Why poor human perception of gradient vs edge definition?!


Question: Evolution has produced human optics that are adept at identifying edges. Why are our eyes so ill-equiped to delineate gradient indices?


Answers: Evolution has produced human optics that are adept at identifying edges. Why are our eyes so ill-equiped to delineate gradient indices?

Yes, edge-enhancement processing takes place at the retinal, not just cortical level.

It's loose phrasing, but probably because survival is more important than aesthetics.

Edge, defining limits, (of a cliff, of a target, of a hole,) is likely to have been more critical information than variation of tone of a surface. The shape of a shadow is more important than just how dark it gets.

Whether we're poor at greyscale tracking depends on what you're measuring against, but it's quite possible that there would be consequences of enhancing that feature in the eye.
Possibly the vast range of illuminations that the eye can now cope with wold have to be curtailed: cells incredibly sensitive to colour variation might not be so good in very bright or weak light...

Or, unless we could process it, being sensitive to small variations might produce sucjh a "noisy" environment that is was distracting.

No, I'm not saying the above are definitive points...
Just thinking.





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