Back when this blog was but a wee young thing I talked about optical illusions ( here), and discussed for a while about how our minds have a terrifyingly strong filter between the 'real world' and the simplified version of reality our conscious mind works with on a daily basis (see old post for more detail).
I had nearly forgotten about how freaked out Iused to be about this until I saw this image:
Clicky for big. If somebody could find out who the origianl author is I'd appreciate being told as I just found this image on my hard drive!
The central crossbar (X) shaped junctions are the same colour in each of the two structures. I still don't really believe it, but have checked for myself with photoshop. This one picture serves as a horrible (or wonderful, I guess it depends on how you look at this sort of thing) reminder that the way we see things is coloured by what they are surrounded by. This really serves as a stark reminder that it is exactly the same mechanism that lets us know that a bright white reflection from a piece of coal is actually black, or that a table we see in low-light conditions is actually bright red that make our brains fill in the gaps in completely the wrong way here.
Although I know intellectually that my conscious mind couldn't handle being bombarded with every single piece of infomation my senses recieve and that it absolutely must make some shortcuts and assumptions to operate in everyday life it still scares me to have it driven home like this.
I had nearly forgotten about how freaked out Iused to be about this until I saw this image:
Clicky for big. If somebody could find out who the origianl author is I'd appreciate being told as I just found this image on my hard drive!
The central crossbar (X) shaped junctions are the same colour in each of the two structures. I still don't really believe it, but have checked for myself with photoshop. This one picture serves as a horrible (or wonderful, I guess it depends on how you look at this sort of thing) reminder that the way we see things is coloured by what they are surrounded by. This really serves as a stark reminder that it is exactly the same mechanism that lets us know that a bright white reflection from a piece of coal is actually black, or that a table we see in low-light conditions is actually bright red that make our brains fill in the gaps in completely the wrong way here.
Although I know intellectually that my conscious mind couldn't handle being bombarded with every single piece of infomation my senses recieve and that it absolutely must make some shortcuts and assumptions to operate in everyday life it still scares me to have it driven home like this.
Labels: opticalillusion
