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SilasBarta comments on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? - Less Wrong
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That's a pet peeve of mine: that illusion belongs to class of illusions of the form, "If you saw this in real life, your perception would be right. But it's a 2D picture, so you're wrong."
It's exactly the same as taking this standard optical illusion, and instead of claiming the A/B squares are the same color, saying "This image has no squares. Verify it for yourself!" (i.e. in the plane of the image, nothing makes a square, but it's understood to represent a perspective image of squares)
Nothing wrong with exploring these -- they're very informative about how our perceptual system works -- but please understand what's going on.
I can see, then, how a culture not expecting perspective images, can interpret them as flat and not fall prey to these illusions.
Another thing I thought about is that there weren't that many straight lines and right angles in the ancestral environment, so i think it's likely that the module in the brain for "getting" perspective doesn't come from a blueprint in the DNA but rather it arises in response to stimuli in the early life. If this is right, there might be differences between people who spent their early childhood in rural vs urban environments.
An old psychology professor of mine once gave an anecdote of a tiger that was kept in a cylindrical room during its early phases of development. It grew up to have a warped sense of spatial awareness and was unable to function properly for the most part. I don't know the details surrounding the story, so I can't confirm it right now, but I'll see if I can find the study (assuming it does exist).