India's Most Wanted

Something I have been thinking about since leaving India. On many of our bus trips, we would see billboards like this

The problem is, I can't tell what it's for. Is it a political poster, these are the good guys wanting your vote?
Or is it Al Qaeda's senior terrorists? India's Most Wanted?
Somewhere with dubious politics like Bangladesh, it could be either. Or both. Depending on which party was in power this month. Remember the two main parties there are run by women, so things really might change on a monthly basis.
Just a thought.

Anyway, looking at those posters made me think.
According to scientists, there are a finite number of variations to facial features that the human brain can differentiate. We subconsciously paste a face together just like those identikit photos.
Small eyes, big nose, round cheeks, square jaw. We can construct a pretty good shorthand, to remember someone's face for future recall.

But here's the problem.
I could probably recognize lots of different faces. Maybe over a million. But they are mostly white. It sounds terrible, but I think it's true. There is a racial bias to our ability to recognize people.

There is an old saying, that all (insert racial group) look alike. But it's true.
If I can recognize a million distinct faces, maybe a few hundred are Asian, a few hundred African, and a few hundred Indian.
I think it is because, when we look at similar faces all the time, we can distinguish between the smaller nuances. Look at an uncommon race, and you are not looking with the same resolution.

Bring someone from a village in China or India, and drop them on the streets of any large, predominantly white city, and they will struggle to differentiate between more than a few faces. They will either think they just saw them around the corner, or they won't recognize anybody.

So outside our own race, we are unable to recognize faces with the same nuances as with our own race. I don't think there is anything radical here. I just think that people are afraid to say it, in fear of being accused of racism. Am I a racist? Doubt it. Oh sure, some sanctimonious prat will find a way to show how evil I am for uttering the blatantly obvious.

Look at the poster, though. Take an Indian guy in his 30-40's, put on one of three mustache shapes or one kind of beard on him, brush his hair that way (by the way, the hair is black), and voilà. Identikit Indian politician. Or to an American, an identikit terrorist. They all look the same.

Anyway, while in India, I recognized a lot of people.
There was a guy in the foyer of our Mumbai hotel, that used to work in our favourite Indian restaurant in Christchurch.
There was one of the guides who we last met in Bangladesh.
And then there was the guy driving the bus one day, he also works in our restaurant in Christchurch.

And so it goes on. I would be constantly recognizing people who I have never met before.

We are told that everybody has a double. A doppelgänger. Given that we can only identify the difference between faces in the low millions, there must be thousands of me somewhere. Poor bastards!
New Delhi alone has nearly 14 million people, so even with the locals' ability to identify a million more individual faces than I can, there has to be 3-4 of every Indian just in New Delhi alone.
By the way, there are aver 1.27 billion Indians in India.
A little more Chinese in china.

We're ok here in New Zealand. There is only about 4.5 million here. Just one of everybody, thanks.