#hermann grid

This image is an optical illusion that's been making the rounds recently. I just saw it posted on twitter by game developer Will Kerslake. But it was originally part of a scientific paper published in the journal "Perception" back in 2000.

It's what's called an extinction illusion, and this one is based on a variation of a grid illusion called a Hermann Grid. The basics of this optical illusion are simple…there are twelve black dots, 4 each placed evenly on the top, middle and bottom horizontal lines of this image. You can see a few at a time, but the vast majority of people can never see all of them at once. In fact when you look straight at a single dot it's difficult to even see the dots right next to it. Go ahead and try.

The explanation for this revolves around a slew of technical things regarding the way our brains process peripheral vision information. But that's not why I posted this. The reason I am posting this rather random optical illusion, aside from the fact that I find optical illusions fascinating and fun, is because optical illusions remind us that we do not always see things as they really are.

There's a tendency to assume that our eyes are like the lenses of a camera, and that therefore whatever we see is simply (and exactly) what's there. But no. Why? Because we don't actually see with our eyes - we see with our brains. Our eyes are just the lenses that capture and send the signals. Our brain is where these signals are turned into an image. And contrary to what many assume, our brains are not designed to give us an unfiltered and exact reproduction of the physical world around us. This is why our physical experience of the world is described as "perception."

Which leads to this thought: if this is what happens when our brains look at simple dots on a grid, how much more complicated do things get when we start talking about our "perception" of politicians and what they stand for?

Can You See All 12 Black Dots At Once?