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> “We assume our perception is a perfect reflection of the physical world around us, but this study shows that each of us has a unique visual fingerprint,” I d

> “We assume our perception is a perfect reflection of the physical world around us, but this study shows that each of us has a unique visual fingerprint,” I don’t think anyone makes that assumption. I think most people know we don’t actually “see” the physical world, our eyes receive electrical signals from photons and our brain interprets those signals and for lack of a better word we hallucinate the physical world (in the form of the visual light spectrum). By its very nature, from a common sense point of view photons don’t hit our eyes at the same time or the same angle; therefore, electric impulses will be different reflected Differently in our hallucinations. And even if 2 people had the same distance/angle, there are sometimes other issues differentiating our hallucinations, just one example being color blindness, where for various reasons one person hallucinates different colors than another based on the same electric impulses from photons. Even without color blindness this happens regularly (think of the blue/white dress vs black/gold viral photo a few years back)

nerdponx 6y ago
I think many educated people cognitively "know" this, or at least have heard it from somewhere. But I also think that the majority of people, educated or not, don't feel this in their actual lived experience. Your brain does a good job of telling you that what you see is what is.
dan_hawkins 6y ago
Anecdotally I've always perceived that dress as blue/brown from the very beginning and I can't "switch" my vision to perceive it otherwise. It's incomprehensible to me that someone can see it as blue/white or even worse as black/gold :)
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I don't want to trigger another thread about this old image, but I will point out that there are significant differences in monitor gamut and gamma across devices. Some cheap laptop LCDs crush blacks and whites significantly if you aren't looking at perpendicular dead center. It is for this reason that using light blue or light yellow backgrounds to demarcate ads is sinister -- one can A/B test their marker into literal invisibility for many users.
  - dan_hawkins 6y ago
    I'm an amateur photographer and have got quite good monitors that I calibrate regularly :) But I've got trained sight, especially for color balance because of that - I can see people faces greenish when they stand under a tree in a sunny day so that's that.
- Izkata 6y ago
  On the flipside, I've experienced the dress thing before the dress itself - for me, it was entirely the difference between being used to sunlight vs indoor light. If I was currently used to the brighter sunlight I'd see it one way, after adjusting to indoor blue-r light I'd see it the other way. After realizing that cause, I was able to change how I viewed the dress willingly.

nerdponx 6y ago

I think many educated people cognitively "know" this, or at least have heard it from somewhere. But I also think that the majority of people, educated or not, don't feel this in their actual lived experience. Your brain does a good job of telling you that what you see is what is.

dan_hawkins 6y ago

Anecdotally I've always perceived that dress as blue/brown from the very beginning and I can't "switch" my vision to perceive it otherwise. It's incomprehensible to me that someone can see it as blue/white or even worse as black/gold :)

nitrogen 6y ago
I don't want to trigger another thread about this old image, but I will point out that there are significant differences in monitor gamut and gamma across devices. Some cheap laptop LCDs crush blacks and whites significantly if you aren't looking at perpendicular dead center. It is for this reason that using light blue or light yellow backgrounds to demarcate ads is sinister -- one can A/B test their marker into literal invisibility for many users.
- dan_hawkins 6y ago
  I'm an amateur photographer and have got quite good monitors that I calibrate regularly :) But I've got trained sight, especially for color balance because of that - I can see people faces greenish when they stand under a tree in a sunny day so that's that.
Izkata 6y ago
On the flipside, I've experienced the dress thing before the dress itself - for me, it was entirely the difference between being used to sunlight vs indoor light. If I was currently used to the brighter sunlight I'd see it one way, after adjusting to indoor blue-r light I'd see it the other way. After realizing that cause, I was able to change how I viewed the dress willingly.