If you've been under a rock for the last day, day and a half, you may have missed the intense online discussion over a dress. It wasn't what Madonna was wearing when she fell at The Brits 2015. It wasn't a dress worn by a red carpet actress at the Oscars.
It's this dress.
The stupid question (which isn't so stupid after all) is this: what color is this dress. Say it out loud.
Some of you said gold and white, some of you said blue and black. But how can there BE such a big difference in opinion? This has made tech sites, the news in the UK and Australia and even celebrities on Twitter are talking about marital strife over this image.
So: how is this a great example of how people (and I'm thinking of climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers here, but I'll give my example as a climate-change denier) can believe something that isn't so? More, below the fold...
Going off-topic from the dress for a moment: here's Jim Inhofe (Oklahoma Republican and the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee) throwing a snowball on the floor of the Senate because of what he calls "the hysteria on global warming"...
Now: I could dismiss this with a nice example (do you have a small child nearby? First-grader, or thereabouts? And do you have access to cold water, a cup, and access to a nice can of soda in the fridge? If you do, get a cup of cold water and the soda from the fridge. Ask the kid if the water is warm or cool (it's cool, but let them say it). Ask the kid about the temperature of the soda can (it's cool, cold, freezing). Ask them which one is cooler, colder. Then ask them if this means the water is actually warm, or is the water is still cool but 'warmer' does not mean the same thing as 'warm' (because I friggin' GUARANTEE you, a reasonably smart six year-old child will know there's a difference between 'warm' and 'warmer'. And that things can be cool or cold and still be warmer than other things))... but what I'm here to talk about is WHY would someone steadfastly believe something that's wrong, even with evidence to the contrary (yes, there are still people online that held to their initial opinion of the color, even when the dress was revealed in better light)?
So, for those of you that think it was a gold and white dress in the shadow, here's the actual dress for sale on the British Amazon.co.uk page...
If you were in the gold/white camp, this might explain it for you. If your brain thought it was (incorrectly) in the shadows and (like you see snow as being bluish at twilight), you compensate the colors, you saw white and gold. If you recognized the over-exposure of the background, your brain knew the dress was bleached out too and tweaked the contrast for you.
What happens next is largely a question of how you think. If you're a progressive person that knows about things like optical illusions and how the eyes and brain can be fooled, you're thinking "wow, I was wrong, that's incredible" ...but if you are of the opinion that you're a proud conservative and could never be wrong so anything a left-winger like me would say about climate change is just a trick? Well, you'd be just like the commenters online that were full of misplaced hubris because that dress was OBVIOUSLY what your brain first thought it was, which was white, so it's obviously white and if it looks blue it's because someone switched the images...
You shouldn't feel stupid if you got the color wrong. Our brain is not a computer with Photoshop installed, our eyes aren't 24-bit scanners, and this is how optical illusions work on us. But if you got the color wrong and defend your initial position in the face of overwhelming evidence? Well, you SHOULD begin to understand that something isn't real just because you happen to think it's real or you ARE an idiot.
Inhofe's a white and gold dress kind of guy, even now. He doesn't know the difference between cold and colder, warm and warmer, and whatever he believes is a position he's sticking with. The fool.
As for me: I know it's pink and green.
But I'm not sticking to that.
