Cool illusion:
The winner of the “Best Illusion of the Year Contest” is definitely worth checking out. I like this illusion because it is subtly different than many visual illusions that I have seen. What comes to mind are those static perception illusions, such as MC Escher paintings, that your eyes travel over but who fundamentally stay fixed. In this illusion, the paradox unfolds in real time. The clash comes from the part of our brain that has encoded the experience of watching objects fall since birth providing a framework, arguing with the visual areas that are trying to interpret motion stimulus within that framework, and finding it impossible. My brain keeps trying to understand how the sequence of events I am observing could not have come from the world that I am used to, and yet at the end this irreconcilable streams are instantly brought into focus, by slightly changing the camera angle.
In this way, I see a metaphore for many of the mathematical problems that I suffered through as an undergraduate. As the constructor of the proof, at times you have an overwhelming intuition that the final result you are chasing is attainable. Yet for some reason, you cannot reconcile this intuition with the techniques you are bringing to bear on the problem. And then, almost in a flash, the angle of you approach shifts just slightly, and your intuition and reason click into alignment. See for yourself…
-n
