Perception. What if they are right? (believe, debate, Revelations, experience)
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"The dress"
I did actually have a point to make with the above thread.
What seems like a simple photo did actually have quite a profound effect on me.
This is going to be rather long winded I'm afraid, but I need to lay out all the details to explain what I mean.
When I first saw the photo I thought it was a prank (posted very early morning on my facebook page). I even checked to see if the date was April 1st. All these people were seeing something entirelydifferent than I was seeing. What was going on? I even thought I might be dreaming. This couldn't be real.
To test this out for myself, I went around and woke up my family one by one and asked them to describe what they saw. Two of my kids and husband described a white and gold dress...WHAT THE HECK? Now I knew it was genuine.
Maybe its because I'm an artist - I naturally automatically break up an image into its constituent colours. But even if you account for differences in the way we perceive colour (cones and rods in our eyes), it was clear that my family were perceiving this image very differently to me. I'll admit I have stared at this image for an inordinate length of time, trying to train my eyes and brain to see what others see. I can't. At all. To me it's dark blue and black. I can't see any white or gold whatsoever.
From the opposite perspective, my husband and daughter, had to be shown a photo of the real dress to be convinced it is black and blue. Even then they didn't really believe it.
I sat down with my family discuss it with them. My son, who after some time was able to see the image both ways did a great job at explaining to me what he thought was going on. He said that there is no light projected onto the front of the dress but there is a strong light in the background, so your eyes make you think that the dress is in shadow hence pale blue looks white and so on.
I have to take his words for this. Even though I held up a blue card next to the image and told them that the blue on the card was the same as the dress they said, "Yes - but it's white". (A bit like when you try to talk to a creationist about evolution and they are still not convinced, despite the evidence)
This all got me thinking. What if we really do all perceive the world differently?
What if theists really do see / feel / perceive things differently than I do? Who am I to say they are wrong? I don't mean just seeing the world in different colours but maybe there are other differences: sight touch, smell etc and even more profound senses we don't account for that we experience differently.
Just because I have no experience of what others tell me they experience should I really discount it because I can't see it myself?
Also don't get me wrong, I am NOT saying here that theists see colours differently at all- my husband is a lifelong atheist so I have already discounted that passing thought! But maybe we are all experiencing life in very profoundly different ways...
We can then get into a philosophical discussion about this. If a person experiences an event in a different way - of course that's still no proof of god - it could still be all in their head. Nevertheless I think this is food for thought.
As I argued with Mystic and Gaylenwoof on the Consciousness thread a while ago, we are like radar operators. we get signals and information about the world out there through a series of rather imperfect mechanisms for presenting information, in various ways and processing them with a machine made of black pudding hash. I am amazed we get any reliable information through at all.
And yet it is amazing now much the old stodge adapts and corrects using information we don't even know. We sorta register that there is a blue bias in a picture and 'read' the colours beyond the blue which tells us it is gold. In my case, I must have been a bit dull as I just registered a silvery grey.
That is why we need the reservation of definite crediting, because something new may come up all the time. And that is why we need science and logic to correct these misunderstandings and misperceptions and why anything claimed to be so in innate revelations cannot be credited, because it is axiomatic that -without validating confirmation by science, we can't be sure of anything.
(Glad to get that in before re -opening a closed thread attracts a horde of infractions).
"The dress"
I did actually have a point to make with the above thread.
What seems like a simple photo did actually have quite a profound effect on me.
This is going to be rather long winded I'm afraid, but I need to lay out all the details to explain what I mean.
When I first saw the photo I thought it was a prank (posted very early morning on my facebook page). I even checked to see if the date was April 1st. All these people were seeing something entirelydifferent than I was seeing. What was going on? I even thought I might be dreaming. This couldn't be real.
To test this out for myself, I went around and woke up my family one by one and asked them to describe what they saw. Two of my kids and husband described a white and gold dress...WHAT THE HECK? Now I knew it was genuine.
Maybe its because I'm an artist - I naturally automatically break up an image into its constituent colours. But even if you account for differences in the way we perceive colour (cones and rods in our eyes), it was clear that my family were perceiving this image very differently to me. I'll admit I have stared at this image for an inordinate length of time, trying to train my eyes and brain to see what others see. I can't. At all. To me it's dark blue and black. I can't see any white or gold whatsoever.
From the opposite perspective, my husband and daughter, had to be shown a photo of the real dress to be convinced it is black and blue. Even then they didn't really believe it.
I sat down with my family discuss it with them. My son, who after some time was able to see the image both ways did a great job at explaining to me what he thought was going on. He said that there is no light projected onto the front of the dress but there is a strong light in the background, so your eyes make you think that the dress is in shadow hence pale blue looks white and so on.
I have to take his words for this. Even though I held up a blue card next to the image and told them that the blue on the card was the same as the dress they said, "Yes - but it's white". (A bit like when you try to talk to a creationist about evolution and they are still not convinced, despite the evidence)
This all got me thinking. What if we really do all perceive the world differently?
What if theists really do see / feel / perceive things differently than I do? Who am I to say they are wrong? I don't mean just seeing the world in different colours but maybe there are other differences: sight touch, smell etc and even more profound senses we don't account for that we experience differently.
Just because I have no experience of what others tell me they experience should I really discount it because I can't see it myself?
Also don't get me wrong, I am NOT saying here that theists see colours differently at all- my husband is a lifelong atheist so I have already discounted that passing thought! But maybe we are all experiencing life in very profoundly different ways...
We can then get into a philosophical discussion about this. If a person experiences an event in a different way - of course that's still no proof of god - it could still be all in their head. Nevertheless I think this is food for thought.
food for thought. No agenda's.
Non-science people stay out of it. ex- pizz doff fundie house wives and accountants need not say a word.
I believe you're on to something because it's the only thing that makes sense out of the stark contrasts in what we see and feel. I'm like the OP, all I EVER saw was blue and black but I believe those who saw white and gold feel just as certain of what they are seeing as I do. If nothing else this simple debate taught a lot of different people about just how different our perspectives are on certain things, and I think that applies to religion as well.
Oh good grief. I just found my way to this thread from your post in the other thread, where I posted this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Btw, people who saw the white/gold, what color was the background? I can't see it as white/gold because the background appears white to me.
I see the dress as white/gold and the background seems mostly bright white to me (with a small patch of red, a patch of pale yellow, a strip of brown, and a few grey-green blurs). The shawl or whatever over the shoulder appears white. I am pretty amazed that anyone could see the dress as blue/black. I can't seem to train my eyes to see how others could possibly see it that way.
And just a crazy little thought: I wonder if there could be cognitive or conceptual versions of this perceptual effect - some sort of neural "fixation on a certain interpretation" that causes liberals/conservatives or theists/atheists to perceive certain concepts in such radically different and seemingly unquestionable ways from those at the other ends of their respective political or spiritual spectrums.
I guess great minds, as they say, are thinking on the same tracks...sorta.
Oh good grief. I just found my way to this thread from your post in the other thread, where I posted this:
I see the dress as white/gold and the background seems mostly bright white to me (with a small patch of red, a patch of pale yellow, a strip of brown, and a few grey-green blurs). The shawl or whatever over the shoulder appears white. I am pretty amazed that anyone could see the dress as blue/black. I can't seem to train my eyes to see how others could possibly see it that way. And just a crazy little thought: I wonder if there could be cognitive or conceptual versions of this perceptual effect - some sort of neural "fixation on a certain interpretation" that causes liberals/conservatives or theists/atheists to perceive certain concepts in such radically different and seemingly unquestionable ways from those at the other ends of their respective political or spiritual spectrums.
I guess great minds, as they say, are thinking on the same tracks...sorta.
I this case our great minds do think alike, Gaylen. I saw white and goldish brown with the background as you described. Clearly those with a mystical bent perceive the world correctly!
I this case our great minds do think alike, Gaylen. I saw white and goldish brown with the background as you described. Clearly those with a mystical bent perceive the world correctly!
Correctly??
The dress was actually blue and black.
This all got me thinking. What if we really do all perceive the world differently?
We do, but not so starkly differently as to be a justifiable source of existential angst over the whole thing. Perhaps this video is the best one available so far to allay your concerns on the matter.
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