My Piece on "The Dress"

Tonight people on the internet got very up in arms over an image of a dress. 

The most common hot take has been to say "wow this is so stupid, it's just a dress". Or just to get really mad at people who don't see it the same way that you do.

It seems to be pretty much confirmed that the physical dress is blue and black. However, photoshop can confirm that the image is a sort of pale blue and gold. I've talked to people who see Blue and Black, and they still see the below image as pale blue and gold. So it's a weird optical illusion.

To me though the real story is on how quickly this went viral. Within 15 minutes of hearing about it I couldn't avoid it. And people in general seem very attached to their perceptions of the image, and get angry when they come in to contact with other perceptions. Furthermore, there is an interesting equation between the image and the object, people don't say "the image of the dress is white/gold" they say "the dress". 

I think this natural tendency to see photographs as proof is a big part of why people got so up in arms. It's much easier to accept that your eye is misleading you when you look at a manufactured optical illusion like this one of a checkerboard (although I have heard of people getting mad about this as well).

But when you assume that the image is a direct representation of an object, it is much scarier to consider the concept that what you are seeing is not what is actually there. Or that what you see can change. Because that demonstrates that our perception of the world is relative, based mostly on the mind filling stuff in. This picture forces the existential question that every stoner in history has asked "what if like, what I see as blue isn't what you see as blue". And that question coming up in the real world is actually... pretty scary. So whether you're on team blue/black or team white/gold just take a deep breath and repeat to yourself "the image is not the object".