human vision
The prevailing theory of vision up til now is that your vision works like a couple of meaty video cameras with a clever computer behind ‘em. Example internal dialogue: by the ratios of colour and patterns of tone I calculate that the incoming light comes from a banana!
The new idea is that your napper just contains a big, dumb neural network that carries the accumulated training of a few million generations. The new probability approach says: well, the last 300,000 times that pattern of light came up it turned out to be a banana, so I’ll see a banana.
The point is that you don’t truly see what’s there: you only see what your brain thinks is probably there based on experience. The news article, but more importantly cool illusions of tone and colour.
14-Jan-03 at 4:25 pm | Permalink
omg. thats a bit matrix, innit? Not really sure if I buy that though.. I mean, when when was the last time you saw a banana that turned out to be anything else? Its metascience I suppose. Y’could get quite philosophical about it. Never could get past that whole “does a tree in the middle of a deserted forest still make a noise when it crashes to the ground?” thing..
15-Jan-03 at 4:49 pm | Permalink
It’s the colour illusion that impresses me particularly.
Despite objectively identical signals (the brown colour) hitting your eyes from both places, the interpreting bit of your brain steps in and basically says nah, based on experience of shadows I think you’ll find that’s actually orange. And you’re powerless to see correctly.
Fair enough, it only applies on a small scale. You’d never mistake bean for an attractive heterosexual, for instance ; P
16-Jan-03 at 9:13 am | Permalink
suck my detachable cock!
15-Aug-07 at 6:13 pm | Permalink
*lol*