I'm in the interesting position of having a sometimes broken, sometimes working facial recognition system. More specifically, it's usually broken, but I can sometimes somehow trick my brain into activating it, usually by staring intently at a person for an abnormally long period of time. The first time I managed to do this, which I believe was when looking at my mom, I suddenly realized "Holy shit, she looks like grandpa." Up until that point, I had never understood what people were talking about when they say that someone looks like their parents.
The analogy I offer, which closely matches my subjective experience, is that of 2D vs. 3D movies. When looking at them, they contain the exact same imagery and look pretty much identical, but the 3D image contains additional information that allows the brain to post-process it and creating a "popping out" experience that cannot possibly be captured in a 2D image. Faces appear work the same way; the post-processing adds a layer of "depth", for lack of a better term, that doesn't really change how it looks, but rather how it's experienced. You're suddenly capable of identifying patterns, similarities and nuances that you were previously oblivious to. Normal people's facial recognition seems to largely be based on this "extra" information.
An analogy that's way less accurate to my experiences, but may be easier to understand, is that of a magic eye image. The pattern doesn't change, but you suddenly experience something "more" that transcends the pattern itself, like an extra layer of previously invisible information on top of what you already had.
To be more vague and subjective, perceiving people's faces in the "normal" way is actually quite weird from the point of view of someone who doesn't normally do so. The person you're looking at appears to be wearing a hyper-realistic "mask" over their face that somehow looks the same, yet heavily emphasizes their distinct traits, sort of like some living, breathing caricature of the person. While this is a very strange, surreal experience to me, I assume this is what most people always experience in everyday life, that it feels perfectly natural to them, and that they're not even aware that it's going on.
Slashdot Mirror
I can offer a better analogy.
I'm in the interesting position of having a sometimes broken, sometimes working facial recognition system. More specifically, it's usually broken, but I can sometimes somehow trick my brain into activating it, usually by staring intently at a person for an abnormally long period of time. The first time I managed to do this, which I believe was when looking at my mom, I suddenly realized "Holy shit, she looks like grandpa." Up until that point, I had never understood what people were talking about when they say that someone looks like their parents.
The analogy I offer, which closely matches my subjective experience, is that of 2D vs. 3D movies. When looking at them, they contain the exact same imagery and look pretty much identical, but the 3D image contains additional information that allows the brain to post-process it and creating a "popping out" experience that cannot possibly be captured in a 2D image. Faces appear work the same way; the post-processing adds a layer of "depth", for lack of a better term, that doesn't really change how it looks, but rather how it's experienced. You're suddenly capable of identifying patterns, similarities and nuances that you were previously oblivious to. Normal people's facial recognition seems to largely be based on this "extra" information.
An analogy that's way less accurate to my experiences, but may be easier to understand, is that of a magic eye image. The pattern doesn't change, but you suddenly experience something "more" that transcends the pattern itself, like an extra layer of previously invisible information on top of what you already had.
To be more vague and subjective, perceiving people's faces in the "normal" way is actually quite weird from the point of view of someone who doesn't normally do so. The person you're looking at appears to be wearing a hyper-realistic "mask" over their face that somehow looks the same, yet heavily emphasizes their distinct traits, sort of like some living, breathing caricature of the person. While this is a very strange, surreal experience to me, I assume this is what most people always experience in everyday life, that it feels perfectly natural to them, and that they're not even aware that it's going on.