I’m just not seeing what obvious reality it highlights, so either I’m particularly dense or it’s not in fact obvious.
So, rephrasing: what reality is being highlighted by the “illusion” ?
Your prime number analogy suggests that it’s in fact the “both colors are the same” assertion which is an illusion. The perceptual reality is that the pixels in these areas are discriminated as different colors. The illusion consists of looking at pixel with identical RGB values and thinking “Oh, these have the same position in colorspace, I expect my brain to perceive them as identical.”
The reality suggested by the “illusion” is that this expectation doesn’t hold in general, it’s a stupid model. A smarter model would take more things into account before it predicted what our brain will perceive as identical colors.
I’m just not seeing what obvious reality it highlights, so either I’m particularly dense or it’s not in fact obvious.
[...]
But this is very much non-obvious...
Reality has been around since long before you showed up. Don’t go calling it nasty names like “bizarre” or “incredible”. The universe was propagating complex amplitudes through configuration space for ten billion years before life ever emerged on Earth. Quantum physics is not “weird”. You are weird. You have the absolutely bizarre idea that reality ought to consist of little billiard balls bopping around, when in fact reality is a perfectly normal cloud of complex amplitude in configuration space. This is your problem, not reality’s, and you are the one who needs to change.
Looking at the image it should be obvious that the colors do not look the same. This is reality. We think they should look the same even though it is obvious they don’t. Once we find the right answer to why they don’t look the same, the illusion should stop being bizarre.
If you find an explanation, return to the illusion, and still think the illusion is bizarre, than something is wrong. You fall into the category that EY is discussing in Think Like Reality.
I am convinced that most of what we consider to be fancy illusions will be considered obvious to future generations. They will look at this image and wonder why we thought it was so fascinating. When our optics system is solved it would completely ridiculous to assume that we would look at that image and think that the two squares should look like the same color.
But your post hasn’t offered an explanation. And I don’t, in fact, look at that image and think that the two squares should look like the same color.
A and B are in fact different colors, for a value of “in fact” which takes into account that the picture is a picture of something—a checkerboard. My visual system makes the correct inference, conditioned on the assumption that I’m looking at a checkerboard.
EDIT: what I should say is that I’m still surprised, knowing what I know about my visual system and how it works, when you tell me that the pixels have the same RGB values. But that’s not a “reality is weird” surprise, it’s more like the surprise of learning some interesting bit of trivia.
To really be totally unsurprised, I’d have to enhance not just my knowledge of the visual system, but my visual system—to include an RGB calibration system.
EDIT: Oh, okay, I read your edit and that makes much more sense. I agree that it may be difficult to get to the point of being unsurprised. Getting there isn’t obvious. You know you are there when you are unsurprised by the illusion. Once Reality is unsurprising and obvious, you are there.
I feel like I have lost the point of this conversation. What, in the following, do you disagree with?
The image is an optical illusion
The squares marked A and B appear to be different colors
In reality, the squares marked A and B are the same color
It is more correct to say that A and B are the same color than to say they are different colors
The reason behind the optical illusion explains why A and B appear to be different colors
This reason is contained somewhere inside of the “visual system”
It is better to not be surprised by Reality
The squares A and B should appear to be different colors
We should not be surprised when A and B look like different colors
It is incorrect to call Reality bizarre as per Think Like Reality
“Obvious” is not a good word for the opposite of “bizarre”
I disagree with #3 and #4. Also #6, mildly—it’s not just our visual system that’s at issue here, it’s our color vocabulary and our “meta” thinking about our color system that explains the “illusion”—that explains why we might think it bizarre.
Oh, okay. Well… I guess I don’t feel like debating the definition of color since that is completely irrelevant to the point of the post. I wish this was made clear earlier.
Perhaps I can answer your original question this way:
Uh? What do you mean by “obvious” in that last sentence?
It has nothing to do with the actual answer to the example illusion. What I mean is that once we have the answer to an illusion, the illusion should stop surprising us.
Neither do I feel like debating the definition of color.
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. You sound as if you are content to know that the phenomenon is in principle explicable; as if the post has done its job by demonstrating your commitment to “thinking like reality”. I would prefer you had gone deeper into the object-level analysis and offered your own explanation of what is going on in this particular case.
This is a little bit like parents who lecture their children about the importance of being truthful, vs. parents who demonstrate being truthful—and being OK with confronting unpleasant truths.
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.
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?
You ended the post with what sounds like a request for an explanation that renders this illusion non-bizarre.
This was my miscommunication. I was skipping over the explanation in an attempt to cut on length.
You seemed resistant to accepting that explanation initially which is probably why discussion of it took over the comments.
I was trying to avoid talking about the explanation because in my mind the post was only using that particular example as an example. I was perceiving the ensuing discussion as nitpicking. (And fully acknowledge that this was a communication error on my part.)
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?
That is it, that is the point. This wasn’t meant to be an awesome post of amazing new concepts. It was just connecting the dots between two subjects I hadn’t connected yet. This connection was that illusions aren’t tricky. We think they are tricky because we were expecting something different from reality.
Hopefully by the next one I will have figured out what went wrong.
My hypothesis is that you picked a misleading example to make your point. Similar color illusions are discussed in, e.g., Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”, where he discusses the kind of processing that the brain does to see color: they’re one of the best illustrations of how misleading the idea of so-called “qualia” is.
It looked like you didn’t really understand your main example. A and B are different colors, at least in terms of how the brain actually perceives color, and it sounded like you talked about them as if they were definitely the same. You wrote of the illusion as if it was mysterious and unexplained, when it has been used as a canonical demonstration of how consciousness works (Dennett’s book has something similar on the cover in one edition). This confusion made it hard for me to understand your main point.
Sometimes it is useful to ask readers for a blow-by-blow response to your writing. (See my previous post on communicating effectively, and follow the link to Richard Gabriel’s book.) Here is mine:
First para, it may help to know I didn’t follow the link at the end of your first paragraph, I kept on reading. So when you led off with “illusions are cool”, my internal narrative was “yes, illusions are cool”.
Your second para had me thinking something like, “He’s going to go past surface appearances, regarding the picture he’s posted. OK, good. Let’s keep reading.” I probably looked at the picture only at that point.
Your third para is a side-trip into number theory. It made me a little impatient, but I tried to rein that in, as I took in your point about “be careful about the definition of primeness or you will get surprising results”. I’m primed to receive some insight regarding such apparent “surprises”.
Final para and I’m pleasantly surprised at how short this post is, I may have upvoted it at this point without quite reading to the end. (Upvote later retracted, after some deliberation, for the reasons I gave.) I’m still not following links, by the way, just barely glancing at the URLs. One I did look at was the “color constancies”. I am still experiencing a feeling of approval as I read “dropped a bad belief and am looking for a replacement”. Yep, yep.
I guess what then makes me uneasy is the string of “should, should, should” in the final three sentences, capped by “obvious”. Wait, what ? I rewind to “looking for a replacement”. Forward back to “obvious”. You’re making me feel like I missed something, so I fire off a comment—in retrospect perhaps hastily—about the part of the post that right now bugs me.
In retrospect, what I was expecting that you didn’t fulfill was “I am looking for a replacement...”, setting up for ”...and here’s how I plan to do that”.
The point of your post (correct me if wrong) is “the ‘cool’ of optical illusions is an instance of the ‘weird’ that is referred to in Think Like Reality”. If that’s your entire point, it just maybe doesn’t quite deserve four paragraphs.
You bring up a specific example that has engaged your thinking. I approve of that. You make a “meta” point. I can approve of that, but provisional on your showing how your object-level thinking has benefited from the meta.
This is extremely valuable to me and I greatly appreciate it. My thoughts are below because I process with words; they are not critiques of your reading process.
First para, it may help to know I didn’t follow the link at the end of your first paragraph, I kept on reading. So when you led off with “illusions are cool”, my internal narrative was “yes, illusions are cool”.
Hmm… yeah, I didn’t predict that. The whole post was assuming that you had, at one point, read that post. Note to future self: Quote the relevant part from the prerequisite link. I skipped it this time to try cutting down words but it hurt more than helped.
Your second para had me thinking something like, “He’s going to go past surface appearances, regarding the picture he’s posted. OK, good. Let’s keep reading.” I probably looked at the picture only at that point.
Your third para is a side-trip into number theory. It made me a little impatient, but I tried to rein that in, as I took in your point about “be careful about the definition of primeness or you will get surprising results”. I’m primed to receive some insight regarding such apparent “surprises”.
Note to future self: Keep second examples shorter. When addressing a particular subject beyond surface dialog check the language the experts use.
Final para and I’m pleasantly surprised at how short this post is, I may have upvoted it at this point without quite reading to the end. (Upvote later retracted, after some deliberation, for the reasons I gave.) I’m still not following links, by the way, just barely glancing at the URLs. One I did look at was the “color constancies”. I am still experiencing a feeling of approval as I read “dropped a bad belief and am looking for a replacement”. Yep, yep.
I went for short this time because I thought the point didn’t deserve a lengthy post. I think a lot of the initial upvotes I received were evidence that I was on the right track with this goal. I suspect that most of them were retracted later.
I guess what then makes me uneasy is the string of “should, should, should” in the final three sentences, capped by “obvious”. Wait, what ? I rewind to “looking for a replacement”. Forward back to “obvious”. You’re making me feel like I missed something, so I fire off a comment—in retrospect perhaps hastily—about the part of the post that right now bugs me.
In retrospect, what I was expecting that you didn’t fulfill was “I am looking for a replacement...”, setting up for ”...and here’s how I plan to do that”.
That makes sense. Notes to future self: Finish the primary example. Don’t expect the readers to assume you did it offscreen.
The point of your post (correct me if wrong) is “the ‘cool’ of optical illusions is an instance of the ‘weird’ that is referred to in Think Like Reality”. If that’s your entire point, it just maybe doesn’t quite deserve four paragraphs.
Where could I trim? I would guess the number example was extraneous. Your summation of the point works.
You bring up a specific example that has engaged your thinking. I approve of that. You make a “meta” point. I can approve of that, but provisional on your showing how your object-level thinking has benefited from the meta.
Okay. This is the big point I get to take away from your analysis. Again, thank you.
In other words, this is the visual version of “if a tree falls in the forest...”, except that we already defined ‘color’ as qualia rather than wavelengths, right?
Since you mention it, that’s something I should have brought up in one of the Mitchell_Porter consciousness threads: the colors you see are not actually matched up one-to-one with the wavelengths hitting your retina. Rather, the visual system does something like subtracting away the average color.
Meaning, the color that you experience seeing depends on all the colors in the scene, not just the wavelength of the light coming off each specific object.
Some people were talking as if you were getting direct knowledge of (something equivalently expressible as) wavelengths, which is unfortunate, since part of the path to demystifying qualia is understanding this kind of processing.
Um, “we already defined”—the referent(s) of that phrase are very ambiguous, I’m afraid. Who’s “we” and where was that definition ?
I definitely agree that color discriminations in the brain (the processes that eventually end up with color words coming out of our mouths) are about way more than wavelengths. I’d prefer the term “discrimination” to “qualia”, the latter carries philosophical baggage that I’d rather do without.
Um, “we already defined”—the referent(s) of that phrase are very ambiguous, I’m afraid. Who’s “we” and where was that definition ?
It’s a royal ‘we’ in this case: Some subset of the group of commenters here at LW, and that subset doesn’t include me. It was discussed at some length in the recent discussion of consciousness. I wasn’t paying much direct attention to the conversation, though, so I can’t be more specific than that. (I’m not even sure that the relevant bits are all in one post’s comments.)
I’m just not seeing what obvious reality it highlights, so either I’m particularly dense or it’s not in fact obvious.
So, rephrasing: what reality is being highlighted by the “illusion” ?
Your prime number analogy suggests that it’s in fact the “both colors are the same” assertion which is an illusion. The perceptual reality is that the pixels in these areas are discriminated as different colors. The illusion consists of looking at pixel with identical RGB values and thinking “Oh, these have the same position in colorspace, I expect my brain to perceive them as identical.”
The reality suggested by the “illusion” is that this expectation doesn’t hold in general, it’s a stupid model. A smarter model would take more things into account before it predicted what our brain will perceive as identical colors.
But this is very much non-obvious...
The post is keying off of Think Like Reality.
Looking at the image it should be obvious that the colors do not look the same. This is reality. We think they should look the same even though it is obvious they don’t. Once we find the right answer to why they don’t look the same, the illusion should stop being bizarre.
If you find an explanation, return to the illusion, and still think the illusion is bizarre, than something is wrong. You fall into the category that EY is discussing in Think Like Reality.
I am convinced that most of what we consider to be fancy illusions will be considered obvious to future generations. They will look at this image and wonder why we thought it was so fascinating. When our optics system is solved it would completely ridiculous to assume that we would look at that image and think that the two squares should look like the same color.
But your post hasn’t offered an explanation. And I don’t, in fact, look at that image and think that the two squares should look like the same color.
A and B are in fact different colors, for a value of “in fact” which takes into account that the picture is a picture of something—a checkerboard. My visual system makes the correct inference, conditioned on the assumption that I’m looking at a checkerboard.
EDIT: what I should say is that I’m still surprised, knowing what I know about my visual system and how it works, when you tell me that the pixels have the same RGB values. But that’s not a “reality is weird” surprise, it’s more like the surprise of learning some interesting bit of trivia.
To really be totally unsurprised, I’d have to enhance not just my knowledge of the visual system, but my visual system—to include an RGB calibration system.
EDIT: Oh, okay, I read your edit and that makes much more sense. I agree that it may be difficult to get to the point of being unsurprised. Getting there isn’t obvious. You know you are there when you are unsurprised by the illusion. Once Reality is unsurprising and obvious, you are there.
I feel like I have lost the point of this conversation. What, in the following, do you disagree with?
The image is an optical illusion
The squares marked A and B appear to be different colors
In reality, the squares marked A and B are the same color
It is more correct to say that A and B are the same color than to say they are different colors
The reason behind the optical illusion explains why A and B appear to be different colors
This reason is contained somewhere inside of the “visual system”
It is better to not be surprised by Reality
The squares A and B should appear to be different colors
We should not be surprised when A and B look like different colors
It is incorrect to call Reality bizarre as per Think Like Reality
“Obvious” is not a good word for the opposite of “bizarre”
I disagree with #3 and #4. Also #6, mildly—it’s not just our visual system that’s at issue here, it’s our color vocabulary and our “meta” thinking about our color system that explains the “illusion”—that explains why we might think it bizarre.
Oh, okay. Well… I guess I don’t feel like debating the definition of color since that is completely irrelevant to the point of the post. I wish this was made clear earlier.
Perhaps I can answer your original question this way:
It has nothing to do with the actual answer to the example illusion. What I mean is that once we have the answer to an illusion, the illusion should stop surprising us.
Neither do I feel like debating the definition of color.
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. You sound as if you are content to know that the phenomenon is in principle explicable; as if the post has done its job by demonstrating your commitment to “thinking like reality”. I would prefer you had gone deeper into the object-level analysis and offered your own explanation of what is going on in this particular case.
This is a little bit like parents who lecture their children about the importance of being truthful, vs. parents who demonstrate being truthful—and being OK with confronting unpleasant truths.
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.
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.
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?
This was my miscommunication. I was skipping over the explanation in an attempt to cut on length.
I was trying to avoid talking about the explanation because in my mind the post was only using that particular example as an example. I was perceiving the ensuing discussion as nitpicking. (And fully acknowledge that this was a communication error on my part.)
That is it, that is the point. This wasn’t meant to be an awesome post of amazing new concepts. It was just connecting the dots between two subjects I hadn’t connected yet. This connection was that illusions aren’t tricky. We think they are tricky because we were expecting something different from reality.
My hypothesis is that you picked a misleading example to make your point. Similar color illusions are discussed in, e.g., Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”, where he discusses the kind of processing that the brain does to see color: they’re one of the best illustrations of how misleading the idea of so-called “qualia” is.
It looked like you didn’t really understand your main example. A and B are different colors, at least in terms of how the brain actually perceives color, and it sounded like you talked about them as if they were definitely the same. You wrote of the illusion as if it was mysterious and unexplained, when it has been used as a canonical demonstration of how consciousness works (Dennett’s book has something similar on the cover in one edition). This confusion made it hard for me to understand your main point.
Sometimes it is useful to ask readers for a blow-by-blow response to your writing. (See my previous post on communicating effectively, and follow the link to Richard Gabriel’s book.) Here is mine:
First para, it may help to know I didn’t follow the link at the end of your first paragraph, I kept on reading. So when you led off with “illusions are cool”, my internal narrative was “yes, illusions are cool”.
Your second para had me thinking something like, “He’s going to go past surface appearances, regarding the picture he’s posted. OK, good. Let’s keep reading.” I probably looked at the picture only at that point.
Your third para is a side-trip into number theory. It made me a little impatient, but I tried to rein that in, as I took in your point about “be careful about the definition of primeness or you will get surprising results”. I’m primed to receive some insight regarding such apparent “surprises”.
Final para and I’m pleasantly surprised at how short this post is, I may have upvoted it at this point without quite reading to the end. (Upvote later retracted, after some deliberation, for the reasons I gave.) I’m still not following links, by the way, just barely glancing at the URLs. One I did look at was the “color constancies”. I am still experiencing a feeling of approval as I read “dropped a bad belief and am looking for a replacement”. Yep, yep.
I guess what then makes me uneasy is the string of “should, should, should” in the final three sentences, capped by “obvious”. Wait, what ? I rewind to “looking for a replacement”. Forward back to “obvious”. You’re making me feel like I missed something, so I fire off a comment—in retrospect perhaps hastily—about the part of the post that right now bugs me.
In retrospect, what I was expecting that you didn’t fulfill was “I am looking for a replacement...”, setting up for ”...and here’s how I plan to do that”.
The point of your post (correct me if wrong) is “the ‘cool’ of optical illusions is an instance of the ‘weird’ that is referred to in Think Like Reality”. If that’s your entire point, it just maybe doesn’t quite deserve four paragraphs.
You bring up a specific example that has engaged your thinking. I approve of that. You make a “meta” point. I can approve of that, but provisional on your showing how your object-level thinking has benefited from the meta.
This is extremely valuable to me and I greatly appreciate it. My thoughts are below because I process with words; they are not critiques of your reading process.
Hmm… yeah, I didn’t predict that. The whole post was assuming that you had, at one point, read that post. Note to future self: Quote the relevant part from the prerequisite link. I skipped it this time to try cutting down words but it hurt more than helped.
Note to future self: Keep second examples shorter. When addressing a particular subject beyond surface dialog check the language the experts use.
I went for short this time because I thought the point didn’t deserve a lengthy post. I think a lot of the initial upvotes I received were evidence that I was on the right track with this goal. I suspect that most of them were retracted later.
That makes sense. Notes to future self: Finish the primary example. Don’t expect the readers to assume you did it offscreen.
Where could I trim? I would guess the number example was extraneous. Your summation of the point works.
Okay. This is the big point I get to take away from your analysis. Again, thank you.
In other words, this is the visual version of “if a tree falls in the forest...”, except that we already defined ‘color’ as qualia rather than wavelengths, right?
Since you mention it, that’s something I should have brought up in one of the Mitchell_Porter consciousness threads: the colors you see are not actually matched up one-to-one with the wavelengths hitting your retina. Rather, the visual system does something like subtracting away the average color.
Meaning, the color that you experience seeing depends on all the colors in the scene, not just the wavelength of the light coming off each specific object.
Some people were talking as if you were getting direct knowledge of (something equivalently expressible as) wavelengths, which is unfortunate, since part of the path to demystifying qualia is understanding this kind of processing.
Um, “we already defined”—the referent(s) of that phrase are very ambiguous, I’m afraid. Who’s “we” and where was that definition ?
I definitely agree that color discriminations in the brain (the processes that eventually end up with color words coming out of our mouths) are about way more than wavelengths. I’d prefer the term “discrimination” to “qualia”, the latter carries philosophical baggage that I’d rather do without.
It’s a royal ‘we’ in this case: Some subset of the group of commenters here at LW, and that subset doesn’t include me. It was discussed at some length in the recent discussion of consciousness. I wasn’t paying much direct attention to the conversation, though, so I can’t be more specific than that. (I’m not even sure that the relevant bits are all in one post’s comments.)