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Houshalter comments on This is your brain on ambiguity - Less Wrong
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No matter how hard I try, I can't see the dancer on her right foot. Its not possible!
Here you go.
Can you easily make a version that has the coloured cues on the upper part of her body going in opposite directions from those on the lower part? It would be interesting to see whether that suffices to make the un-cued version look as if the two parts of her body are rotating in opposite directions.
[EDITED to add: oh, wait,you didn't actually make it, did you? So I should have said: "Would anyone like to make ..."; it seems like it should be not-too-painful with a decent image editing program.]
If you cover L and look at a spot between C and R, and then cover R and look at a spot between C and L, and then cover L and look at a spot between C and R, you can make her look like she's swinging her leg left and right in front of her. =)
Also, doesn't the fact that the shadow/reflection of her moving foot is visible on the right-left suggest that her leg is further away at this point, and thus she's going anti-clockwise?
First thing I've seen that can make me see the dancer on her right foot. Weird thing is, if I look at the right side of that image, I can instantly and easily see her on her right foot, but my brain immediately defaults to seeing her on her left once I look away.
Edit - 'my' brain, not 'by' brain.
That kind of helps but it seems... I dunno, a little "artificial". I don't see it as though it was actually that way, and if I stop concentrating Its still on the left foot. Come to think of it, I never even saw it on the right foot. ERRR!
Initially, I could only see her on her right foot. After looking at Alicorn's link, I can see it either way, but only by looking at the left/right image, then looking at the center... I can't force myself to change how I see it just by looking at the un-hinted version. And whenever I look away for a few seconds and then come back to it, my brain always defaults to seeing her on her right foot.
I wonder if there's any correlation between which way people see this and any other aspects of personality, cognition etc... maybe right/left handedness?
I have to rely on the side images to switch interpretations as well. I find my ineptness at controlling my interpretation both amusing and disturbing/frustrating.
I'm right handed, and see her on her left foot- always. Also, when I look at it, it looks like the camera is locked, and the dancer is moving. Do you have to switch how you view the camera to see it the other way?
Hmmmm, I'm right handed too.
So far, I've always been seeing the camera as fixed - it hadn't occurred to me to think of it otherwise... you mean you're picturing the dancer standing still with the camera rotating around her?
No, but I thought it might be a factor in seeing her on her right foot. Maybe its just me, but I don't even see how it could be physically possible for her to be on her right foot if the cameras locked. This is frusterating.
But that is a good point, we should do a survey and see what kind of people see it which way. Maybe its just random, but I'm guessing theres a reason people see it differently. It reminds me of those people with motion sickness. As I understand it, theres nothing different about their brain or visual system, its just the way they grew up and their neurons were trained. When the image is shaky, their mind can't compensate and it confuses them. And there are different degrees of it to.
That's exactly what I thought as well.... except the other way around.
Freaky.
ETA: ok, I just looked at it again, for the first time in several hours, and now I see her on her left foot, and can't make myself see her on her right foot (opposite of before).
This keeps getting freakier and freakier. I feel like my brain is defective.
Take a coffee cup (with a side handle). Hold it level in front of your eyes, and rotate it slowly around the vertical axis (in either direction).
You can tell the way it's rotating because you see the handle coming into view in front of the cup on one side, and disappearing behind the cup on the other. Inferring the direction of spin from that is easy.
However, if the cup was covered in a magic paint which absorbed all visible light, you would no longer be able to make that distinction. What would you see? You'd see the handle shrinking and growing, alternately to the left and right. This would be ambiguous as to the direction of spin.
The dancer is the same, only more detailed, and because your brain infers a whole 3-D anatomy to go with the inferred direction of motion, it's hard to let go of the conviction that this made-up story about the direction is the "right" story.
Your brain is working perfectly fine, it just wants things to be one way or the other, rather than uncertain.
Yeah, at an intellectual level I understand all that... but it doesn't make it feel any more intuitive.
And I'm still curious as to whether there's any significance to which way a person sees it. And why my preferred direction changed after being away from it for awhile (I'm still stuck on left, if anyone's keeping score)
I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to explain the phenomenon I just witnessed. I went back to that link feeling that I might have missed something and I'd give it another try. In the first image she is clearly spinning on her left foot, the same way I always see it. I then look at the second image. Same thing. On the third image, I thought I was seeing it the way I always do, but when I looked at which foot was on the ground, it was her right! Since the foot in the middle never moves except for up and down, I wondered how it could possibly be the same image. So I compared it to the one in the middle to see if it really was the same, and both rotate exactly the same! Every pixel is the same (except the ones with color.) How could this be possible! So I looked back at the first and compared it to the one in the middle. Same thing, every pixel where it should be, and her left foot was clearly the one moving up and down. How could this be! I thought about it and came up with the idea that if the backside was similar enough the the front, you could switch between which side you saw as front/back and left/right would chang accordingly. But this is not the case, they are far to different. I am completely dumbfounded to the physics behind this. Looking at it again, I can focus on the spot between the first and the second and watch them move the same, then switch to focusing on the spot between the second and third, making her suddenly stop and turn the other direction. By switching back and forth really fast, she quickly wobbles back and forth. I begging to wonder if magic is possible.
The backside isn't just similar to the front, they are both exactly the same shade of black.
This might help you understand what's going on: if you lie on the ground and have someone trace your outline, you can't tell from the outline whether you were face up or face down.
I'm in the same boat as you.
I'm not having near so much trouble today. Yay neuroplasticity!
What works for me is to look at my finger while I spin it around, then the dancer will seem to spin in the same direction.
An interesting application of priming effects!
Hey, that works for me!
I was shocked that this didn't work for me.
I had my two older kids look at it, and that unscientific sample suggested that people may vary widely in a) their initial perceptions (one saw it CW, the other CCW), b) the fixity of their initial perceptions (one got two flips within a minute or two, I had to instruct the other).
Dunno if there has been any systematic study of this, but I'd sure be interested in how these characteristics are distributed, whether they are fixed or variable in a given individual, and so on.
Focus on her hips and hands, and when she's facing directly to the left or the right, mentally pop the far hip and hand to the near side.
Interestingly enough, illusions like this don't faze my visual artist friends. Realistically rendering a scene requires the ability to see a 3 dimensional scene as the two-dimensional projection that actually hits your eyes, and applying that skill to an illusory 3-d image is easy for them.
I usually can't get her to shift, but she shifted once for me today, and now she's stuck again. (Yes, I know it's really my mind, not her.)
I had to block out all but a tiny, tiny piece of the picture (the foot, as suggested) with my hands and concentrate in order to make the flip happen.