Human observations

[IATIA]

There was a recent thread that had some discussion on observations.

Our senses are easily fooled.

[Nine]

Our brains like to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately they are not very good at it.

[Welsh cake]

There was a recent thread that had some discussion on observations.

Our senses are easily fooled.

Yes, our senses are easily fooled, but not this time, or at least, I wasn't tricked.

It asked if squares A and B were the same colour. I immediately said "yes" and thought that was a trick. I didn't think it was a colour illusion at all. Maybe my monitor's too good for it to work. Hmph. ~_~

[jonb]

It is not your senses that that are fooled. The information coming into your brain is correct, the problem is within the brain on how it categorises that information. I know this may only seem a semantic difference, but it is an important one.

[Rayaan]

I think this one has the most powerful effect:



The tables above appear to have totally different dimensions.

But, actually, they're the same!

http://www.psychworld.com/optical-illusi...es-2011-01

---

There's more amazing optical illusions in this thread:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-6331.html

[jonb]

Just look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttd0YjXF0no

[Angrboda]

Thank you, Rayaan. That is indeed powerful.

I'll have to catch your video later, jonb. It looks interesting, but not tonight.

I won't say any of these truly surprised me. I have a life long interest in cognitive bias and other ways in which the mind and the senses misperceive things. As such, the "visual" illusions are a category I don't spend a lot of time on, but enough to have seen most of these effects before. What is not often clearly understood about these "visual" illusions is that there is a basic problem involved in categorizing them. In some, it appears clear that the misrepresentation occurs because the processing on the way to the brain results in the message being processed incorrectly. Then there are those for which the message to the brain appears largely correctly intact, but the brain improperly processes it on its own terms. However for many, many "visual" illusions, it's not entirely clear whether to lay blame at the source or the endpoint, or neither, or both. So in that fundamental sense, some of these illusions are not truly satisfactorily parsed and explained. Or that's what I've gathered from my reading, anyway; as noted, this hasn't been a priority for me, so perhaps I have my understanding here all cattywumpus. I would have to read more to know. But thank you all for the examples. They are indeed very hard for the mind to accept even though, at a higher level, the mind "knows" it should accept them as being other than "what they appear to the mind's eye." A fascinating area, but one I likely will omit to research further at this juncture.

Thanks again.

[jonb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhoSqSHMIAc

Now when you look at that room, no matter how hard you try, the illusion of it being square predominates. This is not an effect of watching it on video. I have seen one constructed and looking through a window into the actual rood the effect is only too apparent. Our minds have an inherent belief in the room being square and consequently that presumption affects what we think we see even when we know the anomaly cannot be correct. Isn’t that interesting? Next time you converse with a christian and they will not move from the view point that they have evidence there is a god, remember this room. They have been trained to see a god, they might actually because of this training be experiencing an effect just as strong as you are when you see this room.

[Rayaan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAXm0dIuyug

[jonb]

Do you know Escher's work?


Now it has been made



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v2xnl6LwJE