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Comment by zkmon | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why it should be a surprising thing. Senses work together. Not isolated. I associate numbers with taste (2 and 5 are sweeter, 3 is salty, 7 is bitter and so on), and with spatial ladder-like locations (ladder goes up from 1 to 10 and then it becomes like rope bridge until 20 and then its like a hill climb until around 40 and then it is steep down- hill upto 100.

Words are definitely associated closely with geometric shapes, and with touch and sound.

Also, most importantly, all thoughts are attached to places that you have already seen. You can't think about anything without attaching it to a known place. When you forget something, it's because that physical place (room, road, or park) is crowded with other thoughts.

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> I associate numbers with taste (2 and 5 are sweeter, 3 is salty, 7 is bitter and so on)

That sounds like textbook "synesthesia" to me? I don’t associate numbers with any taste, smell, or color, and would wager that this is more common than the opposite.

Yeah, that's definitely an unusual association that most people wouldn't make.

And interestingly, in comparison, the mappings in synesthesia are much more arbitrary: while there are certain associations that are more common (numbers and colors, for example), there's not broad agreement on what color each number is.

I believe that this is how your brain works, but it's far from universal. I've certainly never made anything like either of those number associations, nor do I associate most abstract memories with physical places (though I am familiar with the memory palace technique).

Probably synesthesia. I have known a few with many questions to them to understand better.

From my discussions, the senses do work together or as I describe it is convergence of inputs creating a specific harmonic ratios or chords that map to the input.

Numbers with taste is new to me. I know for some numbers have colors or play notes/chords.

Not everything in science needs to be surprising to be useful. Same as the meta study that confirms no link between vaccinations and autism - not surprising, but still immensely useful.

As of today we have no proof that all animals understand sounds and words the same way we do. Some closer primates likely do, because we share common ancestors that communicated similarly to us. But not dogs. We know dogs bark and can memorize words we say, but we don't know how they process those words. This is a step in that direction.

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