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| (Here is the original site of the dress) |
Let's talk about the real color of it by standard definition. Here is a photo that shows the real color of this dress, thanks to Jesse Alford II who shows us how to use Photoshop to find out the true color of the picture in his blog.
However, truth is only based on how we perceive the world through our senses. In the movie The Matrix, seemingly living in a normal and modern world, human beings are enslaved by artificial intelligence who feeds neural simulation of reality to brains. This reminds me of a philosophy problem named brain in a vat which raises a question: how can you be sure that you are not a brain in a vat, and the reality you perceive is not a computer simulation created by a mad scientist?
The point is that our brain is easily credulous. Look at this photo and you know what I mean:
This famous picture is known as checker shadow illusion, in which square A is exactly the same as square B. Look at here if you are interested in its explanation.
There are some guys trying to learn how people perceive the dress, and they give a test to collect data on the phenomena. You can see how you compare to others in the end of the test. Here is the result I got on March 6:
Though the specific reason for why people perceive different color from the dress remains unknown, it reminds me that maybe there is no truth in the world, but only the virtual reality simulation that runs on the brain.
I would like to end up this blog with the following cool dialogue from The Matrix:
Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
Thank you for reading. Please tell me what color of the dress you see in comment, since I wonder whether seeing gold and white is rarer.
My friends and I argued about this for a while a week or so ago. We all saw black and blue except for one of my friends. He insisted that dress was white and gold. We thought he was joking with us but he was completely serious.
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing the dress again after a while, I now see what he saw. When I first opened your blog, I saw the dress as white and gold. As I began to scroll down and read, the dress turned black and blue right before my eyes. Once I was done being freaked out by that I read the rest of your post and found it very interesting! The Matrix quote at the end was a great ending and one of my favorite scenes from the movie. I enjoyed reading this post so much that I already read the others before posting this comment. Keep up the good posts!
I saw this in facebook before also. I saw it as blue-black, and thought the people who said it was yellow-white were making fun of me. I've read a post somewhere else before explaining this phenomenon. But I really liked that you gave other examples and REAL, REAL precise explanations. I really liked reading this post and felt like I was reading a real fun professional science magazine article. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteI also experienced the dress changing color as I scrolled down. I first saw white and gold, but as I read further it changed to blue and black. I believe that the angle at which a person is looking at the picture effects what color the dress appears to be. I very much appreciate the Matrix references. It makes you question everything you know.
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