Seeing is believing – maybe not.
Have you ever fall into a state of awe when a magician performs his magic trick? And the next thing you know, you start questioning yourself whether if what he did was true or was it just an illusion or a paradox. Before you answer, let’s watch the video clip.
So what did you see? Okay, probably I shouldn’t be asking you that because I’m sure none of you could see how it happened. – Not just you guys, heck, I can’t even see the trick, unless you’re a magician yourself then that’s exceptional. At this point, you can’t trust your interpretation of what’s going on around you. Our perceptions are being fooled. It looks like he placed the bandana in the fabric but what you (and I) didn’t see is that he never really put the bandana in the fabric at all.
After doing a couple of research, I found out that we humans have limited/narrow bandwidth of perception. (Bandwidth is the amount of data we collect through our brain cells correlation to time). This is called a selective perception. Thus, the tricks he performed gave us an illusion and this proves to you how limited the power of observation (seeing) can be. However, if you are able to master it then you will definitely have the ability to see what other people can’t see with their naked eyes.
I encounter a couple of magic tricks shown by a friend of mine and every single time I’ll be quoting “IT’S A LIE!” This is because I don’t buy it and I either find it bogus or fake. But then again, ask yourself this. What is real? Is seeing with your naked eyes revealing the reality? The truth is, no. we can’t judge whether one’s interpretation of reality is more true or false than the other. You are what’s different. The way you’re observing reality is different; not reality itself. Hence, reality is in the mind of the observer. – When observation change, reality change.
Optical illusions can distort our perception by manipulating parts of an entity such as motion, color, geometric designs and luminance. Our eyes can deceive us in ways you can’t imagine. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the examples below.
Most of the illusions have been commonly used by psychologists and artists.
shifting gears
Afterimages of complementary colors create apparent movement in our peripheral vision
as our eyes shift across the page.
Afterimages of complementary colors create apparent movement in our peripheral vision
as our eyes shift across the page.
Word Color Test
In this test DO NOT READ the words, say aloud the COLOR of each word.
In summary, as a professional communication student, we need to understand the purpose of seeing so that we can channel this knowledge and mould it to fit into a particular text correlation to our aims and objectives. Also, we should take note that our minds are constantly affected by the limited ability of our eyes – just like the magic trick shown earlier which illustrated the limits and deception of human perception. Now, is seeing still believing to you? Maybe not after all.
