
The Science Behind ‘They All Look Alike to Me’ - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/nyregion/the-science-behind-they-all-look-alike-to-me.html
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usrusr
Another (and much easier to discuss) symptom of the way our people
identification circuitry specializes on the available samples is the disbelief
when someone remarks on similarities between our siblings or to our parents.
In that special case, subtle differences usually ring much stronger with us
than the blatant (and useless, for identification) similarities.

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78666cdc
This article is poorly researched and psychologists are the wrong people to
ask about this phenomenon.

The region of the brain (at least chiefly) involved in facial recognition is
the facial fusiform gyrus, and was named as such because of this observed
role. However, it was later discovered that it does more than that: show, say,
a car mechanic a small intricate car part that only an expert would recognize,
and his facial fusiform gyrus will activate. Same thing with an expert bird
watcher and species of birds.

It turns out that that area of the brain is used for distinguishing objects
based on fine detail. As the article mentions, low exposure to other races at
a young age will lead to "they all look the same", because there are certain
sets of facial features that most often vary within members of a race.

Therefore, yes, it is true that it is not "racist" for members of another race
to all look the same to you, the neural networks in this region of your brain
may not have been trained to look for and recognize a certain set of features.
The psychologists making the observations mentioned in the article are surely
making correct observations, but the real reason isn't mentioned at all.

I would cite sources, but this knowledge is from my undergraduate degree in
neuroscience from years ago, and I'm on mobile. I'll try to come back later
and edit in some citations.

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vacri
Believe it or not, some psychologists do use neuroscience. Source: I co-
majored in neuroscience and psychology.

In any event, you're describing one of the root causes of the problem, but not
the problem itself. It's like saying "A driver isn't responsible for making
the car go forward - it's only the engine that provides the propulsion". "This
bit of the brain lights up when you do X" is not the same as "Humans have this
problem with X, and there are ways to get around it".

Put another way: neuroscience tells us that X happens in the brain when we see
Y. Now what? This on it's own has nothing to say about something like police
training.

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78666cdc
Of course, there are entire subfields of psychology that directly and
routinely engage with neuroscience. But behavioral psychology generally does
not; in any case, the narrative given in the linked article speaks entirely
and solely from the point of view of psychology, with no mention of
neuroscience. That there are fields of psychology that fruitfully engage with
neuroscience does not chance that this article does not mention
neuroscientific considerations at all.

The reason that I made my comment is that the article tries to say that a
deficiency in facial recognition of persons of another race is a psychological
- that is, higher cognitive - effect. If it is taken as an effect of higher
cognition, without a neurophysiological basis, opens up the possibility of the
argument "his bias against black people made him not care enough to
distinguish black people." That argument would bring open the door to
arguments sociologically based biases such as being racist, when in fact there
is an observed, known, studied, published, fact that the neurophysiology of
the part of the brain that distinguishes faces literally cannot distinguish
variations in facial features of members of a race a person hasn't been often
exposed to, as a literally biological limitation that one cannot blame on
sociological reasons. It has the potential to shift the conversation to a
fruitless arena.

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bitwize
I imagine it thus: Human appearance is a vector space in our minds and we tend
to put ourselves at the origin of the vector space. When we look at two people
who look like us, the vectors that describe their appearance may be
comparatively quite different because of their closeness to us. But if we look
at two people of the same, different race, their appearance is quite removed
from us, so the appearance-vectors that lead from us to them will be
comparatively close together in direction and have comparatively similar
magnitudes.

A Japanese friend of mine once told me I looked like a celebrity -- Manuel
Schwarz, an Austrian model who was once married to Ayumi Hamasaki. Near as I
can tell the only similarities between my appearance and his are that we are
both white and we both have brown hair.

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pkinsky
The vector space of appearances is probably pruned based on the facial
features you see growing up. I doubt it's directly tied to one's facial
features.

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FooBarWidget
This does not seem strange to me. My Chinese girlfriend (who is from China)
tells me that caucasian people look alike.

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dclowd9901
I would really love someone to run an objective comparison of James Blake and
the culprit. I know it's not popular to apologize for token racist acts, but
isn't it also possible that two people just looked very similar and it was
simple mistaken identity? I know I come from a place of privilege but i think
there are ways to resolve these questions with simple comparative analysis.

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gnoway
This whole article reads like a smokescreen for what actually happened. If you
look at the video - the Times has it[0], strange they didn't link it from the
article - Blake was leaning up against a wall minding his own business, and
was more or less rushed, grabbed and tackled by an undercover officer. He did
not appear to be threatening anyone and did not appear to offer any
resistance, at least none beyond what anyone would if they were suddenly
attacked.

He was mistaken for an alleged participant in a credit card fraud scheme; the
actual suspect ended up either not charged or acquitted. The officer in
question has multiple complaints of abusive behavior on his record.

The whole thing stinks, and while Blake received apologies from the mayor and
some other officials, he correctly pointed out that probably wouldn't have
happened were he not James Blake. Honestly I don't understand why it matters
that he might resemble the suspect, given the footage it's pretty clear that
there were other ways to approach Mr. Blake without it going down like it did.

This was not a case where an NYPD officer just hadn't spend enough time around
other races (...please). This was yet another example of an overaggressive
cop, and for whatever reason Ms. Swarns chose to write this article comparing
it to some goofball crap w/ other celebrities rather than what it is. It
barely makes sense.

[0]
[http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000003905322/survei...](http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000003905322/surveillance-
video-of-james-blake-arrest.html)

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omginternets
Personally, I often confuse Jamie Fox and Samuel L. Jackson.

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rdancer
America coming to its senses? Hard to believe that the Nation would really
bring itself to acknowledge something so simple and obvious. But I have hope.

