Faces Come Out Of The Rain

Here's a new one for you, I'm going to explain how the trick works before I show it to you. The room you are about to see isn't as it appears. The floor isn't flat at all, it slopes from low on the left to high on the right. The patterns on the floor aren't symmetrical, they are only painted in a way to make it appear so. The people are actually the same height or very close to it. And even when I tell you all of this and inform you that the video below is an optical illusion, your brain will still create a different reality and sense the room is "normal" and the people are different.

Here's another one, albeit not as fancy.

There are two ways to view the front of the box. Either you can envision the front of the box to use the bottom left corner and slope upward to the right or you can see the front of the box to use the top right corner and slope downward to the left. Nothing at all changes about this box except your perception of it.

Let's try another video. Again, I'm telling you it's an optical illusion before you watch. This time, however, I'm not going to tell you how it works, I'm just telling you what you think you're seeing isn't what you're really seeing. About the 30 second mark the illusion will be revealed. I challenge you to hit the pause button before then and try to figure it out.

The next video I really like because even when you are shown how both of these illusions work your brain still goes right back to seeing what it wants to see at the end of the video.

Here's another illusion where I'm going to give it away before you see it. Square "A" and square "B" are the exact same color. So now that I've told you this in advance you should be able to see it. Right?

What do you think is the illusion in the following image?

Correct, the orange circle is the same size in each image. But it doesn't feel that way does it?

Do you like spirals. Take your mouse or your finger and follow the spiral in the above image. Getting anywhere?

Now we're going to get to a couple of my favorites. These are different types of illusions, kind of, because they aren't really intended to be illusions. For instance: many of the images and videos I've included were created to show you how your brain can be fooled, and that's pretty cool. However, the next set is your brain fooling you all on its own. It's giving you a false sense of reality.

Each year the Neural Correlate Society holds a contest for the Best Illusion of the Year. This one won in 2007. Since I'm sure you know you're being tricked at this point, you can figure out by now that these photos are identical. How it works is your brain sees this image as a single scene. Because we see it this way our brain makes the necessary correction to make it possible for these two towers to exist next to each other. Our brain creates the divergence even though one doesn't really exist. Our brain makes it seem like one of the towers is leaning.

Now we've seen a bunch of illusions. So now that I'm going to show you another one and let you know ahead of time that it is very hard to grasp it should be easier to understand. What makes it so great, to me at least, is its simplicity. The items or shapes presented in the illusion aren't things in nature that exist to fool you. You fool yourself.

That's it. You know what I'm going to tell you. Those are the same size. Want a video of it?

You know what, that looks more like a trick of some sort. Even though this was filmed at The Hong Kong Museum of Science it still seems like something is up with it.

Crazy, huh?

The second you think you know something you have limited your ability to perceive the true nature of reality. Our brain is an amazing thing. It tries very hard to make sense of a crazy universe. And, for the most part, it does a pretty good job, as far as we know. It helps us survive. But that's really all it does, help us survive and get along in this world without dying and walking off bridges or eating things that will kill us. It has its limits. The more we understand these limits the more we understand ourselves, the world, the universe.

This next video isn't an illusion at all, but it is about perspective.

Now imagine your brain in relation to that scale of the planets and the stars. It's beyond preposterous to even begin to believe that our brains understand how it all works. This is why it seems so bizarre to me that we first begin by trying to understand how it all functions and then live our lives based on the premise of how we fit into that understanding. It would seem a much more reasonable approach to understand how we function and how we are a part of the bigger picture, not the other way around.

It's hard to know who really first coined the idea about the strangeness of the universe and our ability to grasp it, but the point is someone said it and that someone is right.

"Reality is not only stranger than we perceive, it's stranger than we CAN perceive."