The Dress

[Grayfox]

ASAP science tells you why some see white and gold while others see blue and black

 

[Dagger311]

Pale blue and crap brown here.

 

[Mini Stiggy]

Earlier today I it was blue/black to me, but now I see white/gold

 

[vasiliflame]

is this still going

 

[Mrs. Famine]

No no. It's stopped now and the replies to this thread are in your imagination.

 

[Tornado]

Blue tinted white and gold for me. Background doesn't matter, screen (Samsung OLED tablet, crappy Motorola cell, old Philips HDTV and PSP) doesn't matter.



Incidentally, it's very pretty on the PR photo.

 

[JayOTT]

It's white&gold, wtf you saying it's black and blue? It clearly isn't.

Ok just stop. It's not funny anymore. It's blue and black and always has been blue and black. I've looked at the picture at least 20 times and not once has it ever been white and gold. I, like the OP, am now convinced that this is a group trolling effort to try and convince us that colours are not what they seem.

 

[Sage Ages]

I'm pretty sure the white and gold people are seeing is just a yellowish light reflecting off of the normal colors.

 

[LeMansAid]

All these colour puns......so annoying. Makes me feel like beating someone gold and white.

 

[Liquid]

 

[G.T.Ace]

All these colour puns......so annoying. Makes me feel like beating someone gold and white.

Haha, you should win a black medal for this joke!

 

[Lucas]

It's 8592BC with 8F7E6C stripes.

View attachment 317702

View attachment 317703

No kidding, but this is how I saw the dress from the very beginning (without the pin-point accuracy of Photoshop). I can't understand how people see the white in it, never mind how they see it as blue (which in my mind is BLUE, not some sort of light violet/indigo) and black. This is, like I said, how I see it, not how the dress actually is.

The dress is blue/black, but our eyes take the poor lighting into affect and tell us it could be white/gold. It's sort of like this visual trick:

EDIT: Confused myself just now!

This is similar to a test our "Audiovisual Technics" teacher did with us at uni: he asked us to tell him what color was the blackboard. "Green" was our answer (that's what they look like here). Then he turned off the lights and asked us again what color was it. "Green" was yet again our answer.

"Do you see it green? Looks more like dark gray to me." In your picture and in my teacher's example, our brain uses the reference from the image (and from memory) to tell the color. We say the square is light gray because it matches the position of the other squares, much like the blackboard was green because it was green in natural lights. But when asked what color do we actually see it as, A is equal to B, and the blackboard is dark gray.

Anyway, I have to go kill some Thalmor - nuts to the Blue-Black Concordat.

You rebel scum.

 

[Mini Stiggy]

I, like the OP, am now convinced that this is a group trolling effort to try and convince us that colours are not what they seem.

Mess around with your brightness. Go high/low/high/low etc. After a while, the higher brightness turns it into white/gold for me.

 

[samurai8juice]

Ok just stop. It's not funny anymore. It's blue and black and always has been blue and black. I've looked at the picture at least 20 times and not once has it ever been white and gold. I, like the OP, am now convinced that this is a group trolling effort to try and convince us that colours are not what they seem.

I've only ever seen a gold, and a white that looks like a dim blue light is being flashed on it. But, I've only viewed it on an iPhone and a Laptop. I've played with the brightness, and it still looks the White-blue/gold. I tilt the screen back and I still see the white-blue/gold, but they are just darker. I tilt the screen forward, and I now don't see anymore blue in the white.

But on the black background, there is even less blue(in the white) then in the white background.

My brain/eyes just don't want to give up on the white-blue/gold, even though the real dress color is blue/black.

 

[Sage Ages]

I've never seen gold.

 

[Enraged]

The more I look at it, the more I can see that it is actually black and blue. It's just the light that makes it look brighter than it is, but if you stare at it long enough it becomes black and blue. Specially at the bottom.

 

[JTB10000]

Why is this still a thing?

 

[R5]

Why is this still a thing?

Because of human's genetic need for answers to everything.

 

[W3H5]

I've seen both just now from looking at the full image and then scrolling to read comments and only seeing a partial image. Does that mean my nose is 40/40?

The truth is, there is no spoon dress.

 

[Imari]

The truth is, there is no spoon dress.

The dress is a lie.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

I hate you.

 

[Pupik]

Crap cameras: the downfall of Western Civilization.

I initially see gold and white, but you stare at that thing for a few moments, and I see blue and an (imperfect) black. A computer-processed image can trick the eyes, and to that...who cares?

I mean, until the robot car uprising, that is. Then, we can just argue. Tomorrow, we forget how we got here.

 

[watermelon punch]

This argument is like a metaphor for so many things.

Because everyone is "right" (correct).
Or as much as anything could be correct with such a very very bad photo.

It reminds me of this absolutely fascinating and riveting but also tragic and upsetting documentary I saw some years ago about traumatic brain injury patients.
There was one young man who suffered a brain injury and it was difficult, nearly impossible for him to communicate at first.
Finally they figured out that he couldn't hear properly... but it was more complicated than that.
I recall something where they said something to him, pointed, and he acted like he understood, but then it was clear he didn't.
But when they wrote the question and showed it to him, he understood.
The most bizarre part of it was that HE THOUGHT HE COULD HEAR.
This is very typical of brain injuries apparently... the person with the brain injury often does NOT perceive that something is wrong or what is wrong.
So anyway, his parents were just saying, well "give him a hearing aid".
And it was heart-breaking because they just couldn't understand that his hearing problem was NOT physical with his ears, and couldn't be fixed with a hearing aid.
It was that the part of his brain that interpreted sounds was damaged.
So in some ways he seemed deaf. But he wasn't necessarily actually deaf in the way someone with typical hearing loss would be. And he didn't know he was not hearing.
And his parents just couldn't wrap their heads around that no matter how much they tried to explain it to them.
And he was, I guess, somewhat stubborn about accepting the fact he couldn't hear properly, because it just didn't make sense to him... which made it even more difficult.
I think in the end, he was able to communicate by reading & writing notes to communicate.

Anyhow, it impressed to me how much senses absolutely totally depend on the brain interpreting the signals.
And of course that's what's going on here... the brain is interpreting what the eye sees and often what it doesn't.

Because, at all times, your brain is adjusting to the information coming in, and very quickly interpreting it without the person realizing.
And it often fills in the blanks automatically from past experience.

I saw this happening with a senior family member, before she got a hearing aid.
It's not that she didn't know she was losing her hearing... she knew she couldn't hear as well.
But she just never knew for sure what she was missing... because her brain would fill in the blanks without her realizing it.
And it became evident to others... when she'd "fill in the blanks" with the wrong stuff that was never said!
Like she was not hearing everything, but didn't always know it... her brain was filling in what she wasn't hearing... but it wasn't accurate. And how would she know this? She couldn't because it was happening automatically.
It was really hard to understand what was happening, and even more difficult to correct what she thought she heard... unless you double-check verified everything you said by having her give it back to you.

In the end, the picture is crappy exposure.
It's crappy poorly saturated colours.
And the difference in interpretation of it, probably based on each individuals' past experiences with crappy poorly exposed phone pics more than anything.

 

[Com Fox]

Just looked at the poll and wish there was "colour alternates option" because that's what I'm seeing.

 

[R5]

Just looked at the poll and wish there was "colour alternates option" because that's what I'm seeing.

"Another colour combination" 👍

 

[AlvaroF]

Wherever I see this dress, to me, is light blue and greenish gold. But don't trust me because I'm colourblind (not severly though)

 

[Zenith]

I understand how some people can see it as white and gold, but for the life of me I just can't look at it without seeing blue and black.

 

[Northstar]

You know, I really wish people, mainly men, would put this much effort into the other dress question.

"Does this dress make me look fat?"

For thousands of years we have been searching for the answer that let's us continue being happy, yet no progress has been made.

 

[tarnheld]

OMG this is so Feb. 2015, i feel old on the internet...

Never saw the white/gold except in the xkcd comic, pretty convincing:

They say seeing is believing... or do you believe in RGB triples?

I really hope the next internet hype will be about the McGurk effect!

 

[AOS-]

Hoh. It was white/gold. But then I covered everything in my field of view with my hands, left an opening only to see a segment of the dress and got it to change to black/blue after about 10 seconds.