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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe
@benwolfevision.bsky.social
6.2K followers 110 following 11K posts
Assistant Professor Psychological and Brain Sciences University of Toronto Mississauga Co-Director, APPLY Lab (www.applylab.org) Least important mammal in his house (just ask the cats). "If vision worked like *that*, we'd all be dead."
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · Oct 18
Quick intro: I'm a faculty member at UofT in Psychology, sitting somewhere at the intersection of vision science, cognitive psychology and human factors, with strong interests in driver behaviour and digital (screen) readability.

I'm the Least Important Mammal in my house and the cats know it.
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 5h
YUP. Reread it last year, and yeah, just a bit dated…
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 5h
I read it young enough - pre-undergrad - that I remember enjoying it.

It’s also a Cursed Book for me; I used to throw the paperback in my bag for flights, and possessing it guaranteed awful delays. I’ve not reread it in 15+ years, and don’t intend to.
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 5h
What, “protagonist sits on a rock” doesn’t do it for you?

I have a soft spot for the ending of Anathem, which isn’t much of an ending, but by his standards, it is one…
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 5h
Mostly, he seems to be utterly incapable of writing an ending.
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 5h
Oddly, most shops here clear the holiday candy instantly.

No opportunity for buying unhinged amounts of candy to inflict on friends. I memorably packed a Flat Rate box with very discounted candy corn about 12 years ago to make a friend happy.
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 6h
The Big U is fun, particularly if one reads it whilst living in Warren Towers and is intimately familiar with what he modeled it on
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 10h
As a result of this, the bags under my eyes would qualify as checked luggage on Air Canada.

It's good that Howl is cute.
benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 21h
At least I got Cpt Asshole (Howl) off the bed before the 0600 Thanksgiving Hairball made an appearance.
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 10h
That's the plan (and the counter space question will change in the near-ish future... @rahaeli.bsky.social can tell you more!)
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 11h
Canadian Thanksgiving... well, we don't need a turkey for two people, that's just silly.

I've still spent much of the afternoon in the kitchen, cursing my lack of counter space relative to my culinary ambitions.

Yeah, I think that'll do for thanksgiving.
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 11h
Here's the longform version of these thoughts in driving-land:

Toward a Theory of Visual Information Acquisition
in Driving, Wolfe, Sawyer and Rosenholtz 2020
applylab.org
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 11h
In fact, the more I think about this... the more it sounds like how I think about consequential scene perception... or what drivers do behind the wheel, which is most of what I study.
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 11h
As to the theory… I think we’re in the same general thought-space.

I’ve got an incoming postdoc who is putting fellowships in to study how we do text gist / skimming, so we might get close to this set of questions soon(ish).
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 11h
So, my lab studies readability and gaze behaviour - among other topics in vision science - and this is *absolutely* on the list of "things I would love to do with a high-speed eye tracker some day"
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benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 14h
Procrastiworking!
benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 15h
My annual rental car fun in FL tends to give me teaching material.

It's also gotten me at least one media interview when I've yelled about it on social media.
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 21h
At least I got Cpt Asshole (Howl) off the bed before the 0600 Thanksgiving Hairball made an appearance.
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 1d
Cawti and the bunnypaws
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 1d
That’s why I didn’t tag him in…
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 1d
I mean, Austin is here on bsky…
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 1d
But CHOMP!
benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 1d
+20 to FELONY
-20 to INT
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 1d
Sometimes, an IPA is medically necessary.
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 1d
Hiss.
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Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 2d
Very useful for research. Not a psychic mind reading tool.

Spent a lot of time around that world 15+ years ago.
benwolfevision.bsky.social
Dr Ben Wolfe @benwolfevision.bsky.social · 2d
Years and years ago, my then-boss got stuff that boiled down to “you can read my mind with the fMRI and exonerate me”

We could kinda decode what you had in memory. If it was tilted to the left or right. At about 60% accuracy?
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