Illusions All Around Us

Is the square marked A the same color and brightness as the one marked B? Get a piece of paper and punch two holes in it so that you can view only those two squares, hiding the distracting information in the rest of the picture.

This kind of illusion occurs because our brains scale and interpret things based on their context. "Fudge factors" built into our nervous systems work against us in certain situations. The world doesn't explain itself; we must labor to make sense of it. One theorist proposes that we experience illusions all the time, that they are not special cases. He suggests that our brains continually make perceptual and cognitive adjustments to fill in the blanks.

I just saw a cognitive illusion while waiting for the walk signal at an intersection. A U-Haul truck – I’d guess it was a 14-footer, but that may be an illusion – came around the corner and passed in front of me. The picture on its side included three lime-colored rings that looked like Jell-o from a mold with a large fish-scale pattern. Most side panels on U-Haul trucks show people engaged in activities in colorful, seasonal outdoor or community scenes. I suppose this is intended to evoke images of the new life waiting at the end of the move. But what do Jell-o rings evoke; if the truck fills up, there’s always room for Jell-o? As with an illusion, I can’t make sense of what I think I saw.