White, gold, black or blue or even pink for Katy Perry

White and gold or black and blue? Seems simple and stupid but this "stupid" question over the dress' colors created a huge debate and for the past weeks, people from all around the word have been sharing, on the Internet, what they see. It all started when a girl, after arguing with her husband, shared this photo on Tumbler asking for the true color of the dress. Since then, this debate became worldwide, and scientists eventually started debating over it too, seeking for a true answer to end all this. They concluded that after all, blue and black was the "true" color of the dress and since different people see different colors because of the different ways our different brains analyze the information it gets from our eyes, it is normal to interpret the color of this dress not in the same exact way. As a matter a fact, it isn't, like many people think, taking a photo with our eyes and posting it in the brain. We take in limited information through our eyes resulting in an imperfect photo and we use the context to figure out what's going on and complete the missing pieces. Some scientists even referred to this dress as an optical illusion saying that the brain figures out the important parts of a picture, and ignores the rest of it. It also decides what parts are important and makes changes on how it perceives the other negligible parts depending on that. Scientists also stated that since the dress takes up most of the photo, there are few details and information in the photo and therefore, the brain has to make guesses about the light when the picture was taken, which can go either way. And once again, since, for each individual, our brain operates differently, some people might pay less attention to the blue background light, and not ignore the white or yellow light, seeing a blue and black dress and vice versa. This interpretation can also be affected by their own personal experiences according to some scientists.

Personally, I find that although this topic may seem useless, if you really understand it and get into it it's actually really interesting because you get to discover and learn how your own brain and body interprets the external world compared to others and how your brain is unique in many ways. To be honest, when I first spotted this picture a couple of weeks ago, I remember seeing a blue and black dress. And intrigued by how and why some of my friends saw it as white and gold, I got back to it a couple of days later, seeing it as well as white and gold. I did the exact same thing again and I went back to seeing it as black and blue. And today, I understand why every time my brain interpreted this visual information differently. And for me, it is really important and meaningful to learn something actually interesting and yet intriguing about ourselves and I am very grateful to Miss. Ahmad for choosing this topic as an assignment.

 

Joseph Moussa 8Y