Illusions
Archived Posts from this Category
August 26, 2009
A lot of people find it hard to believe, but if you open the picture in Photoshop and measure the color values, you will see that it’s true…
I don’t have Photoshop so I just held pieces of paper up to the screen and looked at A and B only, with all the context blocked out and yes, they are the same color.
The senses are imperfect and subject to illusion.
May 7, 2009
You can turn down the volume and watch it first, then turn up the volume and hear the explanation.
January 28, 2009
Regular readers will know I am quite illusioned, ergo I like optical illusions and have a whole category dedicated to them. Here is one that is quite literally an “optical illusion”.
Of course the biggest illusion is that the material world is the only reality. To get beyond that we need to find a teacher so we can…
What do we need to learn?
“By the spell of illusion one tries to be happy by serving his personal sense gratification in different forms which will never make him happy. Instead of satisfying his own personal material senses, he has to satisfy the senses of the Lord.”
Bhagavad Gita Preface
Maya, thinking that the material world is it, is sometimes defined as “This is me, that is mine.”
But as Prabhupada says above, we can never be happy unless we look beyond “Me”…
September 26, 2008
Even Four Month Olds Recognize Impossibility
Posted by Madhava Gosh under Illusions, ScienceLeave a Comment
Escher-themed nurseries? Even four-month-olds can recognize impossible objects
“Impossible objects” like the etchings of M.C. Escher have fascinated adults for centuries. You can’t help but stare and wonder at a drawing like this, which seems to defy the laws of nature:
The drawing seems strange to us because our visual system tells us that when an object or part of an object occludes another, it’s in front. Since the parts of the cube are all connected, it’s clear that the vertical bar in the “back” of the cube shouldn’t be in front of any other bars.
Some research has suggested that young babies don’t have the same ability as adults to determine how close objects are to them. Babies younger than 6 months, for example, aren’t able to reach the right distance for objects after seeing a three-dimensional display. But babies do recognize real objects after seeing pictures, and they recognize possible and impossible events involving solid objects. Can they recognize impossible objects?
A team led by Sarah Shuwairi showed an image like the one above to 10 four-month-olds, but with one crucial difference: the portion of the image determining whether the object was possible or impossible was obscured with a red oval:
This image was shown to them repeatedly, at least five times, until they were obviously quite bored with it (they were “habituated”). Then they were shown the entire, unobscured object. The “possible” cube was alternated with the “impossible” cube six times, so each cube was viewed a total of three times. An experimenter watching on video pressed a button when the baby looked at the cubes, so that the total looking time for each type of object could be computed. Here are the results:
The babies looked significantly longer at the impossible cube, suggesting that this was a surprising or novel object to them.
The study was repeated on a new set of infants, but instead of using a realistic image, they were just shown a line-drawing. This offers much less detail, and only one method of determining whether the object is possible or impossible. This time some infants were habituated as before, while others were just shown the possible and impossible objects without habituation. Here are those results:
In both cases, once again, the babies looked at the impossible objects longer than the than the possible objects — suggesting that these objects were novel or surprising to them.
The researchers say this demonstrates that infants are able to use the relative placement of objects (occlusion) to make judgments about how far away the objects are. Even at this early age, their visual system is able to make some of the same types of depth judgments as adults are.
Perhaps more importantly, this suggests that very young infants might already be able to appreciate the work of M.C. Escher!
July 13, 2008
In this illusion, leaning toward the center leads to the brightness expanding outward, while leaning away does the opposite. Credit: Mark Changizi, RPI
Similarly our opinion of things can change depending on how close we are emotionally to the subject.
June 25, 2008
“For one who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, I am never lost, nor is he ever lost to Me.
“PURPORT
“A person in Krsna consciousness certainly sees Lord Krsna everywhere, and he sees everything in Krsna. Such a person may appear to see all separate manifestations of the material nature, but in each and every instance he is conscious of Krsna, knowing that everything is a manifestation of Krsna’s energy. Nothing can exist without Krsna, and Krsna is the Lord of everything — this is the basic principle of Krsna consciousness. Krsna consciousness is the development of love of Krsna — a position transcendental even to material liberation.”
Bg 6.30
Why don’t we see Krishna everywhere? Take the test in this video to find out why (fully realized souls, go ahead and skip this exercise).
This is, FYI, the first time I ever posted a video, which proves old dogs CAN learn new tricks. I usually avoid videos because they take so long to load on my dialup, but this is worth doing even if you have a dial up connection.
If you want to know why this phenomenon works as it does, go to this website. We are so busy consuming and gratifying our senses.
