The light is in our eyes...

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Quantum Quack, May 21, 2017.

  1. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Not sure what that means. Does that mean your brain isn't lying to you?

    I can tell you, your brain, Riv, right now is lying to you.
     
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  3. Nacho Registered Senior Member

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    That is where the "collusion of senses" comes in. Most of the time they show the same thing. That is not "the visual universe is essentially a mental construction" "illusion", all of the time.
     
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  5. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    ??

    The Earth stills looks flat from ground-level.
     
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  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    No. I'm saying your brain is lying to you all the time about what you see. Every waking moment.

    That is what the blind spot test demonstrates.

    There are uncountable other things you can do to prove this to yourself.

    You don't notice the saccades - constant unconscious tiny micro-movements of your eyes.
    You don't see the screen flickering 60 times a second.
    etc.
    etc.
     
  8. river

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    17,307
    The flat Earth was a visual perception . What else did they know .
     
  9. Nacho Registered Senior Member

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    137
    Just what distinction are you trying to make between "see" and "what is actually out there to be sensed"?
    I'm saying it doesn't lie to you about EVERYTHING it sees.
     
  10. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    OBSERVED lab experiments, proving the brain can be fooled.
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,959
    That they are not the same.

    A recording camera can show that things are ojut there to be observed that may not have been perceived be the mind.

    Agree. The problem then becomes how to distinguish between the real and the lie.
    If we can't do that, we can't really trust anything we see.

    It doesn't mean we're paralyzed; it simply means we have to take on faith that mostly what we're seeing is real. But that doesn't hold much water under lab - or court - conditions. or often, in the wild. Thus, the preponderance of many ghost and UFOs sightings.
     
  12. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    .

    Belief does influence the brain's perception & processing. Exactly how much cannot be determined.

    Sometimes I think a drink is tea when it is cola & it tastes horrible until I realize my mistake.

    <>
     
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  13. Nacho Registered Senior Member

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    137
    That's comparable to feeling something and then saying your "feeling" is lying to you because it can't feel molecules and atoms. Everything we see and do and feel and learn and describe is an incomplete picture (description).
     
  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,874
    Your brain, in general tries to help you out. For instance there is no such thing as someone with a "photographic" memory. That's because you aren't a computer. There isn't a "memory" file in your brain.

    A memory is reconstructed each time you recall it. That's why things can change with time. People have very real memories as a small child (for instance) of things that they have been told occurred. If they think of these things enough times they are sure they can remember them when in some cases they weren't even there.

    When you recall a memory, the visual component comes from one area of your brain, associated smells come from another, sounds from another, emotions from another and it is all reconstructed from scratch each time.

    Your brain fills in a lot. It's the same with sight and everything else involving the brain.
     
  15. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,959
    No, it's not the same at all.

    Seeing occurs in the brain. You do really see things that really aren't there, and do really not see things that really are there.

    That's not the same as saying "we aren't really touching atoms". We are. We are touching the EM fields of the electrons, which is how atoms interact.

    True. But there's a diff between your atoms and our seeing.
     
  16. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    When someone loses a hand, foot or limb, the brain takes a while to completely process it. I suspect it is never completely accepted as it would be with someone born without a limb.
    After losing a limb, the brain seems to continue to receive input from it.

    <>
     
  17. Nacho Registered Senior Member

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    137
    Yes it is the same. The sensation of touch is formed in the brain too, not the fingers. It is detected with nerves at the fingers and travels along nerves to the brain somewhat like diffraction images on the retina travel down the optic nerve to the brain.

    My point was not that you didn't interact with the EM field. My point was that you didn't sense that fine of a grainularity, like what you said that a picture of an object can have some things in it that our direct sight may not see.
     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,959
    OK,I thought you wee comparing it to the old myth that we can't actually "touch" anything because we never make contact with other atoms. That this somehow means touching anything is an illusion.

    But yeah, all our senses lie to us. Vision is unique in that we tend to trust our sight as the most faithful to reality because it is so important to us.
     
  19. Nacho Registered Senior Member

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    OK. I probably didn't come all the way out and say it properly (I'm known for that) -- my main point what that we are always operating on an incomplete picture/description of everything we do. Go back to your illusions and spots that appear to be there. If our brain had a complete description of everything in the setup (and the processing power), it could re-produce the image that it should, or the lack of an image that it should. For sure, after we are told how an illusion works, we can sometimes adjust the way we view it to overcome that limitation.

    To me, that is a case of incomplete information for the brain, rather than our brain lying to us all the time and never reproducing what is out there.
     
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  20. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    No. Some illusions can't be disillusioned.

    The blind spot test is one. Your brain is always operating, always helpfully plugging that missing part of your vision.

    Even when you know the trick to spotting the blind spot, your brain still helpfully substitutes in a plain background where you do not see it. You never actually see the hole in your vision.
     
  21. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I don't look at it as "lying" anyway. It's just an imperfect reproduction. Our cell phone isn't lying to us when it prints "they" when we were typing "the". I'm referring to "auto-correct" or whatever it's called.

    We just aren't computers however (or cameras for that matter).
     
  22. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    No it doesn't. The curvature is quite obvious if you look carefully with enough distance.
     
  23. Nacho Registered Senior Member

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    In all fairness, I did write "sometimes adjust". I maintain that your illusions and blind spots are not a big factor in our day-to-day lives, and that our brain mostly delivers accurate representations of what we are looking at it. That is the norm -- the other things are the exceptions.

    And blind spots are not hard to overcome. Just move your head side-to-side to get rid of the blind spots.

    My ophthalmologist takes pictures (field vision tests) that show the blind spots all the time. I might not be remembering it correctly, but I believed it to be an artifact of just each eye, and that with eyes used in unison, the blind spot goes away because of overlap in field-of-vision, not because of the brain manufactoring information that is not there. Not true?
     

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