WEBVTT - Where the Shadows Lie, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:07.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:14.920 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.120 My name is Robert Lan and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.799 And today our October journey continues. If you're new to 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:25.200 the show, we spend all of October covering spooky subjects, 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:28.080 and we are plowing right on toward Halloween at a 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:30.440 frightening pace, at such a pace that by the time 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.040 we reach it, our skin may be seared by the wind. 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.320 But today we wanted to embark on a new series 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:41.519 of Halloween related episodes about shadows. Before we started, I 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:45.600 was thinking about the series on necromancy that we published 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:48.400 earlier this month, in which we explored a lot of 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.520 ancient accounts of people summoning the dead, especially to get 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:54.040 information about the future or some of the kind of 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:58.640 hidden information from them. And we talked about stories that 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.720 assumed the ancient and Greek model of the afterlife a 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:07.440 subterranean realm of darkness called hades, where the souls of 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:11.679 the dead dwell in a weak, pitiable and insubstantial form. 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.280 So this would be unlike modern Christian notions of the 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:19.920 dead dwelling either in heavenly bliss or infernal punishment had 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.160 seems to be most often thought of as a gloomy, 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:27.280 forlorn dungeon where your spirit is locked away forever, more 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:30.919 like a slowly fading memory. It's not really a punishment, 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:34.680 and basically everybody goes there, but it's not good. It's 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:37.480 better to be alive. I guess the only real exception 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:39.600 seems to be like if you're turned into a god, 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:41.960 which occasionally happens if you're really cool. 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:43.720 Yeah, but you got to have you gotta have an 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:45.840 end for that. Yeah, not just they don't have that 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:47.039 out there, just anybody. 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:51.480 So anyway, relevant to our topic in this next series 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.600 of episodes, I was thinking about how in English translations, 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:59.640 for example, of the Homeric myths, these dead souls that 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:04.920 populate the underworld here are sometimes known as shades. I 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:07.400 think this terminology comes up in the story, for example, 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:11.240 in the Odyssey, where Odysseus goes to the edge of 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:14.120 the underworld in order to summon up shades. I think 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:16.239 he wants to speak to the shade of Tyresius. 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:17.440 I believe that's right. 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:19.679 Yes, But he sees his mom, he sees a bunch 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.560 of people, He waves a sword at him, he slaughters 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:26.280 a ram and all that. And I was wondering, when 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.239 the English translations use the word shade here, does that 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.120 mean shadows just in the regular sense of shadow, And 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.880 does that usage, if so, go back to the original Greek, 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:40.240 as best I can tell, it does I'm not a 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:42.720 Greek scholar here, but I was looking up some Greek 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:45.920 English lexical sources, and from what I could find, it 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.440 looks like the Greek word used here is skia, the 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:54.080 Latin equivalent being umbra. And this word does indeed carry 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:58.240 these multiple meanings. It could be used to refer to ghosts, 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:00.760 to spirits of the dead, like the kind that are 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:03.200 called forth to drink the blood of the Ram and 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.760 tell the future to Odysseus. Or it could refer to 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.640 the utterly mundane shade and shadow cast by a tree 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.519 or a mountain, or a person, just whatever blocks out 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:17.920 the sun. And I thought this double meaning was very interesting. 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.880 What is it about the mundane shadows we experience every 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:26.280 single day that would cause people to give them this 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:28.400 hair raising secondary meaning? 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.640 This is a great question, Yeah, because shadows are everywhere 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.600 there that you know, we encounter our own shadow every day, 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:39.240 and yet the term shadow. The idea of a shadow 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:45.960 carries a lot of weight, certainly supernaturally and fictionally and folklorically, 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.240 as we'll get into in a bit here, but just 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:53.760 linguistically it does a lot of legwork, you know. I 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:56.680 decided to turn to brewers Dictionary of Phrase and fable 0:03:56.760 --> 0:03:59.360 on this one. It's often a fun way to sort 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:04.040 of into not just the meaning of words, but also 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:09.520 just like antiquated usages of those words. So the author 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.320 here reminds us that shadow is a word with numerous 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:16.279 figurative and applied meanings. A shadow may be a ghost, 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:20.520 as we see in Macbeth hence horrible shadow. It may 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.440 also be a faint representation, as in a shadow of 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:28.960 a doubt. It may also mean a constant attendant. And 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:33.320 Brewers specifically references Milton's paradise lost here sin and her 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:34.240 shadow death. 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:36.560 It's hard for me to imagine that pearing of her 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.560 shadow death does not in some sense derived from its 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:42.240 usage in the Bible walk through the Valley of the 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:44.520 Shadow of Death exactly. 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:47.760 And of course, we often use the term shadow as 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:51.320 a verb to follow someone around and sort of learn 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:54.440 from them. To shadow someone at work, generally when that 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.240 is used, there are no haunting connotations, but shadow may 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:02.200 also be a moral darkness or gloom now Brewers, Like 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:04.880 I said, is also always great for some antiquated sayings. 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:09.279 Here are a few examples gone to the bad for 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.719 the shadow of an ass aka, choose your battles and 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:15.320 don't battle for something as dumb as the shadow of 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:15.880 a donkey? 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:18.240 Does that go back to a story? I don't know. 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.600 I have no additional context, but feel free to start 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:27.640 incorporating it into your daily conversations. Listeners. There's another one, 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.000 May your shadow grow less? This one apparently has Eastern 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:33.080 origins according to Brewers. And I'll get back to this 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:35.200 one in a bit. And then the idea of being 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:40.480 reduced to a shadow or emaciated. You so so slender, 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:45.680 so starved that even your shadow is reduced. But you know, 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:48.480 obviously your shadow would be reduced if your body was reduced. 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:51.840 But it is also not that simple, right, because shadows 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.440 can be manipulated. We can cast a very long shadow 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:58.560 depending on where we are in reference to the sun. Joe, 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.720 I don't know about your experiences with this as a father, 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.120 but I remember when my son was a mere toddler 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:08.120 that we would have some fun with our own shadows 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:10.919 in the park, especially in the way that a child 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:13.320 can be shown to manipulate their own shadow, to cast 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.479 a long shadow, to cast a big shadow, and also 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:20.040 have it interact with other shadows, like have your shadow 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.800 dinosaur hand, you know, bite another person's shadow, and that 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:24.440 sort of thing. 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:29.880 Yeah. I don't know how much consciousness my daughter has 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:32.040 of her own shadow yet, but I have done some 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:34.160 shadow puppet shows for her in the light of the 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.760 setting sun, and it's interesting to watch because I think 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.520 the few times I've done this, my daughter has tried 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.520 to reach out and touch the shadows projected on the 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:46.719 floor or on the wall, but of course there's nothing 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:50.880 to touch, but she perceives that this moving display of 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.599 shapes must be some kind of object that she could grasp. 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.880 Yeah, there's something about shadow. I think a child's fascination 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:03.120 with them perhaps reveals much about what remains there, at 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.200 least in some part of our mind. Even after we 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.080 have grown accustomed to them, once they've become old hat, 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.440 there are still going to be moments where we notice 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:13.760 the peculiar when it comes to the shadow, that a 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.280 shadow doesn't necessarily tell the truth but also at the 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:20.400 same time, a shadow can reveal things that are there 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:23.200 that you know, perhaps you can't see an individual, but 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.040 you can see their shadow that sort of thing. So 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.280 there's there's obviously a lot of rich room for interpretation. 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:32.280 But then also just coming back to the linguistics of it, 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:34.840 certainly when you get into translation. I know we are 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:37.720 looking around for possible shadow poems to read at the 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:40.120 top of this episode, and I was looking at some 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:43.960 Borges poems in translation, of course, and for instance, there's 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.680 one titled to the One who is Reading Me, which 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.160 is a nice haunting poem with a number of different 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:54.320 Borges sort of trademarks in it. But some translations will 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:59.200 use shadow and others will not, So you know, it 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:01.480 seems like a shat the shadow is one of those 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:03.520 words that likely we've been saying it refers to so 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.280 many things it may be invoked in translation, even if 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:11.000 that was perhaps not the author or the poet's original intent. 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.160 Well, coming back to the representation of shadows in our minds, 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:17.120 I dug up what I thought were a couple of 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:22.360 pretty interesting cognitive science papers about shadow consciousness. So the 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:24.920 first one I was looking at was a short paper 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:28.119 published in Trendsing Cognitive Sciences in two thousand and six 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:33.040 by Roberto Cassadi, an Italian professor. This paper is called 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:37.320 the Cognitive Science of Holes and cast Shadows and this 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:40.800 was published in two thousand and six. This paper asked 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:45.800 an interesting question. It was what can quasi objects or 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:50.480 negative objects such as shadows and holes tell us about 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:55.600 how human brains perceive and understand physical objects. Of course, 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.880 holes and cast shadows are interesting because they are not 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:03.280 objects in themselves. They're actually just absences, in one case 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.360 the absence of solid physical substance and in the other 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.960 a relative absence of light. But despite the fact that 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:15.400 things like holes and shadows are just absences, we intuitively 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:20.400 often think of them as substances in themselves. Kasati writes, quote, 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:25.000 both holes and cast shadows are dependent features. They cannot 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:29.520 exist without objects hosting or casting them. Both shadows and 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:33.680 holes are somewhere between being regions of space and fully 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.959 fledged material objects. They are similar enough to bounded regions 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.360 of space that they have a location, a shape, a size, 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:45.200 and are as immaterial as space is, but are more 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:48.720 object like as they can persist over time and move. 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:53.600 And I think it's this ambiguity between being an object 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:57.760 and not being an object that makes a shadow counterintuitive. 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:00.599 One example I've seen is people to talking about the 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:05.280 interesting fact that a shadow could technically move faster than 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:08.600 the speed of light. How would that be possible? The 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.240 example would often be given that like, if you have 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:15.360 a source of light that you can project across the 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.360 entire surface of a planet, maybe the surface of the moon, 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.440 and then you, standing right next to that source of light, 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.680 move your finger quickly in front of it, you could 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:30.480 actually make your shadow travel across the surface of that 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:34.520 distant object faster than light would be able to travel 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:36.840 if it were going from one side of that object 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.839 to the other. Though, of course nothing is actually traveling 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:42.080 in the case of how you're altering the shadow there, 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.640 so it's not actually a violation of the laws of physics. 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:48.600 It's not any object going faster than the speed of light. 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:53.320 But is it is a change propagating through space in 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:56.320 some sense from our perspective, faster than the speed of light. 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:02.080 Interesting, So absence in a sense travels faster than anything material. 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:04.720 So I wanted to bring up a couple things mentioned 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.640 in this paper that start me as interesting. One of 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:11.120 them is a reference to another paper published a couple 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:15.400 of years before this in the journal Perception, called Impossible 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:21.520 Shadows and the Shadow Correspondence Problem by Pascal Mamasian published 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.040 in two thousand and four, and the background on this 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:27.960 paper is the observation that we can and do use 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:31.439 shadows to estimate information about a scene. So we can 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:35.440 use shadows to infer properties of both the light source 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:37.520 where light is coming from and a scene we're looking 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:42.199 at and the object casting the shadow. But getting information 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:47.040 this way is not a computationally trivial task. It's actually 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:52.280 somewhat difficult. Mamasian rites quote. In order to use that information, 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:55.920 our visual system has first to segment regions in the image, 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.640 decide that these regions are potential shadows rather than say, 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:03.960 in blots, and then match these shadow candidates with objects 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:07.120 in the scene. We call this last processing stage the 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:11.960 shadow correspondence problem. It is reminiscent of the correspondence problem 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:16.360 in stereopsis, and stereopsis is how the brain infers depth 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.360 in our vision by comparing the images produced by our 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:23.679 two different eyes and then going on they say quote 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:27.200 or motion perception, where one has to match features between 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.680 the left and right images or between consecutive frames of 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:35.480 a movie. So inferring real accurate information about a scene 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:37.920 you're looking at in a photograph or in front of 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:43.120 you based on shadows is computationally intensive. We use shadows 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.680 to get information, but it's a complex problem with multiple variables, 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:49.520 and it's taxing on the brain. And so the author 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:53.079 of this paper describes some experiments leading to the conclusion 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:57.080 that we actually only infer information from shadows using a 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.040 rough system. And one piece of evidence for that is 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:05.920 that people usually seemed not to notice when projected shadows 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:09.960 put in front of them were physically impossible. Rob I'd like, 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:12.079 I've got an illustration for you to look at here 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:14.640 that I pulled out of this paper. So there are 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:18.960 a series of six objects shown that are kind of there. 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:21.400 There are ray, a white to sort of like pole 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:24.240 with an arm at the top, and then a shadow 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.600 being cast by that object, And so you could try 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:32.080 to infer some information about where the source of light 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:36.520 is in relation to this object. But four of these 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:39.920 are possible shadows that could be cast by an object 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.400 of the shape, and two of them are impossible shadows. 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:48.600 Wow, So just looking at these six images here is 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:52.760 it is a little taxing. It can feel the mental strain, 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:59.160 because you know, I'm instantly trying to imagine light approaching 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:03.640 the object from different directions at different angles. And when 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:06.560 I start sort of doing that three dimensional computation in 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.240 my head, I mean, it seems like all of them 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:11.800 are probable, Like none of them are really standing out 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:18.360 to me as necessarily impossible. I don't know, maybe gosh, 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:23.320 I don't know, maybe number two. Oh yeah, two is 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:25.160 the only one that I'm that I'm thinking is even 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.720 just a little bit suspect here. But yeah, this is 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:30.280 this is this is This is rough to think about. 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:33.680 You're in the same situation as most of the people 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.600 who participated in this experiment. So most of the shadows 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:39.560 given here are possible given the correct light source position, 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.520 But the two on the right side of the image 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.560 are impossible. If you look at them, you can see 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:48.040 that the arm of the figure is pointed the wrong 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:50.040 way in both of those cases. 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:52.760 Fascinating, I guess, I'm I'm this is why I've always 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:55.880 been so forgiving too with video games, especially the ones 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.840 where you could choose whether you wanted complex shadows or 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:01.880 just sort of like the circle shadow like circle shadows 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:04.680 good enough. If I'm having any kind of system issues, 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.200 let's just go with this simple shadow. 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:09.240 That might be a good instinct. We'll get to some 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:11.520 reasoning about that in a second. So a couple of 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:14.920 these images are not possible shadows. But I think I 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:17.160 don't know. I already knew that I've read about it 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:19.280 before I looked at the image, So I can't really 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:21.440 know what my reaction would be. But you had the 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:23.480 same reaction a lot of the people in the study did. 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.560 They just didn't notice. People seemed not to notice that 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:29.520 these shadows were not possible. It had to be explained 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:34.080 to them afterwards by the experimenters, And so they used 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:39.040 these bits of impossible geometry to infer mundane information about 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:42.880 physical objects, space, and light sources, just like normal. So 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:44.920 in the end here the author says that this is 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:49.480 evidence that our brains use a quick mechanism or what 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:53.720 is called a quote course representation course meaning rough to 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:57.360 solve the shadow correspondence problem. And another thing that gets 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:01.000 pointed out in the discussion is surrealist art that makes 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.760 use of impossible shadows. There is a painting called Indefinite 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:10.360 Divisibility by a painter named eve TONGI. Again, that's called 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:13.400 indefinite divisibility. If you want to look it up yourself. 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:17.320 It is a sort of dolliesque surreal painting with these 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.960 strange objects standing up in a landscape with very stark, 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:26.040 you know, high contrast shadows that are falling long across 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:28.720 the fading background. So there seems to be a strong 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:32.600 directionally oriented source of light sort of where where the 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.280 observer would be casting these long shadows. But in this 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:40.240 paper there is a zoom in and some lines you 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:42.040 can see if you scroll down in our outline here 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:45.000 Rob showing that the shadows cast in this painting are 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.280 again impossible. They don't line up the way they would 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.320 if there were actually a single consistent point of light. 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.560 Yeah, this is fascinating. Yeah, once you start looking at 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.320 it and really comparing object to shadow, then yeah, you 0:16:57.360 --> 0:16:59.040 start seeing you hit the problems here. 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:02.720 And yet I wouldn't noticed at all. So this raises 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:06.440 a question like, were the impossible shadows in this painting 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:10.960 included simply by accident because most people wouldn't notice, or 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.199 is it an intended surreal effect to I don't know. 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:18.119 Reward careful study of the painting for you to realize like, oh, 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:20.240 wait a minute, this is not physically possible. 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:23.920 It's got to be the latter, right, I mean, it 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.800 seems like the amount of work that would go into 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:29.879 a piece like this, and being a surrealist piece, that 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:33.080 would that would make sense to intentionally distort the shadows, 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.439 even if it was done in such a way that 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:38.440 many viewers of the painting would not notice. 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:41.679 Okay, so short story there. We do use shadows to 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:45.240 get relevant information about a scene we're looking at, but 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.520 we only look so close because we apparently do not 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:54.040 detect when shadows violate the laws of physics or geometry. However, 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:57.840 coming back to that paper I mentioned by Cassatti, shadows also, 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:02.520 in addition to providing relevant information, they also represent noise. 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:06.199 We might not think about this often, but in reality, 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:10.199 it would be quite easy to mistake a shadow for 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:14.240 a physical object or the outline of such to interpret, 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.840 to misinterpret a shadow falling across an object as a 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:23.120 contour on that object and the and Kasati points out 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:25.960 this is one reason it is so difficult to represent 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:31.359 shadows in line drawings. So Kasati says, our brains deal 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.199 with this noise threat by mostly tuning out shadows as 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:39.440 visual representations unless we suddenly decide to focus on them. 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:43.680 And that seemed very true to me. You know, we 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.240 we see shadows all the time. We are constantly surrounded 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:51.800 by shadows, but our brain sort of makes them cognitively 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:55.320 invisible unless we decide for some reason to focus on them. 0:18:56.040 --> 0:19:00.000 And Kasati calls this having quote limited conscious access to shadow. 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:04.199 Yeah, this is fascinating. So there is data there in 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.840 the shadow, but there's just too much noise really to 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.359 depend on it too heavily, and there's ultimately better visual 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:13.800 and other sense data to go off of in any 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:16.159 given situation that involves a shadow, I'm assuming. 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.679 So yeah, I found that really interesting that as a 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.960 form of visual information, shadows exist in this middle realm 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.920 where we can get useful information from them, but we're 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:31.280 never looking too close, or at least not naturally unless 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:33.760 we're like really forced to, because a lot of times 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:37.160 we don't even notice if the shadow is eldritch in nature, 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:40.440 it's doing something geometry can't do or wouldn't be justified 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:43.920 by how light works. But secondarily, most of the time, 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.080 even though we're looking right at shadows, we don't see them. 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:49.720 I mean, I'm literally looking right at shadows right now, 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.840 and I don't see them as shadows unless I notice 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:58.800 to look at the shadows there. They don't, I don't know, 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:02.399 strike my visualste them as relevant, and so I'm just like, 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:03.359 I tune them out. 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.440 That's interesting. Yeah, we kind of have shadow blindness to 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:10.960 a large degree, which I guess makes it even more 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.600 fascinating to think that there might be other beings out 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:18.879 there who can see shadows in ways that can appreciate 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:32.040 shadows in ways that human beings cannot. I would like 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:38.680 to at this point turn our attention to various fictional, legendary, folkloric, 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:45.399 and literary examples of shadowless wizards, demons, and vampires, and 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.240 much more in the shadows that may or may not 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.119 be cast by these various individuals. So I've mentioned my 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:55.760 fondness for the horror fantasy of Weird Tales era author 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:58.960 Clark Ashton Smith before, and one of my all time 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:02.359 favorites is a short story title The Double Shadow, about 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:05.080 a pair of wizards who on Earth ancient dark magic 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:07.440 that in turn dooms them both to a horrible death. 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:12.320 Smith's own summary of the tale via eldrich Dark dot com, 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:14.119 which is a great website that has just all of 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:19.320 his writings available. This is how the author himself summarized it. Quote. 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.159 A man sees a monstrous shadow following his own and 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.800 merging with it gradually day by day, while coincidentally with 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:29.200 this merging, he loses his own entity and becomes possessed 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:32.400 by an evil thing from unknown worlds in his personality. 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:36.160 The hideous invading spirit takes form and becomes manifest till 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:42.000 his shadow is that which had followed him. And the 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:45.919 story itself is very haunting, and the ending is really awesome, 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:49.280 with the Doomed Wizard, the last of the doomed wizards, 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:53.480 writing his last personal testimony in a locked study while 0:21:53.520 --> 0:22:00.639 his while this monstrous shadow crawls ever closer closes. As follows, so, 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:03.360 knowing that the time is brief, I have shut myself 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:06.240 in the room of volumes and books and have written 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:09.720 this account. And I have taken the bright triangular tablet, 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:12.919 whose solution was our undoing, and have cast it from 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:15.960 the window into the sea, hoping that none will find 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:19.160 it after us. And now I must make an end 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:23.119 and enclose this writing in the sealed cylinder of ourcallum, 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.439 and fling it forth to drift upon the wave, for 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:29.119 the space between my shadow and the shadow of the 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:34.120 horror is strained momently, and the space is no wider 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:38.720 than the thickness of a wizard's pin. Now I had 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:42.400 long thought that this was mere fantastic invention on Smith's part, 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:47.240 and it doesn't just detract it all from the success 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:49.840 of the story and the effect of the story. But 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:53.160 based on what I was reading in Brewers, it would 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:57.199 seem that he may have based this detail on that 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:01.440 example of so called Eastern origin. This is, of course 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:05.240 spectacularly vague and hartly limits the search too much. It 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.720 just means that it must have originated outside of ancient Greece, 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:13.719 Ancient Rome, and European traditions. But the idea is explained 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:17.640 in Brewers is that wizards studying the Black Arts, after 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:20.920 they reach a certain advanced stage in their studies, are 0:23:21.000 --> 0:23:24.520 chased through a subterranean hall by the devil. I don't 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:26.359 know if this is supposed to be in real life 0:23:26.560 --> 0:23:29.760 or in a dream, etc. But then the idea is, 0:23:29.800 --> 0:23:33.480 if the devil catches you, well, I guess maybe you're 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:36.480 done for. But if the devil catches only your shadow 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:40.160 or part of it, then you lose all over part 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:42.600 of your shadow, but in doing so, you become a 0:23:42.600 --> 0:23:48.080 first rate wizard. And so therefore you might identify a 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:52.119 wizard because the wizard's shadow will be uncanny, It'll be 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:56.440