What I am is disappointed. You brought up the "color constancy" phenomenon as an instance where "think like reality" is applicable, and then failed to follow through with an analysis of what is actually going on.
The point of this post is not to debate, discuss, or analyze color constancy. The point of the post is to talk about illusions and how we think of them as bizarre when we shouldn't.
I have not once debated color or the theories behind the illusion. All I did was use a word one way when other people use it another way. I am not trying to offer some strange, new truth about a picture. I used it as an example because people recognize it, not because that particular example matters.
EDIT: I didn't mean to sound sanctimonious (I realize I do sound sanctimonious). My main intent is to express a wish regarding what I'd like to see in future posts of this type.
I apparently have completely missed with this post. I have watched its karma swing all over the place in just a few hours and all of the 36 comments so far are talking about something I consider completely irrelevant to the intended point. The same thing happened with my last post, too, so something is very off in my expectations regarding people's responses to the post. Something I did caused you to expect something that I had absolutely no intention of providing. It sucks for you and it sucks for me.
I don't really mind you sounding sanctimonious because I don't care about our relative moral status. I find it frustrating that we had to go back and forth so long to end up where we did. I am not fully convinced my point ever did get across, but at least now I know how you perceived the post. Hopefully by the next one I will have figured out what went wrong.
I'm afraid I still don't fully understand the point of your post. I honestly don't find this illusion bizarre any more because I do understand what our visual system is reporting. You ended the post with what sounds like a request for an explanation that renders this illusion non-bizarre. I think between the various responses that has been provided. You seemed resistant to accepting that explanation initially which is probably why discussion of it took over the comments.
It is true that most illusions have an explanation that renders them non-bizarre. This one does and it has been provided. What other point(s) were you hoping to make?
Today I looked at the above illusion and thought, "Why do I keep thinking A and B are different colors? Obviously, something is wrong with how I am thinking about colors." I am being stupid when my I look at this illusion and I interpret the data in such a way to determine distinct colors. My expectations of reality and the information being transmitted and received are not lining up. If they were, the illusion wouldn't be an illusion.
The number 2 is prime; the number 6 is not. What about the number 1? Prime is defined as a natural number with exactly two divisors. 1 is an illusionary prime if you use a poor definition such as, "Prime is a number that is only divisible by itself and 1." Building on these bad assumptions could result in all sorts of weird results much like dividing by 0 can make it look like 2 = 1. What a tricky illusion!
An optical illusion is only bizarre if you are making a bad assumption about how your visual system is supposed to be working. It is a flaw in the Map, not the Territory. I should stop thinking that the visual system is reporting RGB style colors. It isn't. And, now that I know this, I am suddenly curious about what it is reporting. I have dropped a bad belief and am looking for a replacement. In this case, my visual system is distinguishing between something else entirely. Now that I have the right answer, this optical illusion should become as uninteresting as questioning whether 1 is prime. It should stop being weird, bizarre, and incredible. It merely highlights an obvious reality.
Addendum: This post was edited to fix a few problems and errors. If you are at all interested in more details behind the illusion presented here, there are a handful of excellent comments below.