The Lemming Within Us
Is the blue-dress/gold-dress frenzy officially over? Good. It was getting crazy for a moment. The way that photograph made people realize that "reality" is nothing more than a construct concocted in our brains opened the door to the collective realization that what we see is actually just an interpretation that allows us to function in the world. We see colors under different shades a different way (the "white" tile under the table vs. the "black" one to its right) because the brain gets confused between perceiving colors during day and night. The "reality" is that they are exactly the same color once you apply the same light intensity. This differentiation needs to occur in our brain; a mental shortcut happening in our left hemisphere (the one that connects the past with the present ) tells us that colors look different under the shadows, and shapes our perception mechanisms to make better decisions in the environments we live in...