so I was reading a fascinating ask
science on reddit the other day someone
wanted to know what was happening in
their mind when five apples were dropped
on the floor and they were asked to
count them were they just counting
quickly or did they remember what five
things look like in response
reddit user surf K tizzle gave a great
concise explanation of the difference
between counting and something called
Subutai coming from the latin sub u tiss
meaning sudden Subutai zhing refers to
our brains ability to suddenly recognize
objects up to about four which means
that if you see for example one two
three or four pizza john's you don't
have to spend any time looking at each
individual pizza John you just know how
many Pizza John's there are but if you
increase that number by even a little
more your mind loses the ability to
grasp what it's looking at right away
indeed the time it takes to make a
judgment on numbers larger than four
increases by about 250 to 350
milliseconds with each consecutive
number that's because when you move out
of the Subutai zhing range you actually
have to look at each individual item and
count them up the way we do this is by
taking the list of numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 and so on and assigning them to
the pizza John's in ascending order when
we reach the end of our set whatever
number we stopped on is the number of
items there are digging a little deeper
this process of counting as we know it
involves five criteria that was a little
bit corny first the one-to-one principle
meaning that each object can only have
one tag or number name second ordinality
meaning that the tags must be applied in
the same order every time 1 2 3 4 not 3
2 1 4 5 8 9 Omega Jackson Pollock third
the cardinal principle or cardinality
which I mentioned before meaning that
the last tag always represents the
absolute quantity of the set forth the
order irrelevance which means that it
doesn't matter it's irrelevant which
order the objects are counted the number
will always be the same and finally
fifth the abstraction print
or the ability to apply counting to a
number of varied objects not just the
same one used multiple times counting in
this way extrapolated allows us to deal
with very large numbers
aided by something which is not innate
to our minds but is an artificial
symbolic system which we've memorized to
the point where it feels innate we know
of a few cultures in fact like the
Amazonian indigenous group mooned aruku
who don't have words for numbers larger
than five or the brazilian piraha people
who only have names for one and two
above that they just say many when
tested both the mundo ruku and pelota
people were able to sub you ties small
numbers and approximate large numbers
with the same relative accuracy as
Westerners but they could not gauge the
exact amount of many items without the
aid of precise number names
Subutai zhing and counting are
incredible capabilities of the human
brain which we take for granted every
day to appreciate just how fast your
brain works I'll leave you with this get
your pause buttons ready and pause when
you know how many items there are
the final point I'll make on this is
that it seems after a number of studies
that human beings are not the only ones
able to make quantitative judgments
about objects certain species of monkey
horse and bird can sub you tais
interestingly like us up to about for
the best review that I found of
numerical competence in animals well
worth a read was done in 2011 by Zhanna
Resnick OVA and Boris ryoute COO sorry
for the name butchery which I'll leave a
link for in the description under work
site follow me on tumblr asked me
anything on tumblr and twitter for short
little thoughts comment below and I will
respond I will respond to everyone also
post this on reddit if you like what I
do and want me to keep doing it that has
been a great way for people to see these
and just get the word about the nerd
writer out there so if you like the nerd
writer post this on reddit and I will
see you next Monday yeah I think so