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.
Is there a pausible version of this? If I could freeze the individual frames, I might get it. I refuse to believe that her backside is that similiar, because just look at all the detail. Also, the part that reallly bugs me is not her direction of spin, but the fact I can’t even tell which way is right or left.
The Wikipedia entry (link in OP) has a frame-by-frame version. (ETA: or you could download an animated GIF editor, and yourself produce from the ambiguous original two unambiguous versions; it really doesn’t take much in the way of extra cues to convince your brain.)
I found that briefly very disturbing—it seemed that the mere presence of an “L” or “R” on the vertical leg was sufficient to get my brain to see it one way or the other, even though I’d given no conscious thought to the question of which leg was which.
But of course it isn’t actually the choice of letter that makes the difference. (I haven’t said what is in case anyone else is in the same boat as me and wants to take a few seconds to work it out.)
Every frame that can be interpreted as her facing the observer and standing on her left foot can also be interpreted as her facing away from the observer and standing on her right foot.
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.
Is there a pausible version of this? If I could freeze the individual frames, I might get it. I refuse to believe that her backside is that similiar, because just look at all the detail. Also, the part that reallly bugs me is not her direction of spin, but the fact I can’t even tell which way is right or left.
The detail is all in the outline (the part inside the outline is all black). From just the outline, you cannot tell
whether her foot is a little closer to you than it was a second ago or a little farther (so your brain picks one)
or whether she’s facing towards you or away from you (so your brain picks one).
The Wikipedia entry (link in OP) has a frame-by-frame version. (ETA: or you could download an animated GIF editor, and yourself produce from the ambiguous original two unambiguous versions; it really doesn’t take much in the way of extra cues to convince your brain.)
Also “versions of the image with an additional visual cue” (click “show”).
I found that briefly very disturbing—it seemed that the mere presence of an “L” or “R” on the vertical leg was sufficient to get my brain to see it one way or the other, even though I’d given no conscious thought to the question of which leg was which.
But of course it isn’t actually the choice of letter that makes the difference. (I haven’t said what is in case anyone else is in the same boat as me and wants to take a few seconds to work it out.)
Huh. I looked at each frame, and found that when she is facing the observer, she is clearly on her left foot. Weird.
Every frame that can be interpreted as her facing the observer and standing on her left foot can also be interpreted as her facing away from the observer and standing on her right foot.