Reality Check

[xelasnave]

I try to always see an alternative to the proposition being presented as a given and trust no one, my self included.

AND even when somewhat convinced the propostion is reality I leave open the possibility some fundamental fact has been twisted by perception.

Building a reality with all the information that is available is difficult and even with an absolute reliance on science it can be difficult to fit it all together....using only good stuff

But the blessing of science is it can give us a more certain grasp on reality.

alex

[CraigS]

Sure Mark .. I agree with what you say … interestingly we had another discussion on this in this thread. Bert mentioned that the so-called "Golden Rectangle" (from Euclid's Elements) was pleasing to the eye because the fovea has a similar shape. (I wasn't so sure that this, alone, would make it 'pleasing', however).

It certainly is a fascinating topic, and my view on it all is that I think our perceptions extend through many parts of the 'stack of understanding' … from intuition, all the way up to intellectualism. I read an article the other day which was about how our minds alter memories, also and this is a key influencing factor as well.

I'm sure Alex achieved mastery over all this stuff in his prior professional life, also.

Intuition is fine for avoiding that wild bear about to eat ya .. but when it comes to analysing astronomical images for the purpose of distinguishing physical behaviours, it just isn't particularly well-suited (and this might very well be deemed to be a very un-natural pursuit).

Cheers

[avandonk]

It is far more daunting than even this simple example. A search for optical illusions would give you far more examples.

Jack Pettigrew is analysing this with scientific rigour. His site is here.

http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/jack.html


Have a look here first for a few 'illusions'.

http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/rivalry.html


We have evolved as creatures that had to make split second decisions for our survival. It does not matter if the predator was brown or green as long as you saw it in time to not get eaten.

Synthesis is an obvious proof where the sensory inputs are completely misinterpreted. Vincent Van Gogh had this gift or affliction.



The illusion I find the scariest of all is that people think that the stock exchange and 'managed investments' are real. They are not. It is one big Ponzi scheme to enrich the insiders.

Another area of interest is the so called psychics that use cold reading and other standard methodology to part you from your money. Organised religions fall into this same category.

Bert

[CraigS]

This Pettigrew guy seems pretty serious about animal characteristics and what it means for humans !

As an aside, the top ten finalist illusions for the 2011 7th Annual "Illusions of the Year Contest" is here. They're well worth a squizz !

They're all pretty neat, but the "Grouping by Contrast" one, which one second prize is simply awesome. (Mind you, the first one is a corker as well !)

Cheers

[multiweb (Marc)]

This dancer silhouette in one of Bert's links, where you see the girl spinning one way or the other reminded me of another effect you get when you work on 3D CAD softwares. In the old days (pre windows, DOS days) you spent hours meshing models and building triangular faces by joining isolated vertices anti-clockwise. Realtime shading didn't exist yet. That was called rendering back then and took a few hours to do . Anyway every now and then you'd loose your perception of what was in front of or in the back of the plane you were currently working on. When this happened the trick was to check your monitor looking in a mirror and your brain would snap back into gear. We all had small mirrors on our desk for that purpose.

[avandonk]

Exactly it is all about left and right brain dominance of visual perception. Please read Jack's papers.

Bert

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by avandonk

Exactly it is all about left and right brain dominance of visual perception. Please read Jack's papers.

Bert

Ahhh .. the amazing paradoxes of 'consensual' science …

… Not according to this guy …

Study debunks myth about popular optical illusion (update).

A psychology professor has found that the way people perceive the Silhouette Illusion, a popular illusion that went viral and has received substantial online attention, has little to do with the viewers' personality, or whether they are left or right-brained, despite the fact that the illusion is often used to test these attributes in popular e-quizzes.

Niko Troje says that a reported preference for seeing the silhouette spinning clockwise rather than counter-clockwise is dependent upon the angle at which the viewer is seeing the image.

He says it also effects the perception bias of the Necker Cube illusion.

His paper is here.

Cheers

[Amunous (Michael)]

I would like to know how figments of my imagination are able to talk to each other and discuss this topic in this forum. Which i also imagined up.

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by Amunous

I would like to know how figments of my imagination are able to talk to each other and discuss this topic in this forum. Which i also imagined up.

Me too.

When you find out, let us know how you went about it, eh ?

Cheers

[TheDecepticon]

I think the matrix has got into your heads too deep and you all need to take the blue pill!!

[avandonk]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Ahhh .. the amazing paradoxes of 'consensual' science …

… Not according to this guy …

Study debunks myth about popular optical illusion (update).



He says it also effects the perception bias of the Necker Cube illusion.

His paper is here.

Cheers

A very doubtful bit of work from someone who does not know what he is doing. I can get twenty Collingwood supporters to say they only see the world in black and white.

How do you explain the periodical reversing of all these 'illusions'? Check out the rotating spheres where there is no illumination or depth cue. Jack is a member of the Royal Society or FRS so he is no lightweight.

By the way the period between reversals is observer dependant. It is not about left/right hemisphere dominace but an oscillation where each is dominant in turn. This can be modulated by external magnetic fields!

Bert

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by avandonk

A very doubtful bit of work from someone who does not know what he is doing. I can get twenty Collingwood supporters to say they only see the world in black and white.

How do you explain the periodical reversing of all these 'illusions'? Check out the rotating spheres where there is no illumination or depth cue. Jack is a member of the Royal Society or FRS so he is no lightweight.

By the way the period between reversals is observer dependant. It is not about left/right hemisphere dominace but an oscillation where each is dominant in turn. This can be modulated by external magnetic fields!

Bert

Bert, fortunately my life doesn't seem to be immediately threatened by adopting one view over the other, so I'll choose to stand in a 'don't care' mode.

If pressed, as it stands at the moment, I think I'd be likely to go with your convincing arguments in favour of Jack Pettigrew's explanation .. but only if pressed.

But notice how easy it is to take sides, eh ?
And my original point was that:

For me, excluding any area of legitimate science, only results in not being able to see through some of the illusions.

Both authors speak of several different illusions and as it comes down to the causes behind how we perceive visual messages, I can see a lot of very good reasons to remain in "don't care", and "soak it all up", modes.
So, keeping true to that statement, I'll attempt to keep both perspectives in mind, and run like hell next time I see a rotating object !

Cheers

[avandonk]

We are back to science being counterintuitive.

Have a look at this bloke's vids on utube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/10thdim


I have not made up my mind yet but it sounds very much like hand waving science.

Bert

[CraigS]

Hmm .. I don't know about our bodies appearing as an 'embryonic snake-like' object in the 4th dimension. We all move in the other three dimensions as time passes, so the pictorial representation of our bodies still needs to include some kind of representation in the other three dimensions, as time passes. The more time that passes, the more blurring of this so-called 'embryonic snake'.

I'm not so sure about the 'paths' or 'branches', being as a result of choices we make, either. This would seem to suggest a second sub-dimension for time alone (??).

Anyway, my initial motivations for this thread (if you're wondering), although admittedly somewhat obscure, was for me to research a line of enquiry I currently have going which asserts that we seem to be continually seeking order in everything we see around us .. even in the face of overwhelming evidence (in terms of quantity of examples) that the universe consists of both order and disorder, even from within the same system (sampled at different times).

The 'Nuggets' thread, got me thinking about entropy and systems. Our brains (and in this case our visual perception 'system'), seem to have a dominating bias towards constructing order from the patterns we see, (and even the explanations for them), and yet, is still prone to compiling those patterns in ambiguous ways, even to the extent of flipping them around randomly in time. The ambiguity gives us the real experience of disorder .. which results in a conundrum for us (or so it seems).

What to make of all this ?? .. I'm not sure … or brains are clearly the result of disordered processes, and yet we spend most of our time in orderly pursuits .. always striving to increase the orderliness of things around us !

Cheers

[avandonk]

The human brain like all others will change itself to it's environment. It is called brain plasticity. We cannot be disconnected from our environment or history of experiences. Without memory we do not exist. Yet this memory is built from inputs that are quite problematical and a memory far from perfect.

When you are born it takes all your efforts to eat burp **** and piss. At the end of your life you barely achieve this without help!

What happens in between these two end states is up to you.

Bert

[CraigS]

So, by the same reasoning, our immediate environment is also a function of internal and external causes. There is no such thing as isolation of either the human 'system' … or of the environment for which humans are well suited. Both display ordered and disordered behaviours (at varying levels).

Sometimes I wonder why are we so focused on predictions ..


Cheers

[multiweb (Marc)]

Right now I see Craig and Bert spinning around but I can't make up my mind if it's going clockwise or anti-clockwise

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Craig there is no doubt that we live the consequences of our choices. It's not a matter of anything other than the exercise of will. Poor choices lead to poor outcomes. I think the delusion is believing that we can act without impunity. However we choose, we affect others besides ourselves.

Our senses are merely limited, whereas the orderly pursuits of our mind is where we really sit in terms of who and what we are. The body is a vehicle for something much greater indeed, us! I!

[xelasnave]

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have.'

Albert Einstein
(1879-1955


alex