Mind Lies

"Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it."--Hardy D. Jackson

It sounds so simple to be true to your self. Just know what you know and tell your self nothing else. How though is it possible to be true to your self when your mind lies to you? Every interaction with the physical world, that we feel/see/hear/taste/smell, is nothing more than our brain interpreting the output of our many sensors. This interpretation is just that ... an interpretation.

Take for instance this Photo:





It looks harmless enough and your brain quickly associates the squares as being a grid with two different colors. Now for the fun part. Both Square "A" and "B" are the exact same color! I'm not lying ... your brain is! Don't belive me? Print it and cut both squares out. ;)



So whats up with that! How is it possible that the "B" square clearly looks lighter than the "A" square? This illusion occurs because our brain does not directly perceive the true colors and brightness of objects in the world, but instead compares the color and brightness of a given item with others in its vicinity



Ok ... One more:

The black and white tiles are perfectly straight, but look tilted. It is a shape distortion illusion: an object will appear to take on shapes that are different from its actual shape. Like brightness and color illusions, shape distortion effects are also produced by the interaction between the actual shape of the object and the shapes of nearby figures. For the brain, perception is very often dependent on context.



So far we have seen our minds lie but now lets listen to our minds lie!

If we watch a video of a person mouthing the word "ga," but have a synced voice-over of that person saying "ba," what we end up hearing, is a third variation that's never been said! That word is "da". And even though you now know it's an illusion—you will still, when you see the video, think you are hearing "da". But if you close your eyes, and do not see the person's lips forming the word "ga," you'll hear what they are actually saying, which is "ba". We think of speech as dependent on auditory perception. But this study eerily shows just how important visual input is. From this, it's clear that our senses did not develop in isolation, but rather, they work in tandem to form an accurate perception of our world. Here we learn that the position of the lips is key in accurately hearing what someone is saying.

So there you have it. Next time someone is trying to sell you something and you ask your self "Is he lying about the product" maybe you should be asking "Is this guy really here and speaking ... or am I plugged into The Matrix?"

I trust Math and Science and not much else. They are not an evolved, naturally selected, genetically mutated, interpreted sensor but instead a repeatable and provable field of study.

I feel I should mention that I got these pictures and some of the info from www.sciam.com.