Nothing you see is real

[dunkyb]

I got into a debate recently (No not THAT one!) about how humans see things. My argument was that very little of what we perceive is actually what we see, instead our brain is filling in the blanks with what we expect to see. I've noticed this inside my own head when people's clothing has changed between what I saw when they were running up in the

Comments

[rjw76]

That's seriously cool. Though I could never get the pink dots to go away entirely- they followed the green one like a trail. Which was pretty.

[dunkyb]

I think that suggests your eyes are still moving a little (subconciously following the green one).

One debate I remember had people swearing blind (lol!) that there WAS a green dot there, programmed into the site.

[rjw76]

That figures. I'm basically incapable of not reading things put in front of me, even if I try...

[king_of_wrong]

That illusion isn't the brain, though, it's retinal processing - minimising similarity and exaggerating differences. After a few seconds, your eyes adjust to the pink dots always being there, and you (should) stop seeing them and then see the inverse (green) dot where the hole is.

That said, the brain is really quite unreliable in its own right. There is recent evidence from functional-MRI scans that the effect from the Asch Conformity Experiment actually changes perception, rather than being just conflict avoidance. There's evidence that having beautiful friends improves others' perception of your attractiveness.

Of course, on the flip-side, you have the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is utter bollocks. Or, at least, the vast majority of claims made from it are: there's no credible evidence that language affects perception.

[agenticarus]

Poor Brian :(

[king_of_wrong]

Welease Wodewick!