psychology
reviews
11
Anyone, including those who saw white and gold, will notice that the lighting is uncommonly dim. So the contrast is evident and intense- a bit like when we take pictures with flash at night and see ghostly impressions in our final product. Dress
We can acknowledge this mentally, but the connection of the brain with the eyes is the real player here that can make the difference in our perception of the same picture. That rare 30% of blue-and-black viewers were actually able to convince their own eyes to adjust the lighting for them, and in doing so were able to bypass the instinct of their rod cells to identify the contrast as white rather than blue. They rely more on color, and because their cone cells made the connection with their instinct the picture adjusted in front of their eyes! The white-and-gold viewers, on the other hand, have more reliance on their rod cells and made the contrast connection before the color.
It’s just a reminder that our mental perception is really what causes sight, and brings to mind some of our favorite schoolyard conundrums.
If you’ve ever heard that color is a figment of the mind, you may also have heard of theories rendering other concrete concepts illusionary; some say that human interaction is an illusion, others action and many surroundings. There are even some who suggest that the mind may be the only thing that isn’t an illusion, and this school of thought plays into something called solipsism. I guess we can go about solipsists in two ways, then- some may be resting easy and subscribing to the escalation of what they believe to be far-fetched fantasies, and other may be forever restless and searching to make sense of their illusions. We call the latter scientists.
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