this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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Cosmic Horror

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A community to discuss Cosmic Horror in it's many forms; books, films, comics, art, TV, music, RPGs, video games etc.

"cosmic horror... is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock... themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries... the sense that ordinary life is a thin shell over a reality that is so alien and abstract in comparison that merely contemplating it would damage the sanity of the ordinary person, insignificance and powerlessness at the cosmic scale..."

For more Lovecraft & Mythos-inspired Cosmic Horror:-[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Or they're hyperdimensional beings that need all those eyes to see properly across dimensions

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Yeah I suppose they would need another eye for each additional dimension they see, which still justifies the reaction in the comic

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not really, they'd just need to exist in a dimension above ours. We can readily observe the lower three dimensions of length, width and depth because we exist in the one above that - duration. We can't observe time except by passing through it point by point. A being capable of observing actual timelines would have to do so from a vantage point above them.

The extra eyes and wings are just them being a fucking showoff.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (4 children)

You need one eye to see 2D. You need two eyes to see 3D. Presumably, you need 3+ eyes to see in 4D. Don't conflate spatial dimensions with the temporal one, it's oranges and apples.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Most of the "3D" we see is made up by our brains. For evidence of this, look at a photograph, and look at how far away things are.

Having eyes spaced apart does help us to tell the distance to things that are close to us, but that is only useful for a short distance. Our brains also track the parallax and occlusion of numerous objects, which helps over longer distances, but works just fine with 1 eye.

I think there are two ways eyes could work in higher spacial dimensions, you could either have an n dimensional eye, which percieves an n-1 dimensional image, and then an understanding of "distance" is used to fill in the remaining information, or (which may just be my own 3D-ness showing) you could have several 3D eyes in different directions, each percieving different 2D images, with enough overlap to fully see the n-dimensional space. That would take n-1 eyes to properly see.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You can see depth with a single eye, you just need to move your eye

Two eyes in animals are used either to get extra view angle (in a cow, for instance) or to give instant depth information (in a human or tiger for example) or for both (in dragonflies)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

That's still using a temporal dimension to your advantage :P (cause without time you can't move).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I always knew that spiders were from the ninth dimension.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You can get depth information from parallax, which can come from either capturing multiple moments or using multiple viewpoints. IDK if I would call this seeing in 3D, as you can still only see 2d surfaces, just with an additional data point of depth (Think of it like an array of data, with one eye, you get res^2 * (r+g+b) data points, with two, you get res^2 * (r+g+b+r+g+b+d) instead of actual 3D which would be res^3 * (r+g+b)). Having 3 eyes just means you can estimate depth more accurately. Of course, in real animals with many eyes the eyes serve different purposes, such as having a different fov, resolution, color perception, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

So what you're saying is we need 4D eyes to see 3D? Ahh, Kos... or some say, Kosm...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Or it's like with tails in asia: the more tails, the more cat/fox/….

The more wings and eyes, the more angel.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So you're saying we see 2 dimensions? Interesting. I'm going to try to walk around a tunnel now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

“Another eye for each additional dimension”, not “an eye for each dimension”.

Eyes = dimensions - 1

(For positive numbers of eyes)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

What would a negative number of eyes look like?

Poorly, I assume, but I do mean appearance-wise.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes you see in 2 dimensions. You can't see in front and behind a car.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Lol okay you got me. You can see the front and the back of the car.

...now, where is the bottom of the car in this 2D picture lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think on the level of physics, there might be enough information in the photo to describe what’s under the car actually, but I don’t know enough about photons or physics lol. Bless the day

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What...? you literally cannot see the bottom of the car. It's a 3d object. You cannot see all sides of the 3d object. You can only see up down left and right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Our eyes can also see forwards and backwards so we can perceive 3d I believe, and then 4 d one present moment at a time.

But, I’m saying it is possible even with something like sonar to make a map of a thing that is on the other side of something else. That’s sound waves but we know that the light information is there to make a map similarly using light, and if we could see that information in real life, we might be able to perceive from the photons captured in this image to have an understanding of what’s under the car

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yea see what you just said doesn't make sense. Our eyes have depth perception based on the shadows of the 2d images shown... We don't have some kind of magical infrared sighting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Am I being trolled right now?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

lol, nah, I’m just saying there is more information available than what we can process with our eyes in the world around us….

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Sure! Totally agree. But if you take a human, naked in a vacuum. They don't have the equipment to do any of that lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

you are thinking of 3.5d/spacetime vs 4d

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Like some sort of acid trip,
"I can see imaginary numbers!"
being somewhat like
"I can taste colors!"