Posted: Mar 26, 2020 11:47 am
Svartalf wrote:Interesting, to me they are fascinating, at least until I've figured out what's wrong in my perception.
I'm not going to claim to be able to understand or fully explain such illusions (which of course, being different, may have different explanations) but I'm going to have an amateur crack at an idea in general.
Our perceptions have to be reliable, for evolutionary reasons. They don't have to represent what's 'actually out there', but they do have to work pragmatically in order for us to respond in a way that enhances our chances of survival.
Now, nature, the world outside our brains, tends to manifest and function in certain repeatable ways, there are patterns and a great deal of apparent order. Our perceptions will tend to respond to that. They are less likely, I think, to have evolved to deal with very unusual situations (which I think is what illusions tend to involve) because the drivers for doing that are weak. In a way, I think it's about priorities and trade-offs. Better to adapt and respond to (make useful guesses about) what almost always matters than be equipped to constantly waste processing energy trying to analyse everything in detail, including outliers.
In other words, your perception is arguably working very well indeed.
