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The Optical Illusions Thread

Good moving album cover ( Fuxa - Dirty D). Makes your eyes wibbly.

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Seems like there's a lot going on in this one. Margins around the centre box seem wider at the top than the bottom corners, but they aren't! The main outside box has a dippy wobble with the hole pin marks, which seems to make the eye's ~ brain keep trying to level it up and unify it all.:pop:
 
Look at the red dot for about 30 secs then look at a wall.

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What about printing out the template and then gluing it to bristol board to give it better support?
I've managed to get my printer to accept 250gsm Bristol Board paper. I know I should wait to get some scissors and glue and learn how to do mountain folds and valley fold BEFORE I post the templates but I'm excited. I'll let you know how they turn out (unless I mess up).

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Here's an interesting article about the fact that some of how we interpret optical illusions is a result of our brain recognizing that something cannot be what we see because it is not possible, as explained in the commonly experienced "highway mirage" example:

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/s...l-science/do-our-brains-see-what-our-eyes-see
I suppose when you know it's just a mirage, then the brain knows it's just a mirage, and adjusts the interpretation of input from the eye as visually being a distorted truth?
 
I suppose when you know it's just a mirage, then the brain knows it's just a mirage, and adjusts the interpretation of input from the eye as visually being a distorted truth?
My take away was that we know it's a mirage, but think it looks like water on the pavement; however the actual image in the mirage is the sky. We see it as water because our brain refuses to see sky because it's not a possibility for our brain.

After rereading, perhaps that is what you already said in your post:)
 
My take away was that we know it's a mirage, but think it looks like water on the pavement; however the actual image in the mirage is the sky. We see it as water because our brain refuses to see sky because it's not a possibility for our brain.

After rereading, perhaps that is what you already said in your post:)
My brain tells me it more-or-less was 'brownmane,' but then along comes doubt, so could also be a sort of distorted truth!
 
Here's an interesting article about the fact that some of how we interpret optical illusions is a result of our brain recognizing that something cannot be what we see because it is not possible, as explained in the commonly experienced "highway mirage" example:

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/s...l-science/do-our-brains-see-what-our-eyes-see
"A 2019 study sought to find exactly where perception lies in the hierarchy of visual processing". In other words Biologists with access to a MRI scanner are covering the same ground (vision vs perception) that experimental Psychologists have been banging on about for the past 50 years.
 
"A 2019 study sought to find exactly where perception lies in the hierarchy of visual processing". In other words Biologists with access to a MRI scanner are covering the same ground (vision vs perception) that experimental Psychologists have been banging on about for the past 50 years.
I would suspect, only from the explanation of the highway mirage, that our brain over rules what we actually see. VERY interesting from a Fortean perspective.
 
Links, I think, with a tendency to perceive detail rather than a whole picture?
Maybe manifests as perceiving detail, as opposed to an interpretation of what is there based on a context derived from social cues.

In contrast, introverts are detail orientated because they have an innate capacity for doing so - and don't necessarily miss social cues.

Is there any suggestion that autistic folk have difficulty with depth perception?
 
Is there any suggestion that autistic folk have difficulty with depth perception?

Yes ... Depth perception issues have long been one of the most commonly cited symptoms of visual side-effects in autistic children. I don't know whether this and other commonly cited visual issues persist into adulthood.
 
There is some evidence that autistics have a tendency to see what their eyes see, rather than what their brain sees.
Interesting. If we go back to the frequently -posited idea that adult brains (and here I am taking that noun to mean neurotypical brains) simply filter out anomalous visual input as it does not mesh with expectations, then is this ^^ an argument against the objective reality of many Fortean phenomena? Unless there is a large corpus of reports from autistic people that I don't know of.
 
Interesting. If we go back to the frequently -posited idea that adult brains (and here I am taking that noun to mean neurotypical brains) simply filter out anomalous visual input as it does not mesh with expectations, then is this ^^ an argument against the objective reality of many Fortean phenomena? Unless there is a large corpus of reports from autistic people that I don't know of.
Maybe it's just that they (autistic people) don't have the means, or so much need, to question or to quantify, what they see. . . other than, 'it is?'
 
Maybe it's just that they (autistic people) don't have the means, or so much need, to question or to quantify, what they see. . . other than, 'it is?'
Maybe that's true for some, sure. But not every autistic person experiences their autism in the same way. Certainly, I'm aware I have a strong urge to categorise and quantify (although, of course, that exact same caveat applies here, too). There are at least some autistic people for whom the next stage, after the "it is", would likely be "it's odd, though." And that response might lead them to share their experience with others.
 
Krepostnoi: It's not simply about filtering out. It's about creating a cohesive whole, from disparate sensory input. That means some thing might get left out, but sometimes things are also made up. This can also depend on expectations, such as in which setting it happens.
 
Yes ... Depth perception issues have long been one of the most commonly cited symptoms of visual side-effects in autistic children. I don't know whether this and other commonly cited visual issues persist into adulthood.
I remember an article from some long defunct science magazine (1980s), discussing autism and autistic art. It had a technically very good drawing of someone riding a horse, drawn by a child. Of course, the child did not draw the rider's far leg, because it was not visible from the child's viewpoint. This was compared with a drawing by a non-autistic child, which was (from an artistic viewpoint) much inferior, and the rider was drawn with two legs, even though one shouldn't have been visible, because the child knew that the rider had two legs and therefore drew them. The autistic child drew what he/she saw, without necessarily comprehending it, while the non-autistic child interpreted what he/she saw and drew their understanding of what they were viewing.
 
Krepostnoi: It's not simply about filtering out. It's about creating a cohesive whole, from disparate sensory input. That means some thing might get left out, but sometimes things are also made up. This can also depend on expectations, such as in which setting it happens.
I agree - in fact, that's the point I'm driving at: if there is a group of people who tend not to embellish or otherwise augment the visual input their brains receive, and if this group of people is not reporting accounts of visual anomalies, does that tend to support the hypothesis that such accounts are in fact the result of people making things up (consciously or otherwise, perhaps influenced by expectations and contexts)? In other words, that there is no objective reality to such phenomena?
 
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I agree - in fact, that's the point I'm driving at: if there is a group of people who tend not to embellish or otherwise augment the visual input their brains receive, and if this group of people is not reporting accounts of visual anomalies, does that tend to support the hypothesis that such accounts are in fact the result of people making things up (consciously or otherwise, perhaps influenced by expectations and contexts)? In other words, that there is no objective reality to such phenomena?
Yes, lets try putting autistic fortean reports (if any) above non-autistic pilots etc.

P.S. Frideswide, do you have any links you could share?
 
Is there any suggestion that autistic folk have difficulty with depth perception?

many of us :) it's half identified as failing to merge the two etyes into one vision, but still seeing each in detail.

It's one of the things the right coloured lenses can help with.

@EnolaGaia if it's something that affects you then it's lifelong - you just get better at dealing with it. As an adult you can compensate and it's only when all your processing power is taken up elsewhere that you really become aware of the problewm.
 
The autistic child drew what he/she saw, without necessarily comprehending it

this is a way of putting things that I don't get. Was the autistic asked how many legs the rider had? I doubt it. The job was to draw what they had seen, which they did.

What does that have to do with comprehension?
 
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