Comment on Bizarre Illusions

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:19:46 GMT

But your post hasn't offered an explanation. And I don't, in fact, look at that image and think that the two squares should look like the same color.

A and B are in fact different colors, for a value of "in fact" which takes into account that the picture is a picture of something - a checkerboard. My visual system makes the correct inference, conditioned on the assumption that I'm looking at a checkerboard.

EDIT: what I should say is that I'm still surprised, knowing what I know about my visual system and how it works, when you tell me that the pixels have the same RGB values. But that's not a "reality is weird" surprise, it's more like the surprise of learning some interesting bit of trivia.

To really be totally unsurprised, I'd have to enhance not just my knowledge of the visual system, but my visual system - to include an RGB calibration system.

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