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sapinker's profile
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
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@sapinker

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Steven PinkerVerified account

@sapinker

Cognitive scientist at Harvard.

Boston, MA
pinker.wjh.harvard.edu
Joined January 2010

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    Steven Pinker‏Verified account @sapinker May 17

    Helpful spectrograms and digital titration tool to probe the Yanny-Laurel illusion (though I haven't seen a thoroughly satisfying explanation yet). https://nyti.ms/2L4DQJO  via @UpshotNYT

    10:17 AM - 17 May 2018
    • 39 Retweets
    • 98 Likes
    • Goce Simonoski aníchearnaigh Peon Safa مerve mmanu Nando Pelusi Atónito Perpetuo Anton Agureyev Rajib Sarkar
    18 replies 39 retweets 98 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. boringfileclerk‏ @boringfileclerk May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Yanny or Laurel?

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
      3. G III‏ @Gus3_BlueMoonCo May 17
        Replying to @boringfileclerk @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Too awesome, I was thinking the same thing! 😁

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
      4. End of conversation
      1. Tiffany Cheing Ho‏ @TiffanyCheingHo May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Tiffany Cheing Ho Retweeted Dylan  👻BOO 👻nnett

        This has been the best explanation I’ve seen so far (Laurel is at a lower freq):https://twitter.com/mboffin/status/996562598815416321?s=21 …

        Tiffany Cheing Ho added,

        0:25
        Dylan  👻BOO 👻nnett @MBoffin
        Okay, you're not crazy. If you can hear high freqs, you probably hear "yanny", but you *might* hear "laurel". If you can't hear high freqs, you probably hear laurel. Here's what it sounds like without high/low freqs. RT so we can avoid the whole dress situation. #yanny #laurel 🙄 pic.twitter.com/RN71WGyHwe
        Show this thread
        0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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      1. Elizabeth Bonawitz‏ @LizBonawitz May 18
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Cool. But the "experiment" they are running doesn't take into account what kind of speakers are used for each listener. Speakers affect the mix of frequencies, which will also shift critical points. It will be hard to draw meaningful inferences from their data without this info.

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. John Bryan‏ @JohnBry48855978 May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        I went from hearing Yanny to hearing Laurel. I noticed a pitch change as it did so. Those who hear Yanny are focusing on the higher frequencies, those who hear Laurel on the lower ones. Case closed.

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. eateryROW‏ @eateryROW May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        I just tried this and I never hear Yanni. I scroll all the way to the edge and year Yalies. Is this my penance for going to Vassar?

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. Weston Edwards‏ @alifeofmovement May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Turns out it's not just sound, but all of our perceptions can be similarly fooled based on ambiguous data. It frequently comes up in the fields of pain perception and paradigm shifts. https://alifeofmovement.com/2018/03/11/captain-of-the-nervous-ship/ …

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. Desi Insaan‏ @Desi_Insaan May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        How brain deciphers sounds is also playing a role here. If you move slowly, you are likely to keep hearing the same word further into the spectrum. At the same point in the spectrum, you can hear either laurel or yanny depending on how fast/from which direction you reached there.

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. Steve Dylan‏ @SteveDylan4 May 18
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        I heard "Yorrel". What does THAT mean?

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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      1. New conversation
      2. Torben ohne h‏ @iriswasapupil May 18
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        At first, I could only hear Laurel. When I slided like three bars to the right, I started to hear "Yanny". Now I can also hear "Yanny" in the background when I listen to the original, but only as an "alien whisper" without a tone. Yanny-hearers perceive Laurel the other way round

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      3. Torben ohne h‏ @iriswasapupil May 18
        Replying to @iriswasapupil @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Just like very cold and very hot temperatures feel the same, it is probably sth about the "calibration" of our hearing. Wenn we hear very low/high frequencies, we do not perceive them as "tonal" anymore, so our brain puts them into the background.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      4. End of conversation
      1. Adam‏ @AdamJSheridan May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        So what I got from that is I was right about it saying laurel and my wife was wrong.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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      1. eworden78‏ @eworden78 May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        I had a very unusual effect when playing with the slider. I found an equilibrium in which I could simultaneously perceive both "Yanny" and "Laurel". I was an almost indescribable effect, it was not hearing two separate sounds overlayed, or a morph of both sounds.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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      1. Virginia Rich‏ @virginia_i_rich May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        It still doesn't work for me even when cranked all the way to "Laurel"!

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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      1. (•‿•)‏ @_Vorbei_ May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        It sounds never like "Yanny" but rather like Yelly.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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      1. Nick McLean‏ @Nocmclean May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        I think this is a possible explanation. As you age (especially western males) you lose the ability to hear higher frequencies. (I've heard some hypothesize that speakers of tonal languages do not lose these abilities.) https://www.google.ca/search?q=How+old+is+your+ear%3F&oq=How+old+is+your+ear%3F+&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.11921j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 …

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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      1. Hunter‏ @HTaylorEdu May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Thank you for sharing! I teach High School and my students spent 30 minutes arguing about this in class yesterday so I look forward to showing them this!

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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      1. New conversation
      2. Adam Sharp‏ @Doebringer May 17
        Replying to @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        We perceive different vowels for a number of reasons. What we expect to hear is a big part of it. Acoustically, overtone content is the actual difference between vowels. If your brain focuses on certain over tones, you'll perceive it differently than if you focus on others.

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      3. Adam Sharp‏ @Doebringer May 17
        Replying to @Doebringer @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Usually our brain can sort the overtones subconsciously based on what we expect to hear and what it can make sense of based on the meaning we've come to associate with different sounds In this case, for whatever reason, people are hearing one or both of two common interpetations

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      4. Adam Sharp‏ @Doebringer May 17
        Replying to @Doebringer @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Depending on the speakers playing the clip and how they reproduce different frequency bands, the overall and relative volumes of different overtones will make one or the other seem to stand out to different people.

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      5. Adam Sharp‏ @Doebringer May 17
        Replying to @Doebringer @sapinker @UpshotNYT

        Once you hear both and know how they relate, you can basically willfully choose which you hear, or in some cases, hear both simultaneously. It's kindof like an audio version of those illusions that could be an old or young woman, faces or a vase, etc.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      6. End of conversation

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