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Illusions like this always remind me of failure modes of image classifiers - where an AI thinks a sunflower is a panda or whatever, because it's never seen a su

Illusions like this always remind me of failure modes of image classifiers - where an AI thinks a sunflower is a panda or whatever, because it's never seen a sunflower before. That is, presumably the illusion works because it depicts something we've never needed to distinguish before, in such a way that it shares salient features with something more familiar (in this case, oddly-textured concentric rings and normally textured spirals, respectively). Or am I spouting nonsense?

joshumax 9y ago
I've always thought of it this way: Over millions and millions of years of evolution, many mammals (including us) adapted our vision centers to quickly process large chunks of environmental information by developing a series of beneficial hard-wired processing networks in the visual cortex. These neural pathways allow us to do things like subconsciously notice small movement or even judge distances fairly accurately without parallax. Most of the time it works pretty well; I mean, it kept us as a species alive up to today. However, illusions like this "exploit" the "visual hacks" our brain uses (that allow us to process such large amounts of visual data so quickly) by creating objects that don't (or can't) exist in nature. Our brains are fairly picky about things like depth-of-field and textural shading and oftentimes their limits can be demonstrated by simply playing with a few colors and changing a few angles.
- brute 9y ago
  Cats that grow up in an environment without any horizontal lines are unable to see horizontal lines [1]. This indicates that it might not be as much "evolution made me recognize these shapes" as it is "I learned to recognize these shapes since I see them often", which is more inline with OP's explanation. Of course evolution plays into what you are able to learn to recognize in the first place. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-food/201404/the-cat-nobel-prize-part-ii https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-food/201404/the-c...
amelius 9y ago
I wonder why evolution has not exploited this more.
- lithos 9y ago
  It probably has, it's just that after it has been exploited it becomes a default part of everythings sensory kit.
- teddythetwig 9y ago
  It has, think about natural camouflage like zebras. It short circuits the predators ability to pick out individual herd members.
  - brute 9y ago
    Minor correction: Predators like lions have no problem distinguishing individual members of a herd. The stripes pattern messes with the way blood-sucking, disease-spreading flies (such as horse flies or tsetse flies) see the world. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kbzwpv/the-reason-zebras-have-stripes-isnt-what-you-think https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kbzwpv/the-reason...

joshumax 9y ago

I've always thought of it this way: Over millions and millions of years of evolution, many mammals (including us) adapted our vision centers to quickly process large chunks of environmental information by developing a series of beneficial hard-wired processing networks in the visual cortex. These neural pathways allow us to do things like subconsciously notice small movement or even judge distances fairly accurately without parallax. Most of the time it works pretty well; I mean, it kept us as a species alive up to today. However, illusions like this "exploit" the "visual hacks" our brain uses (that allow us to process such large amounts of visual data so quickly) by creating objects that don't (or can't) exist in nature. Our brains are fairly picky about things like depth-of-field and textural shading and oftentimes their limits can be demonstrated by simply playing with a few colors and changing a few angles.

brute 9y ago
Cats that grow up in an environment without any horizontal lines are unable to see horizontal lines [1]. This indicates that it might not be as much "evolution made me recognize these shapes" as it is "I learned to recognize these shapes since I see them often", which is more inline with OP's explanation. Of course evolution plays into what you are able to learn to recognize in the first place. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-food/201404/the-cat-nobel-prize-part-ii https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-food/201404/the-c...

amelius 9y ago

I wonder why evolution has not exploited this more.

lithos 9y ago
It probably has, it's just that after it has been exploited it becomes a default part of everythings sensory kit.
teddythetwig 9y ago
It has, think about natural camouflage like zebras. It short circuits the predators ability to pick out individual herd members.
- brute 9y ago
  Minor correction: Predators like lions have no problem distinguishing individual members of a herd. The stripes pattern messes with the way blood-sucking, disease-spreading flies (such as horse flies or tsetse flies) see the world. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kbzwpv/the-reason-zebras-have-stripes-isnt-what-you-think https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kbzwpv/the-reason...