RichardKennaway comments on Mind Projection Fallacy - Less Wrong

35 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 March 2008 12:29AM

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Comment author: adamzerner 27 February 2015 02:00:48AM *  4 points [-]

Optical illusions might be a good example of this. Ex. http://www.buzzfeed.com/catesish/help-am-i-going-insane-its-definitely-blue#.hfZoPkgjK

People are freaking out over what color the dress "really is". They're projecting the property of "true color" onto the real world, when in reality "true color" is only in their mind.

The way I think about it:

dress.trueColor = undefined;
dress.reflectedWavelength = someNumber;
dress.interpretedColor = function(reflectedWavelength, observer, context, lighting...) {}
Comment author: RichardKennaway 27 February 2015 08:36:44AM *  1 point [-]

People are freaking out over what color the dress "really is".

Are they, actually? Or are they freaking out over what other people say it is?

If I saw only the text of the supposed controversy I would instantly diagnose it as a hoax for clickbait. There are colour constancy illusions, but I will not believe that this is one of them until I see two people actually taking opposite sides. However, that is socially impossible to achieve, because there will always be enough people to perversely take the opposite side for the lulz. The wording of the original Tumblr post, and the buzzfeed and Wired articles, deliberately encourage this.

What colours do you see in the dress in this picture? Not in any other picture, or the real dress, but this, the original picture that started it all. Feel free to experiment with different monitors and ambient lighting (but not editing the picture) and to give details in comments.

Submitting...

Comment author: Good_Burning_Plastic 27 February 2015 01:37:34PM 1 point [-]

I see sky blue and bronze-ish brown, which I'd interpret as navy blue and black decolored by aggressive washing. I still voted "blue and black" as I'd still call clothes that color black in real life unless I'm being pedantic, and there's no way I'd call them gold.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 27 February 2015 03:21:45PM 0 points [-]

Here and here are two fragments of the picture I linked, expanded but otherwise unaltered, and saved in an uncompressed format. Compression artefacts from the original are clearly visible, but please ignore these and attend only to the overall colours.

Again, this question asks only about your experience of the colours, not any guesses you might make about what you would see if you were there, nor what colours you can convince yourself you might be able to see.

Submitting...

Comment author: Good_Burning_Plastic 27 February 2015 11:22:10PM 0 points [-]

If I didn't know where these came from and I was doing an XKCD color survey-like thing, I'd call the colors in the first bronze and mauve and those in the latter black and indigo. (I'm not a native English speaker.) I'd call the difference between the two blacks "striking" but not the difference between the two blues, so I picked "Just show me the results".

Comment author: satt 28 February 2015 05:36:51PM 0 points [-]

I wouldn't go as far as to call it a striking difference, but I perceive the first image's colours as lighter and more washed out than the second's.

Comment author: satt 28 February 2015 05:33:30PM 1 point [-]

If I saw only the text of the supposed controversy I would instantly diagnose it as a hoax for clickbait. There are colour constancy illusions, but I will not believe that this is one of them until I see two people actually taking opposite sides.

My introduction to this illusion was walking into the office yesterday morning, and having a co-worker show me the picture on their monitor while asking what colour the dress was. The office split fairly evenly between white & gold versus blue & black, and nobody seemed to be kidding/trolling.

The weird specificity of a couple of people's experiences also suggested they were being serious. One person who originally saw white & gold, after skimming blog posts discussing/explaining the illusion, eventually said they could kiiiinda see how it could be seen as blue & black (but that could've been a social conformity effect). Another person saw the dress as white & gold on their computer screen, but saw it as visibly blue & black when viewing their screen's image through someone's smartphone, which presented it with lower brightness.

So I deem this legit. I think this illusion messes with people so successfully by turning the relatively well-known brightness/saturation illusion (as in the checker shadow illusion) into a colour illusion, by exploiting the facts that (1) very light blue looks white, (2) brown looks like yellow/gold or black depending on intensity, and (3) perceived intensity depends on the surroundings as well as the region of focus.

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