SilasBarta comments on Bizarre Illusions - Less Wrong

11 Post author: MrHen 27 January 2010 06:25PM

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Comment author: MrHen 27 January 2010 11:22:22PM 0 points [-]

Okay. Do you think it would be valuable to just edit the post in place?

As best as I can tell, these are the trouble paragraphs:

Today I looked at the above illusion and thought, "Why do I keep thinking A and B are different colors? Obviously, that is not what my visual system is trying to tell me." I am being stupid when my eye looks at this illusion and I interpret the data in such a way to determine distinct colors. That information is not being transmitted and received. If it were, the illusion wouldn't be an 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 system is reporting True 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. Once I have found 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 should highlight an obvious reality.

Is this better?:

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 I look at this illusion and 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 it were, the illusion wouldn't be an 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 system is reporting True 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, the visual system is distinguishing between [what term goes here?], not individual RGB style colors. Now that I have right answer, this optical illusion should become as uninteresting as questioning whether 1 is prime. It stops being weird, bizarre, and incredible. It merely highlights an obvious reality.

Comment author: SilasBarta 27 January 2010 11:26:23PM 1 point [-]

It sounds like you're trying to come up with a sentence or two that captures all of the insight on color that the commenters have given. While I'm a big fan of summarizing, and a big critic of those who can't, I don't think you can get it to work here. Instead of your final bolded change (the others are good), just point to or quote a few good comments that show what the visual system is doing, and how the optical illusions trick it.

Comment author: MrHen 27 January 2010 11:33:58PM *  0 points [-]

How about:

In this case, the visual system is not trying to distinguish between individual RGB style colors (more details in the comments).

EDIT: I updated it with something similar. Hopefully it was an improvement. :) Thanks again for your help (which isn't to say that I wouldn't mind more help...)

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