Do you see the white square laid over the four black discs?
Look again. There is no white square.
Do you see a vase? Or two faces looking at each other?
Both are there.
How many arrangements of boxes do you see?
Two? Three? More?
Do you see the old woman?
Or the young woman?
All the above images are two dimensional drawings, yet all to more or lessor degrees suggest depth. The box drawing is the most depth deceptive. One can get an illusion that makes the boxes appear to go up and into the backround, up and out of the background, one going up and in while the other goes up and out, and the reverse.
These illusions are designed to demonstrate that what our mind/brain mechanism ‘sees’ sometimes conforms to stored patterns that do not correspond to what is actually focussed on our retinas. Think how much more illusive are those images that are generated by imagination, prejudice, and distorted propaganda.
This function, not to say dysfunction, of the mind is what all illusionists rely on. Stage or entertainment illusionists are great fun, but bankers, economists, politicians, theologians, gurus, advertisers, ideologues, and any other form of con-man rely on this mental function to mislead, confuse, and steal. They have learned that if they tell us what we want to hear, what we expect to hear, or what we hope to hear, we will serve them to our great disadvantage.
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