Optical Illusion
Stare at the red dot for a minute or two:
From the SEED article on it:
Stare at the red dot in the center of the figure for a minute or two. Before long, the green ring will disappear—it simply seems to fade into the white background. There are no tricks: This is a simple, static image file. The effect has been known for more than two centuries and is named for its discoverer, Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler (1780–1866), a Swiss physician and philosopher. “Troxler fading” is actually related to what you experience when you get “dizzy”: You become so habituated to a phenomenon (spinning in a circle or seeing a green ring in your peripheral vision) that you stop noticing it’s there. Or, rather, you don’t realize that your perceptual system has begun actively ignoring it.
I feel like my perceptual system might actively ignore other things, BUT HOW WOULD I KNOW?
About
Pop Bioethics, written by Kyle Munkittrick, is an effort to study the ethics of the continuing evolution of the human species via the lens of pop culture and be somewhat entertaining in the process.
Kyle's writing can also be found at Discover's The Crux, Slate's Future Tense, and at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. For questions or comments: comments [at] popbioethics [dot] com
All opinions, ideas, and words either explicit or implicit found within this website are my own and represent no other person, organization, or group.Categories

