I know it was just for introduction, but that was an awesome illusion, much better than the more widely-known one mentioned in this previous LW article. I mean, wow, when you draw a line from the “blue” to “yellow” tiles the same color as both tiles, the line looks like it’s changing color, even though it can’t be! Amazing.
Of course, the point I made about the previous optical illusion still stands: yes, your visual cognition is “wrong” for this rare occasion, but the same heuristic that makes you wrong here allows you to be right in more common cases, like if you saw this kind of thing in real life.
Unfortunately, the corresponding phenomenon doesn’t happen for the related “comparison bias” you discuss, so a similar point can’t be made there.
I mean, wow, when you draw a line from the “blue” to “yellow” tiles the same color as both tiles, the line looks like it’s changing color, even though it can’t be!
I can see the colors changing in the modified image, however, the effect seems to be a lot more subtle for me than for other people.
I was very confused by the first image, because the tiles others are identifying as yellow on the right cube look gray to me; that is, I don’t see any yellow boxes on the right cube; I had to look at the modified image just to know what boxes to compare. I’ve never been diagnosed as colorblind, but have on rare occasions argued with people about the color of items that have a similar gray appearance. Anyone care to hazard a guess what’s going on here?
Interesting. I can “focus on” the four gray (blue) tiles on the left cube and see them as gray, but I can’t see the yellow tiles on the right as anything but yellow just by thinking.
Any color blind people look at this? I blocked off the surrounding color with a pair of envelopes, and the line then looks the same color, but it seems to be darker on the left side (yellow-tinted cube) than on the rest of the line. Edited for clearness.
Neat—when I look at it up close, I see the ‘line’s color changing’ effect Silas mentioned. But when I back off, I instead see a grey line connecting the squares, including a ghost image of the line overwriting part of the colored square.
Yeah, I don’t think this illusion (which I posted in the colour constancy discussion you mention) is an appropriate example to use as an introduction to the Predictably Irrational story. Your brain is not being ‘fooled’ here—it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is solving the inverse rendering problem and not identifying RGB values. The anchoring effect with the prices of subscriptions is not really the same kind of thing at all.
Ariely then went so far as to recommend in his book that for best effect, you should go to bars and clubs with a wingman who is similar to you but less attractive.
It’s commonly observed that many girls use this exact tactic when going to bars and clubs.
Your brain is not being ‘fooled’ here—it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is solving the inverse rendering problem and not identifying RGB values. The anchoring effect with the prices of subscriptions is not really the same kind of thing at all.
Why not? Presumably the brain is ‘supposed’ to perceive differences more easily than absolute values as well, because that’s what was useful on the sorts of problems that shaped the brainware we now use to compare prices.
Your visual system is not evolved to be a colorimeter because that is not actually very useful for the kinds of things we use our visual system for. Thinking that your brain ‘should’ identify the same RGB values as the same ‘colors’ in a different context reflects a confusion about what invariant properties of the world the visual system represents as ‘color’.
Our conscious experience of color is related to the spectral composition of light that reaches our retinas but the RGB value of a pixel is not sufficient to describe the more complex qualia we label ‘colors’. If there is any ‘failure’ captured by this illusion it is a failure to understand what a good job the brain does of extracting useful information from the complex pattern of light that falls onto our retinas rather than a failure of the visual system. A colorimeter is a relatively simple $90 device. Matching the human visual system’s performance on the inverse rendering problem is an unsolved hard AI problem.
The anchoring phenomenon which can result in poor choices in certain circumstances on the other hand does reflect a ‘failure’ in the sense that a generally useful heuristic may lead us to make poor judgements. I’d say it is an example of misapplying a heuristic to a problem it is ill suited for. I think comparing it to the colour constancy phenomenon is misleading and inapt.
I totally agree that those functions of the visual system are features and not bugs, but I still think the analogy to biases holds; after all, there’s a strong argument that that biases can be features too. It’s all a question of whether they’re being used in the sorts of situations for which they were designed, or whether they’re in an unusual situation where they break down. In the case of vision, that’s specially designed optical illusions, but practically all modern thought is outside the original design specs for our cognitive heuristics.
Thinking that your brain ‘should’ identify the same RGB values as the same ‘colors’ in a different context reflects a confusion about what invariant properties of the world the visual system represents as ‘color’. … If there is any ‘failure’ captured by this illusion it is a failure to understand what a good job the brain does of extracting useful information from the complex pattern of light that falls onto our retinas rather than a failure of the visual system.
I agree with mattnewport’s use of “supposed to” if it’s in the sense of current usefulness. “It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do” as in “it is doing what we’d generally want it to do”. The ability to screen off tinting and lighting variations is probably more useful than the ability to perceive absolute colours. (If you see a Rubik’s cube through a yellow-tinted window and you want to figure out what colours are showing, then you don’t want the window to affect your answer.) But if we’re looking at a list of subscription options or choosing between TVs at a store, it would be vastly more preferable to have some neutral, non-relative way of evaluating the options, some way of having a $2000 TV evoke the same amount of happy desirability feelings whether you see it next to a $4000 TV or a $200 TV.
I’m not sure that the same neural mechanism is used to compare colours and to compare prices, but I could be convinced. (Is there any research on it? Are there any conditions that impair one of these processes, such that we could study them and see if the other process is impaired too?) If they are indeed the same, and I could choose to knock out that part of my brain or not (with no other side effects), then I think (very tentatively) that I would. I think I could deal with perceiving the blue tile as grey if it made me a much more rational economic decision-maker.
I really doubt that same neural mechanism is involved. Like P= 0.0005. We’re dealing with totally different areas of the brain that evolved hundreds of millions of years apart. I’m not even sure I see an obvious sense in which the optical illusion corresponds to the cognitive bias.
I don’t think it’s mechanically the same, or that there’s a value-of-magazine-subscriptions equivalent to double opponent cells in the visual cortex, but I think the two processes are conceptually solutions to the same problem.
The general problem is trying to pick out salient features from what’s currently in the attention without being distracted by the macro-level problem of how what’s currently in the attention differs from everything else.
So in color vision, that’s something like determining what parts of a field are redder or greener than others without being distracted by the entire field being redder than usual because it’s sunset. In purchasing, it’s something like deciding which of two meals is better value than another without being distracted by the whole menu being more expensive than normal because it’s a fancy restaurant.
Yeah, that was my intuition (though I hadn’t thought about it enough to get that confident). I was just posing the question to see if anyone actually wanted to argue a connection between the two processes or if they were only using it as an analogy. I got the impression that Yvain was using it as an analogy but that Nick was arguing or assuming that both cases were actually using the same cognitive processes.
I know it was just for introduction, but that was an awesome illusion, much better than the more widely-known one mentioned in this previous LW article. I mean, wow, when you draw a line from the “blue” to “yellow” tiles the same color as both tiles, the line looks like it’s changing color, even though it can’t be! Amazing.
Of course, the point I made about the previous optical illusion still stands: yes, your visual cognition is “wrong” for this rare occasion, but the same heuristic that makes you wrong here allows you to be right in more common cases, like if you saw this kind of thing in real life.
Unfortunately, the corresponding phenomenon doesn’t happen for the related “comparison bias” you discuss, so a similar point can’t be made there.
Cool idea, here’s what it looks like.
Thanks for providing that image. This is a very powerful effect.
For instance, I have to focus on it very hard to temporarily not see it.
Can anyone NOT see this effect easily? Or is it fully universal?
I can see the colors changing in the modified image, however, the effect seems to be a lot more subtle for me than for other people.
I was very confused by the first image, because the tiles others are identifying as yellow on the right cube look gray to me; that is, I don’t see any yellow boxes on the right cube; I had to look at the modified image just to know what boxes to compare. I’ve never been diagnosed as colorblind, but have on rare occasions argued with people about the color of items that have a similar gray appearance. Anyone care to hazard a guess what’s going on here?
Is it possible that you are super-un-colorblind? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy
If you turn out to be humanity’s third identified tetrochromat, I want 500 karma.
Color vision deficiency? Variant cone cell pigmentation in your X-chromosome(s)? I imagine running some color vision tests might be informative.
Interesting. I can “focus on” the four gray (blue) tiles on the left cube and see them as gray, but I can’t see the yellow tiles on the right as anything but yellow just by thinking.
Hands down the most startling optical illusion I can remember seeing.
Any color blind people look at this? I blocked off the surrounding color with a pair of envelopes, and the line then looks the same color, but it seems to be darker on the left side (yellow-tinted cube) than on the rest of the line. Edited for clearness.
Neat—when I look at it up close, I see the ‘line’s color changing’ effect Silas mentioned. But when I back off, I instead see a grey line connecting the squares, including a ghost image of the line overwriting part of the colored square.
Yeah, I don’t think this illusion (which I posted in the colour constancy discussion you mention) is an appropriate example to use as an introduction to the Predictably Irrational story. Your brain is not being ‘fooled’ here—it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is solving the inverse rendering problem and not identifying RGB values. The anchoring effect with the prices of subscriptions is not really the same kind of thing at all.
It’s commonly observed that many girls use this exact tactic when going to bars and clubs.
And some people have advised hitting on the less attractive one on the theory that she’ll be more likely to be receptive to advances.
Or to make the other one jealous.
Why not? Presumably the brain is ‘supposed’ to perceive differences more easily than absolute values as well, because that’s what was useful on the sorts of problems that shaped the brainware we now use to compare prices.
Your visual system is not evolved to be a colorimeter because that is not actually very useful for the kinds of things we use our visual system for. Thinking that your brain ‘should’ identify the same RGB values as the same ‘colors’ in a different context reflects a confusion about what invariant properties of the world the visual system represents as ‘color’.
Our conscious experience of color is related to the spectral composition of light that reaches our retinas but the RGB value of a pixel is not sufficient to describe the more complex qualia we label ‘colors’. If there is any ‘failure’ captured by this illusion it is a failure to understand what a good job the brain does of extracting useful information from the complex pattern of light that falls onto our retinas rather than a failure of the visual system. A colorimeter is a relatively simple $90 device. Matching the human visual system’s performance on the inverse rendering problem is an unsolved hard AI problem.
The anchoring phenomenon which can result in poor choices in certain circumstances on the other hand does reflect a ‘failure’ in the sense that a generally useful heuristic may lead us to make poor judgements. I’d say it is an example of misapplying a heuristic to a problem it is ill suited for. I think comparing it to the colour constancy phenomenon is misleading and inapt.
I totally agree that those functions of the visual system are features and not bugs, but I still think the analogy to biases holds; after all, there’s a strong argument that that biases can be features too. It’s all a question of whether they’re being used in the sorts of situations for which they were designed, or whether they’re in an unusual situation where they break down. In the case of vision, that’s specially designed optical illusions, but practically all modern thought is outside the original design specs for our cognitive heuristics.
Beautiful. Well said.
I agree with mattnewport’s use of “supposed to” if it’s in the sense of current usefulness. “It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do” as in “it is doing what we’d generally want it to do”. The ability to screen off tinting and lighting variations is probably more useful than the ability to perceive absolute colours. (If you see a Rubik’s cube through a yellow-tinted window and you want to figure out what colours are showing, then you don’t want the window to affect your answer.) But if we’re looking at a list of subscription options or choosing between TVs at a store, it would be vastly more preferable to have some neutral, non-relative way of evaluating the options, some way of having a $2000 TV evoke the same amount of happy desirability feelings whether you see it next to a $4000 TV or a $200 TV.
I’m not sure that the same neural mechanism is used to compare colours and to compare prices, but I could be convinced. (Is there any research on it? Are there any conditions that impair one of these processes, such that we could study them and see if the other process is impaired too?) If they are indeed the same, and I could choose to knock out that part of my brain or not (with no other side effects), then I think (very tentatively) that I would. I think I could deal with perceiving the blue tile as grey if it made me a much more rational economic decision-maker.
I really doubt that same neural mechanism is involved. Like P= 0.0005. We’re dealing with totally different areas of the brain that evolved hundreds of millions of years apart. I’m not even sure I see an obvious sense in which the optical illusion corresponds to the cognitive bias.
I don’t think it’s mechanically the same, or that there’s a value-of-magazine-subscriptions equivalent to double opponent cells in the visual cortex, but I think the two processes are conceptually solutions to the same problem.
The general problem is trying to pick out salient features from what’s currently in the attention without being distracted by the macro-level problem of how what’s currently in the attention differs from everything else.
So in color vision, that’s something like determining what parts of a field are redder or greener than others without being distracted by the entire field being redder than usual because it’s sunset. In purchasing, it’s something like deciding which of two meals is better value than another without being distracted by the whole menu being more expensive than normal because it’s a fancy restaurant.
Yeah, that was my intuition (though I hadn’t thought about it enough to get that confident). I was just posing the question to see if anyone actually wanted to argue a connection between the two processes or if they were only using it as an analogy. I got the impression that Yvain was using it as an analogy but that Nick was arguing or assuming that both cases were actually using the same cognitive processes.