IMO it's underappreciated how these mistakes are not a bug of human intelligence, but a feature. They reveal a default non-literal interpretation of the world, which can be made less abstract when needed. However, it's the default abstractness that prevents us from making gross contextual errors based upon a literal interpretation.
This has been discussed at least a couple of times before but maybe I have a new angle:<p>Somewhere during the last three years or so I realized I'm one of those people who can hardly see mental images. Even my dreams seems to often be just feelings og having been somewhere and done something.<p>However I can draw bikes my house and everything else that I know well (and I often have too draw things since I cannot keep mental models in my head.)<p>Why is this, how can I draw something I cannot project in my head? Is it just because I understand it so well that if I try to draw it wrong my mind hurts?<p>PS: My drawings are not nice, but they are somewhat correct, the frame makes sense, the chain is in the correct place etc etc.<p>PPS: I keep wondering if I always was like this or if I lost it at some time (if I lost it my best guess is there's a mild form of something like PTSD because of a bunch of stuff that happened from I was 15 to 25).
>Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t.<p>They probably don't pose the question like this, though. I suspect you'd get different results if you asked a person, "Can you draw an accurate representation of a bicycle?" vs pestering them to draw a bicycle so you can make fun of them later. I know for myself, if someone handed me a sheet of paper and said draw a bike, I'd do it for fun, but it would not be correct.
Some of them have now been built in real life!<p><a href="https://www.behance.net/gallery/77793195/Velocipedia-IRL" rel="nofollow">https://www.behance.net/gallery/77793195/Velocipedia-IRL</a>
If you showed some people a sketch of something like a Ventum triathlon bike they would probably say it was wrong or fake. The shape of bikes has been held back for too long by tradition and outdated UCI race equipment rules.<p><a href="https://ventumracing.com/bikes/" rel="nofollow">https://ventumracing.com/bikes/</a>
What really surprised me is that the bicycles weren't made using 3D modelling, it looks like he used something like Photoshop to compose the images.
I love these sketches!<p>Having worked in a bike shop for a bunch of years I'm really good at drawing a bike, but recently I tried to draw the outside of my house. The front of the house that I see nearly every day. My house that I've been living in for over a decade. I couldn't do it!
What blew me away is that the author is using 2d vector graphics to draw all that. I think there might've been a follow up post where he shows the process.
I didn't know what part was missing from the first bike and it was a little frustrating the author didn't explain! I have an idea now from comparing to real bikes, but I am not confident that this bike would "immediately break." From forces on the rear wheel?
It's kind of hard to draw a chain and chainstays clearly. That seems to be one of the common missing pieces. They're in a similar region of the bicycle.
it's easy to assume that these are people who don't have a lot of familiarity with bikes, but pro cyclists don't do much better:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU</a>
I wonder what else seems simple but is actually hard to draw from memory. My example is the simplest knot, although the difficulty seems a bit different from that of the bike.
Some of these are gorgeous! Hilariously impractical, but gorgeous. Nice job. Shame it's rendered; I was kinda hoping they actually made these bikes. Although I suspect they'd be too dangerous to try them out.