like I grasped the human voice behind this severely distorted recording. Then,
when I moved the slider back to the neutral position, I could not hear YANNY
at all anymore. Only by taking a brief pause could I 'reset' my brain to
hearing YANNY.

There's another processing step going on that helps us deal with distorted or
band-limited voices. We're reconstructing in our heads the ideal sonic image
of the human voice we're supposed to be hearing.

I hypothesize that if the sample in question came at the end of a few words by
the speaker, not related semantically, e.g. "right, seven, purple, elephant,
laurel", so the listener could reconstruct a more complete "imprint" of the
speaker's voice in their mind, the YANNY outcome would drop to <1%.

~~~
pygy_
Likewise. I had "Laurel" initially, but after going into "Yanny" territory, I
can progressivley put the slider back to 100% "Laurel" and still hear "Yanny".
Less so in the other direction.

Perception is about matching input to pre-conscious expectation. Once your
brain has been primed to one word, you keep on hearing it when given an
ambiguous signal.

Keyword: "priming", there's a lot of research on the topic.

~~~
ravensraven
Exacly what happened to me, except that I heard Yanny first

------
always_good
Aside, this whole Yanny vs Laurel quarrel exposes a good example of how humans
seem to approach opposing views in general.

The video sparks thousands of comments on Reddit and Facebook, many of them
amounting to "I hear <X> and the rest of you are wrong!" \-- surely in jest
most of the time.

You have to wonder what fraction of people have the healthy response of "I
hear <X> but I want to try to hear <Y> like other people, interesting."

Imagine if this was human nature, instead: "I hate Javascript, but I'd like to
understand why someone would choose it on the server instead of assuming they
are an amateur." HN would be much more relaxed. :)

Same with that blue vs gold dress "debate." \-- Why is it a debate?

I don't mean to suck the fun out of it, though. But I do think it's a
caricature of human nature in general.

~~~
volgo
I don't think you understand social interactions online very well...

People don't say it with a serious tone. It's mostly a friendly jab. It's
similar to how people say "Chicago has the best deep dish and anyone who says
otherwise is simply WRONG". The exaggeration is meant to be a joke

~~~
firmgently
Some people are jokingly exaggerating and some people are being serious. I've
heard people have arguments that became fairly angry about which pizza in town
is the best. I've heard rather than participated in those arguments because
it's laughable (and sometimes scary) when people don't understand the
difference between subjectivity and objectivity. Some really do think their
way of seeing the world is correct and anybody who varies from that is wrong.

------
picklesman
I first heard Yanny and now I can only hear Laurel.

This one is even more interesting for me:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8)

If I _think_ "Brainstorm" I hear that, but if I think "Green Needle" I hear
that.

~~~
function_seven
This one blows my mind. I must have replayed it two dozen times, trying to
think of one word but to hear the other one. It just can't be done. There's no
in-between, no fuzziness. When I think of "brainstorm", the word is
unequivocally that. I even looked for "brain needle" or "green storm", but
nope.

~~~
clay_to_n
I can do "brain needle" or "green storm". Just like Yanny / Laurel, I believe
the lower voice (brainstorm) is what is intended to be heard. The distortion
artifacts in the higher frequencies just happen to match up with "green
needle" \- super interesting.

To me, the "Laurel" "Yanny" wasn't as interesting, because I could clearly
hear both at the same time in different registers. But I really like this
example because I can't hear "brainstorm" and "green needle" at the same time
- it really seems like my brain shuts the other one off once I start listening
to the audio.

------
BigHatLogan
I may be overanalyzing this entire "phenomenon", but it serves to remind me
that our own understanding of ourselves is incredibly limited. There seem to
be a number of processes happening under the surface that are completely
unbeknownst to us. It made me wonder what else I have missed or misinterpreted
in other aspects of my life. How often have I been utterly convinced of
something? How often am I so sure that what I'm feeling or thinking is the
"correct" way to feel or think about a problem? It amazes me that something as
simple as a good night's sleep (the phrase, "Sleep on it", comes to mind) can
completely change my perception of an event in the course of a few hours.
Whereas in the prior evening it felt as if my world was caving in on me, in
the morning things became more manageable. The event itself did not change,
only my perception. I liken the human mind to an iceberg. We're cognizant of
such a small part of it while the rest remains under the surface and out of
our sight.

~~~
Applejinx
We are repeatedly finding ways to hack general human perception the same way
we can hack AI neural network perceptions. It's all very well pointing and
laughing at the way we can construct pathological data: 'look, here's two
pictures of a kitty, but the AI thinks the second one is an emu and can't be
convinced otherwise!'

And then it turns out we're very much in the same boat.

~~~
wool_gather
100%. This is going to be one of the big struggles with AI, especially in an
interaction like driving. By and large, I don't think humans realize how much
they misperceive things, and make little mistakes. How many times have you
momentarily seen a face in a bush when it's dark, misheard a sound as your
name, thought that you saw a dear old friend across the room, failed to figure
out where the lanes are on the road?

We're really good at adjusting to these little mistakes, covering them up,
because they're insignificant. But we do them constantly...and then forget
they happened. I think that most of us overestimate humans' abilities in
really mundane matters. We do well, not because we don't make mistakes, but
because we recover from them quickly. (And when they're done in a social
context, we have rules of politeness that usually allow us to forgive others'
tiny mistakes.)

That high evaluation of our own cognitive ability means that an AI that's
"less" than that, which makes "silly" mistakes, isn't good enough. Even if an
AI makes far fewer mistakes than a human would at some task, any mistake is
evidence that it's not good enough, because "no human would have made _that_
mistake". Our meta-perception of our own perception is so clouded by (natural)
hubris that we can't even realistically imagine a typical human's performance
for comparison.

This, to me, was a great revelation about the human mind when I studied AI:
perception is _hard_ , and I'm actually not that good at it. I just muddle
through, with some kind of metaprocess smoothing over all these silly little
bumps. (And there's an interesting link here, too, to old meditative
practices.)

------
alew1
After playing with this, I can make my brain hear either — and even in
rhythmic patterns (Yanny, Laurel, Yanny, Laurel, Yanny, Yanny, Yanny, Laurel).
It’s a neat reminder of how much “preprocessing” our brains do before we
experience a sound (filtering out what are perceived to be the irrelevant
frequencies).

------
jagger27
I was firmly Yanny for the longest time, but now I'm hearing Laurel "by
default" now. But I can easily hear both throughout most of the slider. In the
middle it sounds like two people talking over each other.

~~~
zawerf
> two people talking over each other

This effect very well might be just a side effect of humans' subconscious
ability to focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.

------
Nomentatus
It's well known that humans vividly hallucinate sounds - specifically
overtones - that aren't really there; given specific sound (harmonic
frequency) combinations.

It may be that how well you are able to "hear" (hallucinate) overtones is
involved in this effect. Moving into the bathroom changed what I heard, and
extra reflection of sound would alter overtone perception. I interpret that as
(rather weak) evidence for the hypothesis.

~~~
clay_to_n
I don't think we're hallucinating the overtones here - with an EQ (like in the
link I believe) you can clearly separate the high and low freqs, and they
sound like different words. So it's overtones baked into the audio file.

~~~
Nomentatus
But what you're describing is exactly what you'd expect if you were dealing
with overtones, actually - one tone of the two actual tones that create the
illusion of the overtone has to be substantially lower than the other, always.
If you knock out one tone by dumping some frequencies, the overtone vanishes,
and those who were hearing it now hear something else. Those who never heard
it, hear what they heard before.

The basic idea here is that if the harmonic match of the two fundamental
(actual) tones isn't exact, then some listeners will hear the overtone, but
less sensitive (or perhaps more refined) listeners' brains won't hear it. And
many conditions will make it easier or harder for the listener's brain to
(falsely but vividly) infer the overtone, including a lot of acoustic
reflection (my bathroom example.) Completely knocking out one of the two
fundamental tones will change what's heard by some - since now everyone will
be hearing the same thing.

Similarly, shifting all frequencies up or down, even if all the information is
preserved, can cause everyone to lose the overtone since the overtone is now
at a frequency above (or below) what we can hear, so the brain doesn't
hallucinate what is beyond it's capacity.

------
readhn
Crazy thought: Hearing loss starts at higher frequencies- so is it possible
that we have a large portion of population with hearing issues due to years of
abusing technology? (I.e. Loud music in headphones, cars, homes?)

~~~
komali2
The BART is damaging thousands of people's hearing every day and nobody seems
to care.

>long or repeated exposure to sounds at or above 85 decibels can cause hearing
loss. The louder the sound, the shorter the amount of time it takes for NIHL
to happen.

[https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/noise-induced-hearing-
loss](https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/noise-induced-hearing-loss)

We were convinced for months before my friends and I got our hands on a decent
decibel reader (didn't trust the phone apps) and it strays well past 85 up to
95 even, for up to 20-30 seconds between stops.

If you ever see a group of nerds with earplugs in our ears shouting at each
other on BART, that's my friends and I, we carry extra individually packed
earplugs, feel free to ask us for a pair.

~~~
__david__
30 seconds isn't nearly long enough for 95 a decibel noise to permanently hurt
your ears. Even at 100dB permanent damage take on the order of minutes, not
seconds. At 90 dB it's measured in hours. Your BART ride isn't hurting you.

~~~
komali2
Twice a day, every day, for years?

Do you have evidence to support this claim because it goes against my own
research.

~~~
__david__
The OSHA standards are a good starting point. Factory workers aren't even
required to wear ear protection if the average noise over their 8 hour shift
is under 85 dB. For 95 dB it's something like 15 minutes. From what I
understand (and from what I've experienced), the every day repetition isn't
the issue, it's the sustained noise for long periods of time. 2 little noisy
bursts a day that are hours apart just aren't going to affect anything.

------
spdustin
I'm reminded of what you would get (aside from a ruined needle) when you
played some records backwards.

One example I remember: if you play the opening line of Madonna's "Like a
Prayer" ("life is a mystery") it was supposed to sound like, "he will save us,
Satan."

It's like pareidolia, but with sound. Once primed, you can hear whichever
version you were primed with.

~~~
crtasm
Another One Bites The Dust / it's Fun To Smoke Marijuana is a classic example,
here's a nice mashup featuring a priest warning the world about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdXek5d2ocw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdXek5d2ocw)

------
matt-attack
Wow, I found it depends on which way I'm moving the slider. If starting from
the left, I continue to hear laurel until right around the very right side. If
I start on the right, and move it left, I start to hear yanny more and more.
Even on positions where I was certain I heard laurel when coming left-to-
right.

~~~
RealityVoid
Yes, same here. BUt there is an obvious bias for one of the sounds. I can head
yanny all the way to the left side if I step through it slowly. I can only
hear laurel until 1/2 of the yanny side. A cool effect happened when getting
at an "edge point" where I could hear both laurel AND yanny at the same time.

------
mirimir
So this is an auditory analogue of, for example, the young/old woman
illusion,[0] right?

0) [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl-
OldWomanIllusion.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl-
OldWomanIllusion.html)

~~~
Double_a_92
This would be even more fitting, since it's about frequencies. If you blur
your eye (removing the high frequencies) you see Marylin, otherwise Einstein.

[http://infohost.nmt.edu/~armiller/illusion/einesteinmonroe2....](http://infohost.nmt.edu/~armiller/illusion/einesteinmonroe2.htm)

~~~
mirimir
Agreed. There is some of that for the young/old woman image, but it's clearer
for Monroe vs Einstein. And it's even clearer in this video:
[https://youtu.be/tB5-JahAXfc](https://youtu.be/tB5-JahAXfc)

------
stuartaxelowen
Slider all the way to the right, only hear demonic "Laurie".

~~~
dkarl
To me the "Laurel" just gets more and more distorted, and I start to hear a
faint squeaky _yerry... yerry... yerry_ on top of it. But it sounds more like
an artifact than like a separate voice. I have no idea how it sounds like
Yanni to anyone, but maybe I've lost my ability to hear high frequencies with
age. (40m)

~~~
psergeant
This was my experience too, and then it abruptly changed. I couldn’t figure
out if the tool or my brain was at fault

------
vinayms
I don't know about this. I mean, to me, the letters 'l' and 'y', and 'r' and
'n' have a very obvious difference. There is another such audio illusion where
the word 'oil' sounds the same forwards and backwards, both ways effectively
sounding 'oyo'. This is due to the position of the letter 'l' and the sort of
elision that happens. However with the laurel thing, I can't imagine it
sounding yanny. I could mistake it for wallow but it takes a lot of adjustment
to hear yanny. May be I just belong to that 45% or so that always hear laurel.

~~~
jgtrosh
I have the same feeling and I believe that the initial L of Laurel really
strongly shapes the rest of the word. When I move the slider towards Yanny I
can still always hear Laurel but I can distinguish the "yaew" that makes
Yanny; it's very distinct from the L. I assume that people who naturally hear
Yanny first have the same understanding with the weird "yaew" hiding the L. If
I'm just expecting Larry I can only sense the deformation as a weird vibration
in the sound.

Also I checked on a couple of videos to test my hearing range because I
expected it to be quite damaged and assumed that was the main factor and even
though it's not a very good form of testing I'm now more convinced that it's
the brain treating slight variations differently, with priming playing a
strong influencing factor.

~~~
vinayms
Yes, with the slider at near extreme right it sounds yanny (it spooked me a
bit) but I guess there's a lot of mathemagic happening. In the twitter post
that was posted yesterday [1] however, which I believe was untouched, it was
just impossible for me to hear yanny.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17080800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17080800)

------
kbenson
Wow, so I listened to a clip the other night, and it was very distinctly
laurel sound to me. This tool sounded like yanny, even with the slider all the
way towards laurel, which I thought was confusing. Then I realized that I'm
listening to this on my phone, and maybe the speaker not facing me and the
sound rebounding off surrounding surfaces affected it. As I rotated the bottom
of the phone, and thus the speaker towards my face, it started to sound _much_
more like laurel to me. Cool.

------
Tade0
I'm not an english native speaker and all I hear sliding he slider to the
right is "Yelly" \- with "l's" much like "jelly".

~~~
wool_gather
I was wondering about this: how your, let's say, "native phonemes", might
affect what you hear. Is there a word like "Laurel" in Arabic, for example?
Would that bias non-English-native speakers to "yanny", or another
interpretation entirely?

------
fapjacks
Yeah, well... Yanny/Laurel ain't got shit on Brainsteam / Green Needle:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/8jxzee/y...](https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/8jxzee/you_can_hear_brainstorm_or_green_needle_based_on/)

~~~
KozmoNau7
Can't hear "needle" anywhere in that, I absolutely can't.

~~~
dsego
I only hear needle and I'm a Laurel guy. It's mind boggling.

------
taborj
I find the Brainstorm/Green Needle audio to be far more interesting, as you
basically can make it hear whichever you want (including combinations of the
two).

[https://youtu.be/5pRY3wlKwm8](https://youtu.be/5pRY3wlKwm8)

------
Waterluvian
I feel like I'm alone on this so I'll speak up. I convincingly hear Larry. Are
there any other claims or do people pretty much just claim to hear Yanny or
Laurel?

~~~
pram
I her Yammy more fwiw

~~~
wingerlang
I can't hear "Yanny" at all. It's more like "Yaewwy".

------
wyldfire
The frequency response of the playback system probably plays a role here too.
Try listening on headphones, on speaker, on laptop speaker, on in-car audio.

------
ravensraven
I heard Yanny first and after I started hearing 'Laurel', it took me to slide
a lot to the yanny side to hear 'yanny' very distinctively from laurel. I hope
that make sense. Like somebody else commented here, did it open up my brain's
receptors to recognise that frequency of sound after being exposed to it only?

------
throwaway739567
Is this phenomenon anything like adversarial images in neural nets?
[https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-
os/robotics/artificial-i...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-
os/robotics/artificial-intelligence/hacking-the-brain-with-adversarial-images)

------
Dave_Rosenthal
Amazing psychoacoustic illusion.

I found the balance point (a bit to the right of center) where I could merely
_think_ yanny or laurel to myself in a random sequence and I would hear the
matching word 100% of the time.

I finally know what it feels like to have the power to change radio stations
with my mind!

------
towb
I kept hearing yanny even on full laurel, then I tried thinking "laurel" and
there it was. ... Ok, when I imagine myself talking with a deep voice I hear
"laurel" even in the middle where "yanni" was super clear. Strange!

------
andbberger
One of the most stunning illusions of perception I have ever witnessed.

Not feeling so loquacious just now but if you want to dig deeper the threads
to pull are perception as bayesian inference and the sampling hypothesis.
Olshausen and co are a good place to start.

------
siidooloo
It sounds more like Yaw Yee to me.

------
dsego
I can finally hear Yanny 1.5 notches to the right, but I have to overshoot and
then return. Moving it anywhere left of that first notch instantly goes back
to Laurel.

------
foota
I enjoy forcing myself to hear one of the other.

------
MperorM
I only hear Laurel no matter where on the scale I am. Even with 100% yanny, I
still just hear a very distorted Laurel.

~~~
sangnoir
I was like you until I made a surprise discovery. I hear "Yanny"* if I tense
my inner ear a bit (as if I'm about to pop my ears - doing this on demand is
not a universal skill apparently)

* I still don't hear "Yanny" \- it's more like "Yi-a-hee". Weird, but close, right?

------
yummybear
I can hear Laurel, but even with the slider all the way right I hear "yierry"
and not "Yanny".

------
fareesh
I can selectively hear either if I want to. It's like one of those optical
illusions

------
everyone
I still hear 'yanny' even with the slider all the way to 'laurel'

------
hnal943
The room matters to me. I hear it as Laurel in my bedroom but yanny in the
bathroom.

~~~
Nomentatus
Ditto here.

------
doctorstupid
I would be surprised if this isn't dependent on the listener's accent.

------
King-Aaron
I can't help but feel that there's an entity somewhere that's benefiting from
this somehow.. Crowd-sourced machine learning training? The pessimist in me
says that something spreading virally (globally) so rapidly must have some
purpose behind it.

------
dogruck
Am I alone in being able to hear both Yanny and Laurel in the sound?

~~~
macawfish
I could also hear both the first time I listened to it.

