The impetus for this article came from seeing the following optical illusion on Facebook last month:
What do you think?
Are the blue bars all parallel, or are they zig-zag? Can you believe what you
see?
Victoria Skye’s Illusions
The above image was created in 2017 by Victoria Skye, who
introduces herself on one
website as “a children’s and family magician and balloon twister in Atlanta,
Georgia.”
Another
website says she is a “magical entertainer” and “illusion artist,” and it
gives a link to the image above, which is called the “Skye Blue Café Wall Illusion.”
That website also links to a YouTube
video, which explains that the blue bars in the image are really parallel.
So, what about it? Can we really believe what we see (or
what we think we see)?
Believing What
You See
As you know, Missouri has long been called the Show-me
State. The origin of that unofficial motto goes back at least to Willard
Vandiver, who served from 1897 to 1905 as a Missouri member of the U.S. House
of Representatives.
According to this
2021 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vandiver declared in a
1899 speech about a questionable issue, “I'm from Missouri, and you have got to
show me.”
As one born and reared in Missouri, I have always taken some
pride in our state’s motto: it is a caution against gullibility and a call for
verifiability.
One troubling problem, though, is that we humans don’t
always see things correctly. Even what we think we see clearly can sometimes be
an illusion—as the above image of Victoria Skye clearly shows. And we can be
mistaken about important, real-life matters also.
Thus, a large majority of the voters in the Show-me State were
under the illusion that their preferred candidate for POTUS in 2016 was an admirable
man who would lead the U.S. in a positive way. But after four years they were still
unable to believe what they saw and voted for him again.
Seeing What you Believe
Some things have to be believed in
order to be seen. That was the title of#20, the seven-page chapter in my book Thirty
True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018). (I wish you all had my book
and would (re)read that chapter, but you can read it online here.)
In that chapter, as in my July 10
blog post, I quote the fox in The Little Prince: “Anything essential is
invisible to the eyes.” What we know intuitively or, yes, by faith is necessary
for “seeing” things that are of the greatest importance to us. We “see” those
things because of what we believe.
But here, too, is a knotty problem: our
beliefs are not always correct. Just as we can be misled by what we see with our
physical eyes (come on, the blue bars in Virginia Skye’s image are clearly
zigzag!), we can also be misled by what we incorrectly believe.
To avoid duplicating what I wrote
for #20 in my book, here is an important matter not discussed there—and something
I need to know more about. There is often, we are told, a skewing or
misunderstanding of “reality” by something psychologists call cognitive bias.
I found this 2020 article about that matter instructive, although it did not say
enough about the central importance of beliefs/presuppositions. But it did refer
to “confirmation bias,” which is “favoring information that conforms to . . .
existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform.”
Because we all tend to see what we
believe, we have to examine our beliefs regularly just as we have to be sure
what we see with our physical eyes is correct. (The blue bars still look zigzag
to me!).
To use the previous example, we
“libtards” who strongly disagree with the “Trumpists” must discuss or debate
not just what we see/hear but most of all what we each believe and why.
To acknowledge that we all see what
we do and evaluate what we see on the basis of our basic
beliefs/presuppositions is of the greatest importance.
I used to see that very illustration as an early TV test pattern -- unless my eyes then or my memory now are deceiving me.
ReplyDelete😁
DeleteThe first comment received this morning was from local Thinking Friend Vern Barnet. He wrote,
ReplyDelete"This idea is so fundamental that it is on the CRES [Center for Religious Experience and Study] home page [at this link]: https://www.cres.org/index1.html#illusion ."
Thanks, Vern, for responding early this morning and for linking to the CRES website. I hope that many readers of this blog will click on the link you provided and consider the image there and the words following.
DeleteAs you say, the idea of the blog post and what you linked to on CRES's home page is, indeed, a fundamental one. But, unfortunately, that does not mean that it is universally acknowledged and implemented.
You know, I have always thought the very same thing that you have written in this blog. It is probably why I left fundamentalism after only a year or two from my born-again experience. But I find myself these days wondering whether it is wise for many of us Libtard‘s at this point to be encouraging each other to be so self critical. It is a very liberal concept. And in principle I agree with it. But when you have the enemies of democracy at the door, can we afford to be encouraging each other to doubt ourselves, as we normally should? I think about warriors in a war, when their lives and the lives of their comrades are at stake. So I would raise the question whether the level of importance of the issue is a factor that should be taken into account.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anton, for raising significant questions about the conclusion of the blog article. You have put your finger on what I referred to when I wrote in the email I sent to you Thinking Friends that more needs to be said about the conclusion.
DeleteAs you say, being self-critical is a liberal concept. Religious fundamentalists and those who are markedly conservative politically (and now, of course, those two groups overlap considerably) tend not to be self-critical for they are convinced that they are unquestionably right in what they believe and those who see things differently are unquestionably wrong. So even in this way there is a distinct and potentially dangerous polarity. So, what should we do? Here is what I am thinking now.
1) I think what I have written is basically correct and should not be jettisoned for pragmatic reasons.
2) While what I have written may well fall on deaf ears (blind eyes?) for those on the far right, there are many who are right of center but who may still have enough integrity to give serious consideration to why they see what they see (believe what they believe). I trust such Thinking Friends, who are far too few, will do just that.
3) Being self-critical does not mean refusing to take a strong stand against that which seems to be detrimental to society as a whole and to individuals, and especially those individuals who are suffering the most, in society. And, certainly, I firmly believe that we need to take a strong stand in opposition to the current “enemies of democracy.”
4) We who are progressive/liberal must be careful not to adopt the attitudes and actions of those with whom we most disagree or we will end up being just like them in many unfortunate ways.
5) Admittedly, this blog post may not be about the most burning issues of the day, but it is basic for considering all those issues. I have written and will continue to write about the multitude of problems society is facing: global warming, racism, economic inequality, sexism, homophobia, etc., etc. But, I am convinced, there needs to be considerable variety in what I write and every post can’t be directly about the most important issues.
Here are comments from local Thinking Friend David Nelson, who is also a personal friend of Anton, who made the previous comments, and me. I don't know if the comments he was referring to was to Anton's or mine, or both.
ReplyDelete"Interesting comments. Thanks. My experience is that I see what I am looking for. I see what I expect to see. When I look for and expect to see acts of compassion and justice I see them daily. When I look for signs of God’s reign I see those signs. I choose each morning to keep my focus on community and compassion. It works for me."
Two things:
ReplyDeleteOne is the importance of examination. This includes coming to awareness of why you take a position: your reasons and rationalizations both objective and subjective, the fears and hopes, and narratives encapsulate them.
Second is humility in belief. Any complex belief involves a web of assumptions that remain axiomatic and can't be 'proved. Belief always entails our very biology (including our individual genetics and formative experiences) and our place of scale in a reality beyond our 'common sense.' It always entails personal preferences.
Yes. people can be objectively right or wrong about empirical events. Biden won the election. To insist it was stolen from Trump in spite of empirical facts is delusional or just lying. And we must insist he did to counter this attack on our republic. When it comes to religious beliefs, dogmatic assertion demonstrates a lack of awareness.
I agree with your five points above.
I figured from the reference to illusion and the obvious zig-zag appearance that the real fun would be figuring out how the illusion worked. It is the saw-tooth details which are carefully designed to create the illusion. Try backing up to where the details blur out, and the then slightly fuzzy lines suddenly go parallel.
ReplyDeleteI have been tricked enough times by real-world optical illusions to be very aware that they happen, both by design and by accident. The bottom line is that our brains do a lot of processing on what we see to make it into something intelligible. Sometimes that brain system gets tricked by odd inputs. One illusion is so popular that it is a cliche; Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or the headlight of an oncoming train? We need to know about these things!