I was reading a forum on fark.com about optical illusions and came across two web pages that, judging by the other readers comments, I was too spooked to fully explore. One was on the The McCulloch Effect-
The McCulloch Effect is an optical illusion that makes one see colors that aren’t there-hours after looking at the illusion. From what the others in the forum said, it is real, but sounds BAD for you. Basilisk images, on the other hand, are supposed to cause permaent brain damage or death?! The mind can’t “digest” the picture and the brain just “crashes”, sort of like a computer virus. There wasn’t much discussion of these images on the forum. A google search of “basilisk (BLIT) images” turns up some interesting pages, but since I don’t want to die I didn’t look too deeply.
Does anyone know if basilisk (BLIT) images are for real or is this just some scifi mumbo-jumbo?
I believe this statement (from your second link) marks it as BS:
‘Extreme magnification’ of fractal images does not reveal any new detail that is not visible at less extreme magnification - that’s the whole point of fractals - the detail at magnification is the same as the unmagnified detail.
That’s not to say that some odd things aren’t possible with contrasty B/W images, of course.
From what I can find it sounds like either a joke or sci-fi fans just talking about “insider” aspects of a story. Kind of like how everyone here just “knows” that 42 is indeed the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Also note that the nature.com article was “revised” June 27th, 2006 - almost two years in the future.
I say sci-fi geek “in”-story, half based on the small amount of reading I’ve done, and half based on the fact that PICTURES CAN’T KILL YOU.
The BLIT is a fictional construct of Science Fiction writer David Langford, which first appeared in his short-story titled, appropriately enough, “BLIT”. A little background on how he came up with the subject is given here: http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/t3_002.html . And you can read the story in its entirety here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm
My guess is he had some friends at Nature that helped him set up that fake article for publicity.
The idea, I have to admit, gives you the chills at first. I think I may go read it now, actually.
I’m assuming you simply didn’t read this part, or else you are one of the most naive Internet users of all time. It states quite clearly that images have been banned not only from the Internet, but from the public airwaves as well.
I don’t think it’s possible to take that website seriously if you read it all the way through.
The aliens in A.E. Van Vogt’s ‘War Against the Rull’ series (1940-1950) employed psychoactive images as lethal weapons. Sometimes the patterns were used to implant keyword triggered hypnotic suggestions, and sometimes they made you shoot your friend, or run off the nearest cliff.
I’d say check some Mandelbrot images before saying that’s true. Although most of the striking details are more from the “near-set” points, colored to correspond to how many iterations where required to determine when the point “escaped”, rather than the M-set itself.
As an additional data point, Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash had a similar concept: a black-and-white bitmap corresponding to some big binary value that caused brain wipes in people with an innate understanding of computers (i.e. hackers).
As for real-life BLIT images: if they existed, who’d be able to tell you about it? Anyone who saw one is already dead!!
The most recent one I know of is in the January 2000 F&SF, entitled “Different Kinds of Darkness.” Actually, this is the only story of his I’ve ever read, until gregongie’s link. It’s also in Year’s Best SF 6, edited by David G. Hartwell.
Actually Mangetout, the Mandelbrot set has the peculiar property that no scaled distinct areas of the Mandelbrot set are identical. The closest you can come is that areas on opposite sides of the line of symmetry are inverted. Some of the swirly parts look similar to larger areas of the set, but they are distinct in the details.
