Convinced you have a good grip on reality? Then try these illusions spotted on Discover’s D-brief blog:
With one Facebook post, Japanese psychology professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka has sent the internet into fits.
Look at the image above, and try to see all 12 black dots at once. Good luck. Honest, we aren’t playing tricks on you. Your eyes are literally deceiving you.
Kitaoka posted this image on Sunday, which has since been shared over 10,000 times, and got a further viral boost when video game developer Will Kerslake shared the image on his Twitter page, and it quickly appeared on Reddit. Now, we’re all hopelessly chasing black dots.
And while the point of D-brief and Professor Kitaoka is the inability to see what’s there, I draw a wider point – the problem of seeing reality. This may be where the fissure between scientists and believers begins, because believers often only want to believe what their senses convey to them, with the unspoken assumption that their sensory equipment is excellent and believable.
As this illusion demonstrates, this is simply not true. There are certain configurations of reality which are really difficult to sense, and then to understand. It may be due to our frail sensory apparatus, our weak eyes, our sad little noses, our dull ears. Or it can be simply that we don’t deal well with time, we don’t see hyperobjects because we’re just not constructed to operate on those scales.
Whatever it is, it pays to wonder about one’s perceptions from time to time.
