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Perceptual Illusions
- Fred27 8y agoThose are particularly good examples of optical illusions. Normally these sort of articles are disappointing, but I'd not seen many of those before. Very tempted to order one of those mugs.
- drcode 8y agoLOL, that mug may win "best illusion of 2018" but definitely would also win "things not to bring to the office in 2018"
- lihaciudaniel 8y agoSometimes I feel like my perception of life even can be altered. For example, positive thinking can change a lot but you live same reality. (Other examples like gratitude)
- poopchute 8y agoI've often described colour blindness as an optical illusion, and that confetti illusion is exactly what I have in mind. Peanut better has a green lid and green label which makes the slightly ambiguous brown look green. Or the walk symbol at a cross walk - usually a light is white so I just assume that walk symbol is also white (even though I now know it's green). Or the statue of liberty - it's a big rock so I assume grey, even though I know it's green. However when any of these are looked at in isolation, it's clear what their correct colours are.
- lnx01 8y agoSo, the statue of liberty isn't made of rock, it's made of Bronze, the Copper oxidised (amongst other things) eventually leaving it a bluey-green: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/the-true-color-of-the-statue-of-liberty-and-it-isnt-bluegreen/ https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/the-true-color-of-the-s...
- torgoguys 8y agoDepending on the lighted walk symbol, it may be white. I think most in the US are but some localities vary.
- mx91 8y agoStudying electrical engineering I've learned an important concept: Everything is relative. Ex: to measure the voltage, we need a reference to measure it against. I think the brain works very much the same way. Every perception of reality is processed with respect to some reference.
- torgoguys 8y agoThese are great and many were new to me. Instead of #6, the one involving moving the square from the light to dark side, I prefer the static Checker Shadow illusion[1], using the same priciple. The problem with involving electronics in it is that there always is suspicion that the machine is playing the trick instead of just your visual system. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion
- lisper 8y agoThere are no electronics in #6. That's just a piece of paper sliding back and forth over another piece of paper.
- chrisweekly 8y agoThese are awesome! I studied cognitive psych and psychobiology at UVA in the mid 90's, and my favorite class was a seminar on perception. Illusions are a great tool for learning how our visual system works. Also, they're really cool.
- chrisweekly 8y agoHere are some more good ones: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-3d-optical-illusion-will-make-you-question-the-shape-of-known-reality-kokichi-sugihara https://www.sciencealert.com/this-3d-optical-illusion-will-m... ... which embeds my all-time favorite ("Ambiguous Cylinder") https://youtu.be/oWfFco7K9v8 https://youtu.be/oWfFco7K9v8
- graedus 8y agoThese are cool. FYI some of the images are displayed at the wrong aspect ratio. The final example in particular is pretty squished, I recommend opening the image in its own tab.
- mrbonner 8y agoStill can’t subscribe to the print edition!
- jpfed 8y agoThis is a timely post, considering the 2018 Best Illusion of the Year Contest has just posted http://illusionoftheyear.com/cat/top-10-finalists/2018/ http://illusionoftheyear.com/cat/top-10-finalists/2018/ .
- otras 8y agoI was recently investigating a CSS shadow issue that looked like an uneven shadow across the bottom of an element that had a lighter section and a darker section, but it turned out to be illusion #6! I had to do the color picker method on the shadow to convince myself, and even after I had convinced myself by drawing a single color line in between, my eyes were still fooled. Very tricky!
- btilly 8y agoI used to have a printout of https://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot-snakes/index.html https://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot-snakes/index.html over my desk. People got so freaked out by a piece of paper "moving" that there were people who literally refused to go to my desk. :-)
- jpfed 8y agoI'm not clicking the link, but I'm assuming it's "rotating snakes". If other people are like me, they may have avoided it because it literally nauseates them.
- btilly 8y agoIt is. I've never heard of that reaction. People just being freaked out was fine with me. Making them actually sick would not have been.
- tlynchpin 8y agoAkiyoshi's site [0] has been serving mindwarp since .. forever? (says since 2002) That's gotta be hand wrought html - dig the hitcounter! I used to have some of these tiled on my desktop so that in true BOFH style when someone came to pester me I could click show desktop and they would forget what they came to bother me about. [0] http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html
- beanboot 8y agoIn all seriousness I dont think that the illusion works when under the influence. Which is very interesting.
- samirm 8y agowhoa, turns out some people with autism, schizophrenia and transgenderism aren't affected as much by these illusions if at all.
- BearOso 8y agoI’m always annoyed by the arrow length trick. This article calls it the “Müller-Lyer” illusion. The problem is inconsistent line caps and the joints overlapping means that the size of the line actually is changing a little. As a result, I’m not sure whether there’s an optical illusion involved or not, and, if there is, this is a poor way of demonstrating it.
- lanius 8y agoSeems like the human perceptual system is easily hacked. I wonder how close we can get to an actual Snow Crash bitmap?