I’d find it very comforting to believe this. However, too many people insist that they switch between seeing the dress as white-and-gold and as blue-and-black on the same monitor, like the spinning dancer illusion.
Me, I can only see it as white-and-gold, even though I’ve seen photos of the dress in normal light and know that it’s really blue-and-black. The problem is that the camera flash washed out the colors, but the bright light in the background tricks my mind into thinking that the illumination is coming from the wrong direction.
Speaking of the illumination coming from the wrong direction, why does it take so long to see craters instead of bumps when looking at the moon or Iapetus or the like? I tried rotating the image, but the illusion of convexity was damn persistent.
Re: TVs. A not insignificant portion of people seem to watch TV with “stretch” mode on and don’t seem to notice that the aspect ratio is all screwy.
And of course, some people are fine with low-bitrate mp3s, while other won’t settle for anything less than FLAC. I suspect that both groups are somewhat self-deluding.
There is lots of research using carefully calibrated monitors and individual differences are still seen. Some see one, some the other, and some can switch.
How can they be presented as something other than speech, when they’re coming out of a person’s mouth?
I notice that too, but I love my plasma TV anyway. Like a fluorescent light (and a plasma screen is basically an array of tiny fluorescent lights,) it’s more noticeable in your peripheral vision.
It wasn’t a camera flash, it was the fact that the camera automatically overexposed the photo. The illumination really is coming from behind. But otherwise, my thoughts exactly. When the thing went viral, many of the people saying they saw it as blue and black were saying “oh, yeah, I can see how it sort of looks white and gold at first, but if you keep in mind the extremely bright background and look at it the right way, you can switch your brain into seeing it as blue and black.” And I still can’t do that.
That’s another good one. That used to be more common when we were in transition from 4:3 to 16:9 TVs, and it used to drive me crazy. Another situation where you walk into the room and say “ahhhh! How can you watch TV like this? Here, let me see the remote and adjust the aspect ratio” only to have the other person reply, “what are you talking about?”
And I can look at a page of type and, not only identify the font and size, but spot bad kerning. A number of years ago, in one of the Olympic games, there was a huge logo on the TV: The 20xx OL YMPICS. Nobody bothered to kern the “LY”, and apparently, nobody noticed.
The concepts you have influence your perception—for instance, Russian speakers, who have no single term for ‘blue’, can discriminate between light and dark blue shades faster than speakers of other languages.
Yes, this. I find a stretched video completely unwatchable, while my wife hardly notices the difference—I can point out that, say, the Universal logo (the Earth) ought to be round, but looks like an ellipse, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
Also, unsynchronized audio and video playback. I will take ages fiddling with the settings to get it right, while some people don’t seem to be bothered by lips moving like half a second before the audio plays.
On some TVs, there is a marked difference between whites in static pictures, and whites in motion—the whites (say, reflections on surfaces) dim in motion, then brighten up again upon standstill. It drives me bonkers, but I haven’t yet found anyone else who even sees the effect (granted, I haven’t interviewed a statistically meaningful sample).
The worst thing you can do to a friend is to teach them how to spot bad kerning (well, maybe not literally the worst). It’s one of those things you just can’t un-see, and it’s damn near ubiquitous.
While I think I understand what you’re talking about, I’ve never had that problem.
I was very happy the first time someone in these boards complained about bad kerning and I learned the word. I could see the most horrid cases, but I was happy to learn the word for it. If something bothers you, at least you ought’a know what it’s called!
Musicians hear things that others don’t. Here’s a thread where I ask which song “does it better” and some musical Dopers just respond, and another asked what the songs are supposed to have in common: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=807595
That’s not a slam on a non-musician. I see the same thing with anyone who has taught themselves/learned about things. Hearing a chef discern between flavors, ingredients, quality of execution is cool. Hearing a great QB expert like Ron Jaworski of ESPN break down game film and point out what that QB is doing well or not so well is fascinating.
Do those “magic eye” 3-d pictures that were popular a number of years back count? Because I’ve never been able to see one of those things, no matter how hard I try. (Yes, I know it has to do with how/where you focus, I just can’t get the hang of it.)
I did full-time kerning for many years … every character pair in thousands of fonts. Then I went on vacation to Hawaii, and instinctively kerned palm trees.
Yes, a high suicide rate.
Also: it bothers me if the left/right stereo channels are reversed, especially with headphones, and especially with classical music. I can’t stand the violins or soloists on the wrong side. Most people can’t tell the difference.
I’m thinking of an experiment - maybe you can see how a stretched screen interacts with a movie with normal people talking vs. an inherently stretched aspect ratio - say Ron Perlman.
For many people, it takes practice, but like riding a bike you’ll never forget. For people with things like strabismus and/or amblyopia, you might never see them.
3rding the aspect ratio thing. I do the graphic design for the work committees I’m on, and dealing with coworkers who cannot see problems with aspect ratios and cannot understand why I’m banging on about how important it is to properly resize images without stretching or squishing them is such a headache.
That and the fact that they cannot understand image resolution, 72 ppi = web quality / 300 ppi = print quality, will be my undoing.
I’ve built with Lego all my life. As such, I instantly recognise every little piece. However, looking at a layperson trying to build a set is excruciating; they often can’t tell the most obviously different pieces apart. Lego does their share by making similar pieces in different colors, but still folks don’t see the difference between a 2x2 L and a 2x2 macaroni brick
I am nominally stereoblind (probably amblyopia), so I do not even try those things. When I got contacts, I was able to see the depth effect in a Viewmaster, but mostly, the 3D stuff is simply of no interest to me: too much effort.
