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Fitness & Health

03rd Dec 2016

WATCH: This is why you can never trust your eyes to show you the truth

Rosanna Cooney

Is this real life?

Optical illusions are always fun, remember that dress debate, was it white, was it blue? Yeah that was  incredibly annoying and clogged up the internet for days until no one ever wanted to wear or see a dress ever again fun.

Like we said a real whoopla.

But optical illusions do call into question how much you can really trust your eyes to tell you the truth. Do they show you what is really there? Or do they show you a world without Santa?

These are the great questions of our time.

Look at this dot. Now close/cover your left eye and focus on the cross on the left of your screen. Done that? Now move your head closer to the cross while keeping focused on it. The black dot will disappear.

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Except it didn’t really disappear, you just located your blind spot.

The video uploaded by AsapSCIENCE explains why this happens and how our brains evolve to receive information as rapidly as possible, but will sometimes make assumptions based on learning, memory and expectation.

This means we can react faster, make quicker decisions and have snappier reflexes but could that speed come at a cost greater than the loss of a black dot?

The internet has given us so many things, we would gladly give back the dress but it is always monumentally unsettling enjoyable to be reminded of just how little we can trust our own eyes.

It makes us believe that northpole magic might only be lingering out of view.

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