5 ms·
The Illusion Machine That Teaches Us How We See
- chairmankaga 12y agoThere's a video game titled echochrome that touches on this phenomena. Its puzzle platformer where you have to navigate around obstacles by positioning the camera into various positions until a path forward or the obstacle is obscured by the illusion being projected. Very cool!
- devindotcom 12y agoOn that note, try Antichamber and Perspective, both of which toy very effectively with your perception of 3D spaces.
- xemoka 12y agoAlso check out monument valley, they just released an expansion too if you've already played it.
- Kapow 12y agoThere's also Naya's Quest, a free browser game by the creator of VVVVVV. It uses a diagonal isometric view and lets you rotate the camera around to see where the platforms really are. Even with that, it's tricky.
- mtdewcmu 12y agoCool. It seems to make the common argument that "since evolution is random, it makes mistakes, therefore we see illusions." I disagree with this logic. I think it would be truer to say "since visual processing resources are (inherently) limited, evolution makes trade-offs, therefore we see illusions." I see jumping to the most-likely conclusion about what we see as more of a power-minimizing and performance-maximizing trade-off than a design flaw.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoIt may be a mistake to assume evolution 'designed' anything at all. Its a drunkard's walk over the solution space. As soon as a relative optimum point is reached, evolution tends to stick there and not search for further, more-optimum solutions. Witness the 'thumb' of a panda, which is uses to strip leaves from the eucalyptus branch. It has a thumb (toe on its paw) but no, evolution chose to extend a wrist bone in a kind of protuberance; the panda pulls the branch between that and its arm to strip leaves. Not ideal; kinda weird really. But evolution doesn't give a flip.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mtdewcmu 12y agoHow optimum the solution is is related to how important and conserved the system is. The visual system is very old, and it has unquestionably been subject to intense selective pressure.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoThen explain the half-dozen entirely different vision systems extant right now? They are very different; they have all been under selective pressure.
- mtdewcmu 12y agoIt would be interesting to see if they all succumb to the same kinds of illusions. I guess the important question is whether these illusions are arbitrary and reflect arbitrary choices by evolution, or if they are fundamentally hard and would be hard for any hypothetical vision system. My hunch is that they are fundamentally hard.
- mtdewcmu 12y agoEvolution doesn't design, clearly. But its solutions are not determined by chance alone, either. The shapes of the solutions are partly determined by the contours of the available solution space. It's sort of like pressing soft material into a mold, I think. The trajectories of the individual bits of material are governed by chance; but after applying and releasing pressure, the macroscopic object invariably forms itself in the image of the mold.