The Imperceptible Bounds of Perception

[acidbrainfather-deactivated2021]

1. If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink.

2. Green Catastrophe: If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green.

3. Reality Shatter: Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, many if not all of the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you may only see a green dot rotating.

What does this tell us about the nature of reality? There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don’t disappear. If our brains are so easily fooled, what aspects of reality are we missing?

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Two days ago you were sure that the ballerina was spinning clockwise. Now you are baffled because she now spins counterclockwise and you don’t have an idea how this shit happened. Or you just don’t know where you’re going.

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Age differences in perception and awareness of emotion

We investigated the effects of age and gender on emotional perception and physiology using electrodermal skin conductance response (SCR) and examined whether SCR related to subjective perceptions of emotional pictures. Older adults found pictures to be ...

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Camping

               I knew I felt something different that day. I couldn’t explain to you what it was, but it was there. Feeling good and standing tall, I looked out on my campsite and took it all in. The ashen logs were still strewn about the fire pit, and I felt the days I had spent here in the past flood back to me. Years of memories now vying for my attention and, as the amber morning sun rose steadily over the mountains, I felt myself being taken over by the recollections of time spent in this very spot.

               I saw a wet afternoon roll by. I watched myself, as a young child, trudging through the mud and tiredly complaining about the long day spent walking only to find that our destination was as miserable as the journey to it had been. The campsite which my father had promised would be “stunningly beautiful” looked to my young eyes like a pile of mud just wide enough to hide a family of crocodiles and deep enough to get more than a boot’s-depth stuck in. I was certain then that the log benches were only clever reptiles in disguise. My eyes followed a disappointed child into the quickly-pitched tent and lost sight of that distaste and general annoyance.

               When he finally came out, the earth was dry, the skies were clear, and the budding red flowers matched perfectly the acne on a newly adolescent face. It was a face yearning for love. I remembered the excitement I had felt knowing that this camping trip would be a chance to reunite me with the girl I had met the year before. I recalled recognizing for the first time the beauty of the landscape. Everything was dazzling until the moment I saw her with another boy. Suddenly, the bright sun and vibrant foliage felt like a kick in the face, serving no other purpose than to exaggerate the beauty I felt I had lost.

               That kick sent me careening back towards my tent. This time I was inside. It was storming too hard to leave, and I knew I wouldn’t want to. I was looking at myself now on the brink of manhood and more lost than I had ever felt before. The landscape outside was so blurred by the rain I could not even bring it to my mind. Everything felt unfamiliar then. I was alone, and nothing felt the same. I thought it never would.

               But it all came back. It came back because I was staring at it all in front of my eyes. The sun, the tent, the logs, which I was fairly certain at this point must be very patient crocodiles, were all there. Today I could see it all for what it was and what it had been. I watched a child emerge from the tent. It was not me this time but my son, and though he grimaced now, I knew eventually he would see it all differently.

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The Experiment

               “It’s happening, but I don’t believe it!” Katherine exclaimed as her eyes filled with astonishment at what she was witnessing. “It’s completely inexplicable….” The awe in her voice was enough to lift George from his seat, the origami he had been folding collapsing onto the lab’s pristine countertops.

               “Are you serious?” He asked, not quite willing to believe that their efforts could have really brought about the results they had so desperately wanted to confirm. “You’re telling me that these findings were real? I’m going to look on that screen and see two straight, vertical lines?”

               “See for yourself,” She turned the computer monitor towards him and heard his gasp. There on the monitor were two straight, vertical lines, marking the spots where every single electron had landed. “No interference pattern! They went straight through, and the only difference is that we were watching those little devils.”

               “There’s no way,” his eyes were bulging, his mouth agape, “How can it be possible that by the mere act of observation we have changed the behavior of these particles, and not just any particles mind you, but some of the most fundamental particles in the universe?” The double-slit experiment they had performed had shown that, by simple observation, the motion of electrons being blasted through the two slits changed from that of a wave to that of individual particles. It was as though the physical properties of the universe had been affected by the device used to measure the location of each electron.

               “Do you think it’s true, then?” Katherine inquired of George.

               “Do I think what is true?”

               “A watched pot never boils. A watched clock never ticks. What if the way we see things isn’t just in our heads. What if by looking at something we are actually altering its behavior?

               “But how could that be?” George began to retort.

               “How could this be? What is causing this? Should it be any more possible that we can change the very nature of an electron with our gaze than it is that we might slow down time, or stop the transfer of energy from one body to another?”

George had to think about this. These thoughts clouded his mind and he could feel the weight of a thousand questions begin to bury him. His brain was becoming a tumultuous landscape of new ideas and possibilities. All that he had once thought was certain now became an endless sea of unknowing. “So what does this teach us about the world we live in?” He wondered aloud.

“It teaches us nothing. All we now know is that there is so much more to learn than we ever thought before. The world, as we had previously seen it, is not the world we live in. The mysteries are now more bountiful than ever!”

“Well that was a waste of time.” George propped up his origami paper and continued to fold.

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Who are you?

               There is a man, sullen and defeated, sitting at an oak desk. His hair nearly matches the dark tone of the wood, and his eyes as dark and burnt-out as the sage that littered his small apartment. It had been burning since the day he saw something. Out of the corner of his eye, he would always just catch it: a glimmer or a specter. It seemed like a man, following him through every room, acting as he would, and yet he detested it. He felt it in the cold of morning when we awoke, in the sharp sound of the shower as he washed, and in the form of the steam as it clouded the bathroom of his apartment. He could not decide what it was, but it had been haunting him for quite some time now.

It was inescapable, and yet he was the only one to feel its presence. When company would come over, he would feel it there stronger than ever and yet nobody seemed to notice. Explaining as best he could, all he ever heard in response was “we’re the only one’s here.” It was driving him to madness and every day he felt it eating away at him. He was sleeping less and less, his mind driven wild by the thought of this presence constantly watching him… consuming him. With each new visit from friends or family, he could feel the concern grow within their eyes. With every visit, he felt that their concern gained warrant.

He felt the shift: a softening in his body, but a hardening of his soul. Everything began to hurt. The sharp chill of a winter morning, the wet gloom of a rainy spring afternoon, and even the tender warmth of a summer evening did nothing but let him feel the skin that was slowly becoming a walking tomb. The passage of time was a curse, slowly, relentlessly, cruelly forcing him to observe his own insanity. The weaker he became in mind and body, the stronger the presence of this ghost became. He could feel his sense of self being unraveled. Every ounce of sanity, direction, and emotion leaving his decaying form only served to solidify the form that haunted him.

He laid his head upon his oak desk, his face blank and his gaze empty. At the very moment the last spark of sensation left his eyes, the ghost dissipated. The man was still conscious, but felt nothing. He was no longer in control. He was watching. He was there as the head rose from the desk, but it was no longer his. He was the chill of the morning air, the harsh sound of the shower that prepared his former body for company, and the steam that escaped the bathroom as the body went to answer the door. As it swung open, he faded until he was nothing but the painful words: “I’m glad to see you back to your old self.”

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