Palinopsia—The Aftertaste of Imagery

How religion and politics control the point of focus and at odds with reality

The human brain is a fascinating organ, but is very susceptible to input based on your output (what you already think you know). We see what we are programmed to see, what we expect to see, often seeing what is not there at all. The quirks of human perception must be understood before one decides where they stand—on any subject. Palinopsia is when you see that residual image after you remove the original from view. Most of us have seen these demonstrations at one point or another where you stare intently at an ink blot or photo, then take it away and close your eyes. The image reappears.

Below is the checkerboard illusion. Look at squares A and B. They are in fact the same shade of grey, but your preconditioned expectation of what the checkerboard looks like, will not even allow you spot see it correctly, even when it’s pointed out to you.

Look closely. Your brain is playing a trick on you, but the puzzle is cleverly designed to do just that. Here below, a strip in the same color is laid between the two squares. This bridge confirms the illusion, but look at the top pic again and the trick remains.

This is just the tip of the neurological iceberg when it comes to perception.

“Attention is what steers your perception, it’s what controls your reality, it’s the gateway to the mind. If you don’t attend to something, you can’t be aware of it”—Apollo Robbins, The Art of Misderection (9 min TED)

But if you only attend to it, you miss the best of reality—Enter religion

Christianity and Islam demand all your attention, all your devotion “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might—not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord”

My attention today is to open your mind to the possibility that that focus is a misdirection. A hijacking of your self empowered life.

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

99 thoughts on “Palinopsia—The Aftertaste of Imagery”

    1. Our minds are that funny at times. Once you concede and go with faith, you’re pretty much done thinking. Throw in a couple of ‘corner of the eye’ shadow people and paranormal can get quite addictive when you can find so much support. The human neuro-plexity should be mandatory training.

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  2. I’m not convinced on the checkerboard image presentation. Why the green cylinder used to introduce an unnecessary colour and cast a shadow where to shade comparison is to be made? I sense deception in this presentation. But I would not argue against the point you are making. The only way out of self-deception is through self empowerment.

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    1. Sure. It’s a cleverly designed puzzle. They are however the same shade of grey. You’ll see it demonstrated in the short vid. The idea here is to get one sided people to take a serious look at their perceptions, how they are manipulated, and come to some consensus that we’ve been manipulated into living a divided life—Religion and politics being the biggest culprits, but really lying in general in these areas is based on a faulty perception of reality

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        1. I would never do that. Of course there is a chance I’ve been deceived as well, but it is a reputable illusion with multiple explanations. The short video is just one of many.

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          2. I begin with the knowledge that everything is a deception… that’s a safe assumption in man’s world after all: call it experience… and history backs it up a plenty. Reputable illusion? OK, what makes something reputable? 🙂 I recently had a blog discussion about truth also. What is truth? How do we know for a fact that a thing is true? For that matter how do we know that a fact is a fact, for a fact? Observation? Well, your presentation just proved that observation is useless… there goes man’s entire scientific house of cards… or do we just believe “them” but then it becomes “faith” and neither truth nor fact and we’ve come full circle again… sorry Galileo you observed an illusion.
            I think that only what an individual can observe, measure or personally experience can be classed as truth. If I just nicked my thumb while chopping my carrots, that’s truth. If my friend Sharlene calls me from Vancouver and tells me she nicked her thumb while chopping her carrots, that is neither truth nor fact because I can’t verify it. It is, however, truth and fact for her… as long as she’s not lying to me to get sympathy. No wonder the Altarians call Earth “Land of Chaos.” Everything done within our global civilization is based on nothing but faith. Eliminate faith and you destroy civilization. I’m just thinking out loud here…

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            2. I think that only what an individual can observe, measure or personally experience can be classed as truth

              I tend to agree with what you are saying.
              I think at the end of the day it’s how much credibility you ascribed to people or bodies that determine what you accept as true or fact

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    2. Hi Sha’Tara,

      Jim is right in that there is no deception. What deceives us here is our visual system. You are very welcome to find out much more at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2017/09/28/optical-illusions/

      The said post has more than 200 examples of various sorts. Moreover, it also discusses optical art (op art) and performance art as well as special decors and rehabilitation centres that contain or exploit optical illusions.

      Please be informed that you might need to use a desktop or laptop computer with a large screen to view the rich multimedia contents available for heightening your multisensory enjoyment at my websites, some of which could be too powerful and feature-rich for iPad, iPhone, tablet or other portable devices to handle properly or adequately.

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      2. OK, yes, sure and all the rest. My “visual system” is what is doing the deceiving – according to the presentation. Let me pose a problem for you based on that observation: I live with my “visual system,” I don’t live in the checkerboard puzzle. My reality has to rely on my visual system, so in actual fact it’s the checkerboard puzzle that is the deceiving article – that is attempting to deceive me about my own natural propensity to see things a certain way. Nothing else matters here. There is an old fable about a fox and a millipede. The millipede was going along very happy with himself when a crafty old fox stopped by and observed him walking. “Say, tell me, millipede, which foot comes before which?” The millipede stopped to look at himself and got so confused he never took another step. The millipede stopped trusting in his natural ability to handle his reality and entered into the illusion presented by the fox. We do this all the time. That does not negate the original point made by Jim regarding religion. Religion is deceptive, as is all advertising, all politics and all monetary systems. Anything that tries to convince me to believe in something I don’t need to live a perfectly good life is a deception.

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        1. Hi Sha’Tara,

          No one, least of all Jim and I, is or has been suggesting that you live in the chequerboard puzzle, or any puzzle for that matter. To insist that “Nothing else matters here” and that the chequerboard puzzle is the issue or “the deceiving article” and not the human visual system, is as much a denial or delusion as insisting that all of the heavenly bodies move around the Earth since that’s how they appear to us in the sky! By your own logic, the heavenly bodies too must also be “the deceiving articles”.

          Things are not always as they seem. However you wish to reason or conclude, there is much more in reality than what our “visual system”, and by extension, our “belief system”, afford us to know, sense, learn, live and so on. Besides, do Jim and I, like the metaphorical millipede, look more confused, confounded or disabled by our many discoveries of the “visual system” and “belief system”?

          Let us also use another fable: A particular frog has lived all its life in a well, and has been coaxed by some of its relatives and friends to jump out of the well to learn more about what lies beyond. The frog always declines and retorts that the outside world cannot be any different than what is inside the wall and what it has always been able to look up and see.

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      1. It is a cleverly designed illusion by MIT. The gradual blending of the other squares is really the trick. That part is very subtle, but the two squares are the same shades as demonstrated in the video. But I admire your skepticism. It’s a smart approach to most things in this life that are unimportant, which is nearly everything. You can actually see the shade match up if you squint a bit, which is a good technique for matching colors on different substrates.

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          1. They are that crafty. This was from an MIT dept and if you go to the wiki page they even give you all the details, colors, pixels so you can do it yourself and check it in paint. Pretty cool.

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      2. Hi makagutu,

        There is a much easier version that only requires you to put one of your fingers across your screen to instantly see for yourself that they are the same shade of grey. You can find it in my post at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2017/09/28/optical-illusions/

        The said post has more than 200 examples of various sorts.

        Hi Jim,

        It seems that your choice of the chequerboard puzzle as a medium of “conversion” or “deconversion”, so to speak, has been met with incredulity and resistance, even designated as “the deceiving article”. Now, try to imagine SoundEagle sticking its tongue out in jest and/or frustration. 😉

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        1. There is a much easier version that only requires you to put one of your fingers across your screen to instantly see for yourself that they are the same shade of grey.

          I saw this and many more.

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  3. I agree! And I’ve heard of those tests! 🙂 Really neat to bring up and does tie in with religion and illusion. Not is all as it seems 😉

    On another note, I wanted to tell you I made a post using the linguistic concepts I mentioned before and that paper by Whorf I sent you! Please let me know your thoughts on it on my blog when you can, as I worked extra-hard to make it good…
    https://aladyofreason.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/war-of-the-words/

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            3. Oh, and coming off swearing a blue streak and telling me to “go to hell” doesn’t quite work on a fellow athiest 😂 I figure I made an enemy of you, disappointing but I’ll accept it…I’m a conservative AND an athiest so I agree with much of Jim’s commentary while disagreeing on liberal politics…

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            4. Jim also had similar reservations about it being one sided, but he expressed it in a mature and balanced manner…Try following his example. I’ve had strident disagreements with religious people over the subject of God and morality, yet never once degraded myself into ad hominems over it despite pushing my own hot buttons…

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            6. Humm, and exactly what did I mean when I told you I’ll see you in hell–I certainly did not tell you to go to hell. As for swearing a blue streak, first of all you have to believe it is possible to swear, which I do not. Your whole thesis was about the ability to ignore the power of words, so I tested out your theory. I used words other people think are swear words. You responded beautifully. Words do have power, even for you.
              As for making an enemy of me, sorry, but only trumpo can do that. I respect and agree with a lot of what you say, but I had not seen this conservative side of you before. Hopefully now we have started a dialogue. I notice I definitely got your attention, which I meant to do. You got my attention without meaning to, but that is what life is about, isn’t it? So I am putting the ball back in your court. Please do with it as you feel necessary.

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            8. I replied at 3 am did let me extend my own apology for coming off so strong 😂😂😂 It’s still hard for me to differentiate between a very spirited debate with harsh language vs. A personal attack due to the vitriol in our polarized nation. I’m also extremely relived you’re still open you having common ground with me too. That’s all too rare these days!

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            10. My apologies to you also. I don’t usually blow off that much steam at once, but I did last night, and you happened to feel the bru t of it. Nothing personal, although with the way your nation is right now personal attacks are much more the norm. That is a very sad state of affairs…

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  4. I have vision problems from my brain injury. I can see but not perceive. Like not seeing the door knob but knowing there is one some place. So I have to feel for the knob or decide that the knob should be somewhere in the middle of the door.

    This goes into philosophy and perception. Can you prove to me that you are not a figment of my imagination? Am I really typing at a keyboard? Is this a dream or reality? You get the drift.

    What humans do is to place a matrix or meaning on what they perceive. Why does a dog in English go arf but in Japan won-won? Same dog, different language. Why in English, there is only one word for “you,” but many words in Japanese? Is the status of you to me equal in English or unimportant, but in Japanese, very important?

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  5. I need to stop reading the comments that follow your blog before I post. I end up on (attention) a totally different street, and if I keep going I get lost in conversations that have nothing to do with me. By the time I am at the end and ready to comment, I have to go back to see WTF Jim said in the first place. I had to sit back and look at the puzzle for a while even with the bridge in order to see the color/shades match up. I do not see it as a deception, but my perception. Very interesting. I did watch the TED. Cool!

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  6. Whew! I made it to your most recent post.

    I’ll be trying to keep up, from here. As for this post, I like it! The brain is a current fascination. I look forward to more advances in neurological and cognitive science.

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      1. I read quickly. I acquired that skill in my youth. Mom would walk my sister and I to the bookmobile every Thursday during the summer months and I would check out the maximum of 5 books, read them all, and check them back in the following Thursday.

        Thanks for the medal!

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  7. Hi Jim, another interesting post, thank you. I know we have different views in some of this but I wanted to ask if you’ve written a post describing your decision to leave the church you were in. I’d be interested in knowing about that shift in you. Also, whether your decision to reject religion means the same, for you, as rejecting God and vice versa. Hope you’re doing well, Stephen

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    1. Good morning Stephen. It’s a good question, while giving it some thought this morning the reasons seemingly conflate into one big picture. Prayer was probably the first to draw my attention.
      I have lived a very independent life, always calling my own shots and going about life in unconventional ways, basically traveling the backroads and finding my own way—except religion. That I was an independent minded sort with a variety of interests, no fears or worries that I couldn’t survive well in any situation took me to homesteading in the Panama jungle. There, disconnected from the influences and pressures to conform, to believe the unbelievable, I observed the realities of life and the complete odds of religion with reality, the fact that every concept of god requires hairsplitting and exhausting explanations to connect/confirm it to our experience. We believe because we make the effort to believe, been persuaded to believe. There’s a reason the more you know, the more faith eludes you.
      Had not religion resulted to force, virtually eliminating any competing factions we most certainly would not have the monopolies we have today. Only the compliant genes survived. Breeding programs sufficiently describe this evolution in our compliance. I have yet to read an atheist book, I have watched a half dozen videos, but my journey is my own and this blog is an exercise to challenge my pre religious stance with my own thoughts and minimize the conclusions of others influence. I strictly observe outcomes and compare them to teachings and scripture. None of it produces the promised outcome without ones willful ostriching.
      I’ll try to find an old post for this. I have discussed it before.
      There is one short video that has influenced me quite a bit. Worth watching no matter what side you’re on
      Dangerous memes https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes

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      1. Thanks for that Jim. It’s helpful to know part of your path and I respect your honest search for the truth. I’ve travelled my own path too and only ever had bad experiences (on the whole) with mainstream life and what we’re expected to do to ‘live’.

        I’m with you on religion, although perhaps not as passionate in my criticism of it – I haven’t found a church yet that I’ve felt at home in. None have never seemed authentic. Although I have tried to find one and the closest to a ‘vision’ I had was seeing in my mind’s eye a church with a dirt floor. I suspect it’s a metaphor for my need to share the company of people who are honest and truthful in an ‘earthy’ way (no pun intended).

        The more I know the more I’ve believed in God. But not the God that religion describes or infers. I couldn’t explain it here, but God isn’t an idol to me. I think I have strong Faith also, but not in the usual sense of the word. It isn’t ‘blind faith’. Anyway, that’s for another time.

        I’d like to know if you’ve rejected both religion and God as being part and parcel. For me one is the baby and the other is the bath water, if you catch my drift.

        All the best.

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        1. Maybe in my mind the baby’s water was drawn in haste, without anything but spectral evidence. As with any crumbling venture, starting with a clean slate, new people, a new vision, and even a new way of seeing altogether. K-Mart and Sears merging together is a great example, hehe. Now they are bankrupt.
          I am an atheist, but I think this is only absolute considering the choices we are tricked into having. Atheism vs belief is the same as choosing left or right, conservatism or liberalism, capitalism or communism, all wrong choices in themselves. My journey has led me to this: not an ‘either or’ nor a mixture of two wrong philosophies, but a new way altogether. The universe is much more complex and interesting than the two choice illusions that forced upon us.
          I do love your dirt floor analogy. I have nothing against personal spirituality. The big box religions one size fits all approach is a failure.

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      2. We believe because we make the effort to believe, been persuaded to believe.

        Sums it up rather well, IMO. Fits life in general, but especially in our approach to religion.

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        1. Victoria did a post a while back about the results and perceptions after praying for what you want. You’ll split infinite hairs to prove god heard you, and dismiss the obvious non answers as gods will too. It’s actually crazy.

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  8. Hey Jim, you have done a lot of research and study. I’m wondering how you determine the the difference between what is real and what is an allusion. I have also done a lot of study but have come to a vastly different conclusion. So I’m wondering if there is a difference in the way we determine if something is real or not. Thanks

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    1. Great question. Good morning Dave. It is important firstly to understand the gullibility and foibles of human neurology and psychology, confirmation bias and the results of spending too much time in one discipline. Putting god first (as by way of commandment) is a neat trick, that’s why it is a first line of conversion. Just believe! When we do that we are done. But through understanding the trick and understanding the human tendencies to want to fit it, Only then is there a chance to see through your own dilemma. You cannot see anything the way it actually is by employing faith first. That is the great trick, really. If you simply (or complexly) want to believe, there is very little chance you won’t perceive the desires of your heart. Studies have shown quite clearly (take prayer for instance) that believers will give credit to god when simply the odds of natural consequences give a positive answer to prayer roughly 1/2 the time. Things just tend to work out when we apply ourselves. Survival instinct and luck, or a helping hand. Other areas of the world are not so fortunate. They lack any control or resource due to several factors like corruption, oppression, etc. I have used this saying many times, more or less—I’m glad god got you that new job—meanwhile in the Sudan and Burundi…. The ultimate display of ego is to think a god that already knew your plight ahead of time, will now alter the laws of physics and consequences to help you find your car keys, while prayers for the starving and dying go unanswered.
      Without writing a book here, the way to know real or not is you. But it can’t come by faith. You have to trust your own conclusions, but as I’ve written in the past, as a believer all the words and all the conclusions you arrive at are not your own, but those in authority that have decided what you’ll say and believe. As an example, my church was anti-gay, and holds no position for women in the church. Making babies was top priority and stay at home if any way possible. The minute I concluded there was no god, my thoughts just flooded with compassion and love and understanding for the plight of oppressed people. Of course I always thought I understood, but the things I thought and said through the lens of faith were not mine—It all changed in a day.
      In conclusion I would say, trust your own feelings and knowledge, and to know what that is you’d have to believe the studies and understand the foibles of the human mind, and objectively as you can scrutinize your “beliefs” because they don’t add up to any objectivity at all. Belief is futile, and we’ve proven that after 2000 years of dominance.
      I was fortunate to have three weeks alone, no outside influences, no clever explanations, no one interpreting for me the simplicity of the gospel, and line by line it doesn’t add up to the promised outcomes. We do however, have to grapple with the fact that quite possibly you’ve been duped, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. But we are raised in deception at every turn, especially here in the states, and religion and god are just the continuation of that model. I hate that, but people lie and fool their kids from day one. It’s amazing that any of us are sane at all.
      The key to understanding the mysteries is unbelief. It’s that easy.

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      1. Hey Jim I found your response and last post excessively intresting. Belief (this includes non belief) is one of the things I study and your belief system is fascinating. I’m not trying to say that in a belittling way. When it comes to athiast you are original without being supper crazy. And I respect that about you.
        I appreciate you responding to my question, however I’m still confused on how you determine what is true and what is not. What I got was that you stoped believing in God and started seeing clearly. I was hoping for more of a method or list of, criteria. In the post I recently read you listed a conversion process, if you don’t mind me asking, what denomination were you in?

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        1. Just to be clear, and thank you for the curiosity, I believe nothing. That is not a type of belief. I am in no hurry at all to claim anything, and am very patient to adopt solid answers.
          As I stated yesterday, “In physics observable is defined as something that can be measured. The basic realities in life also can be measured. Outcomes can be predicted based on experience, consensus, repeatability, and yes, our eyes (usually). Only what a person can observe, measure, and demonstrate can be deemed as truth”. Every thing else is subjective to feeling, which are easily manipulated (herd instinct, peer pressure, repetition, submission, etc. The awareness of the human tendency to believe (starting as a young child raised in deception at nearly every level) to the hardwiring that occurs, basically a neuro-muscle memory when you do something over and over, or devote too much time to one discipline. You can observe is each of us, say, a profession that you gave your all, you can never forget it and the knowledge and skill can even improve over time—by repetition.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
          If you take a moment and look through this page, we can all find ourselves within it. I would even open the subheadings and see the studies. There are many more as well, and where biases and cognition is deeply flawed by what we have previously been exposed to, someone else’s testimony becomes a personal and circular quandary that keeps us searching beyond the mark based on someone else’s “belief” and testimony. Faith before knowledge, often faith with cherry picked verses and personal testimony. Logical fallacies and pluralistic ignorance, (two good words to wiki) shows the intensity of the problem. You initially believe because everyone else believes. Continue to believe because of doubt, (I seem to be the only one that doesn’t) and everyone else thinks everyone else believes, while nobody really does.
          I am resistant to review my denomination. I think that my argument is sound regardless of the religion in question. Let me say that in all my years I studied the arguments of every main faith and contrasted it with my own. I know most apologists arguments much better than they do. If my presentation is not truth, it’s not truth in any faith or language.

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          1. Hey I’m not going to lie I had a hard time fallowing you, so please correct me if I got something wrong.
            I am not sure I know what you mean when you say, you don’t believe. Refusing to quickly exsept things, is in fact, a belief system(you believe that you should not just exsept things). When you say “I believe nothing”. Your claiming a system of belief (you believe that nothing is reliable).
            also you said that something is true when it can be measured, this indicating that if something can’t be measured its not true, indicating that “spiritual” things are not true. That’s a truth claim, I.e. a belief. Even if you are willing to change your mind, that willingness is based on a belief. (If you are willing to change you mind, I would suggest changing the way you determine truth. If not, you definition is good!). I’m sure we won’t agree on this, but I hope you see why I’m confused. What your describing as your way of understanding the world, sounds like skepticism (which is a belief system). It might not be a organised religion, but it is a way to view and navigate the world, I.e. a belief system.
            I was not trying to use your X denomination as an argument, I hope you did not get that impression.
            I’m just curious. It sounds like you came from one of the more ridged ones.
            Btw, the article was good, though incomplete. It was far to focused on “repeated information”, and did not go in to the reason repeated info is more likely to be believed, it touched it, in the beginning, but did not go in to it. Some of the tabs that exsplaind the experiments went in to more detail about why repeated info is belived, Which was nice.

            But ye, if you could respond to how I think your non belief is a belief I would apreasheat it!
            Last but not least, Jim did you unfollow me? I promise my content is getting better. I’m almost a the end of the learning curve! Any advice on how to do a better writing job is more than welcome!
            Have a good one!!

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            1. I didn’t unfollow you intensionally. I’ll check. WP does that sometimes.
              Defining belief the way you are doing is another game of whack a mole. Like saying atheism is a belief. It’s not. It’s a lack of belief due to non evidence of a claim. I believe that if I work hard I’ll have good luck, so yes I believe some things. As far as believing your testimony, I believe you think it’s true, but my method would not allow to take your word for it. I would investigate and come to a conclusion that several factors came into play, emotion, need, neurology, etc. Supernatural beliefs can vary the width of the world over, but somehow your inspiration is true? But not the animist from the Kogi Tribe in Columbia who are actually more in tune with the world and it’s forces than we will ever be, that believe the earth is alive and all its elements. They are the keepers of the earth and have some astounding understanding considering they have only recently been contacted. Their feelings and faith are actually more poignant than any judeo believer I’ve ever met. Maybe there’s something to that worth looking at. I do “believe” they have some special insight to the world and they prove that with their actions.
              For Christianity, the belief can feel good, but after careful scrutiny on my own time, disconnected and no apologetics, o noticed that none of it adds up to one observable reality. I don’t not believe Christianity, I’ve demonstrated it’s ineffectiveness.
              Most of you all are good people. You are a gem here in WP, but that is rare. Apologists here brought me to this conclusion, based on the experience of many people. Those that most vehemently defend the faith, have never lived its precepts. It is by faith one stays in the churches, and it is by fact that they leave it. The apologists only know the words. Only an untested fool would believe his bible in the remote jungles or mountains. I’m sending you a link of a story that happened back in 1979

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            5. Hello Dave and Jim. If I may offer my humble two-cents here on human perception via our sensory-receptors and how our brains interpret those stimulated sensors. 🙂

              I will pull from my 6-part blog-series “Untapped Worlds” the related information for consideration by you both. In the Intro and the following parts II and a portion of III… I discuss the evolved efficiency (and deficiency) of the human brain, so much efficiency that it frequently misinterprets, distorts, or completely overlooks a TON of factual data. I begin this way. Please excuse the length, but it might be worth examining. At least I hope so, huh? 😉 …

              12.6-watts average. That is it. That is the average electric power (i.e. metabolic-energy) the human body must supply the brain for one “normal” day says Scientific American magazine. Want to know what sort of items can be powered with only 12.6-watts and for how long? To help better understand this comparison, let’s pretend we have a 12.6-watt battery to run some common household items. A basic clock-radio you might see on a bedside table in a cheap hotel will run for approximately 3-hours, if the radio volume is soft; maybe 4-hours if the radio is never used. A Nintendo Wii game-console can run on 16.8-watts for an hour. A standard 19″ CRT TV, 55-90 watts for an hour. A camping range-burner requires 800-watts for 1-hour. The average household coffee-maker requires 900-watts per hour. Getting the picture?

              The human brain must conserve metabolic-power and run as efficiently as possible in order to function “normally” for a 14-16 hour day awake. Naturally, when asleep the brain is using much less metabolic-power, but still consumes small amounts. Power efficiency becomes critical in abnormal circumstances; either the body has enough metabolic-energy stored or it doesn’t. When the body does not, the potential for serious or traumatic harm increases proportionately to the danger, correct? Without the necessary brain-power for higher or acute cognitive and motor reactions, the greater the bodily harm or mortality. We see this organ-power equation illustrated in the animal kingdom every day. For example, animals falling prey to predators. Those animals with a higher healthier organ-power coefficient typically escape death, or their chances of escape are higher than those hunted animals with lower or less-healthy organ-power coefficients. Roadkills are another example. Animals with a low coefficient (i.e. tiny brains with tiny metabolic power to that tiny brain) typically cannot cross a busy highway 10-times without being hit.

              Hence, our human brains are quite prone/susceptible to various degrees of ambiguity, superstition, memory-errors, and deception. Below is the link to this blog-series if you two are interested. 🙂

              https://professortaboo.com/2015/10/02/untapped-worlds-an-intro/

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            6. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when we typically see, log, reference, and distribute based primarily on what we already have been exposed to. It’s important to be open to the fact you could be completely wrong at the very core. I made a 180 a few years ago. It was humbling

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            8. So to continue my above train of thought, due to the human brain’s significant deficiencies and efficiencies, it is wise to have as MUCH hard data as possible to examine, decipher, and interpret. Furthermore, it is even wiser to have a broad dataset examined, deciphered, and interpreted by a large pool of Analysts; the more diverse the better the hedging against errors, false conclusions, and individual bias.

              However, when freedom of scrutiny or questioning is heavily discouraged, banned or even illegal — like many situations throughout human history, e.g. Joseph Stalin or the Spanish Inquisition to name two — sometimes a phenomena called truthiness by orthodoxy will form and if this continues for several human generations, then errors and false realities grow exponentially until the laws of physics and Quantum Mechanics change everything. Sometimes that “change” is horribly catastrophic. :/

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  9. I see this kind of questioning approach, critical inquiry as a kind of re-wilding of the human spirit. If we are going to survive this extinction emergency we are all going to have to fine tune our BS detectors.

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    1. Overhaul our bs detectors…then fine tune. Belief is always presented as some emergent need. It’s ok to scrutinize any deal, especially ones that are too good to be true. What’s the rush to have mere belief? I don’t know

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      1. I would comment that “the rush to have mere belief” is survival instinct in a global capitalist society that relies entirely on faith: faith in God, faith in some kind of government, faith in some sort of economic system. None of them provide any fact and all of them increasingly contribute to the implosion of civilization through lies, greed, gargantuan theft of resources and social income as well as promotion of violence and wars. It is faith (fear of something even worse) that keeps people believing and supporting in the face of such obvious rapine of mind and matter. The world of man has become one giant gambling casino and casinos are where people go to exercise the greatest level of faith, not the churches. Our global gambling debt now stands at $184,000,000,000,000 or $86,000 per man, woman and child on the planet. Even those who can’t play must pay.

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        1. Wow! And yep. If they really believed what they teach we could employ the year of release and give the world a clean slate. I think that would actually work (Deut 15) How long do you think it would take for people to go back in debt?

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          1. Not long, you can bet on that. It’s a global addiction and unless there is a change of heart and mind, individual by individual, the bait will continue to work, even faster then next time around. Those who tried to implement the year of Jubilee understood human nature very well – they gave it a 49 year cycle to revert back to its originally cancelled evil of endebting and enslaving. They knew people don’t learn.

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  11. Ok. After painstakingly covering all the surrounding squares with sticky notes, I have confirmed that the two squares do indeed have the same shade of gray. Now excuse me while I go clean my monitor.

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    1. I did the same, and try doing it on a touch screen, hah! In my case, for some reason known only to advanced physics my squares all turned yellow. I had kind of expected to see faces in them though, as in Hollywood Squares but my palinopsia doesn’t reach that far back. Thankfully I also have a screen protector…

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    3. Hi Ron,

      You have been indeed really serious and diligent about testing the chequerboard puzzle out, assuming that you were being truthful and not just being facetious!

      Now, there is a much easier version that only requires you to put one of your fingers across your screen to verify that they are the same shade of grey. You can find it in my post at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2017/09/28/optical-illusions/

      The said post has more than 200 examples of various sorts.

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      1. No offense, SE, but anyone who reads your entire post has a heckava lot more time (and endurance) that I have! Fascinating but waaaay too much information. Yikes! 😲

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        2. To Nan and whomever it may concern,

          SoundEagle would like to add that Jim (the proverbial turkey as depicted by his latest Gravatar) has done a very decent job here, even though his chosen chequerboard puzzle as a medium of “conversion” or “deconversion” is so “good” (or some would insist to be so “deceptive”) that it has triggered what seems to be the so-called “backfire effect” from some of his readers.

          But wait! There are further intrigues!! Even the “backfire effect” itself still requires much more research to verify its validity and veracity.

          According to Wikipedia:

          The backfire effect is a name for the finding that given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly.[43][44] The phrase was first coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in 2010.[45] However, subsequent research has since failed to replicate findings supporting the backfire effect.[46] One study conducted out of the Ohio State University and George Washington University studied 10,100 participants with 52 different issues expected to trigger a backfire effect. While the findings did conclude that individuals are reluctant to embrace facts that contradict their already held ideology, no cases of backfire were detected.[47] The backfire effect has since been noted to be a rare phenomenon rather than a common occurrence[48] (compare the boomerang effect).

          Moreover, SoundEagle would like to add that some of the issues mentioned in Jim’s current post indeed have a lot to do with with emotional reasoning, confirmation bias and other cognitive biases, as well as, even more importantly, how human beings process statements and quotations, as discussed in my very detailed post at http://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/the-quotation-fallacy/

          But wait! Wait! WAIT! That said post is yet another one that is “Fascinating but waaaay too much information. Yikes! 😲”, to use Nan’s own words.. . . . .

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      2. Hi SoundEagle,

        I was diligent up to a point. Ideally, I would also have liked to have taken colour readings of the two squares. But without access to the proper instruments required to perform that task, I’ve tentatively (and perhaps erroneously) assumed that my visual confirmation is/was adequate enough to render an opinion.

        Thanks for the link. I’ve read through the post and will check out the embedded videos later.

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        1. You are very welcome, Ron. Your feedback or critique is also appreciated there. Please be informed that you might need to use a desktop or laptop computer with a large screen to view the rich multimedia contents available for heightening your multisensory enjoyment at my websites, some of which could be too powerful and feature-rich for iPad, iPhone, tablet or other portable devices to handle properly or adequately. A fast broadband connection is also helpful. 🙂

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      1. You asked — “Where do you draw lines between reality and illusions.”

        My response:

        Illusion is when people tell me how to live my life and what to believe.

        Reality is when I go to work and pay my bills.

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