Seeing is Believing

Or not! In the image above, squares A and B are exactly the same color and shade! Yep, even on your monitor. Suspicious souls can download this little gidget called eyedropper. It's free and lets you sample color on the screen (useful for designing web pages and such if you want to match a particular color.) Or you can save yourself the time and take my word for it, cause I had to test it myself, and they really are the same.

Imagine: if context can have such a powerful impact on physical perception with senses that are at least somewhat anchored in the physical world, what influence might it have on our thoughts which are much more abstract and free form?

How we feel about what we are thinking now may be overshadowed by the thought that immediately preceded it, or by checkerboard associations the thought may trigger; more so than any intrinsic meaning of the thought itself, perhaps? How many times might we see A and B as completely different when they are exactly the same because of other thoughts they are hanging around with? And vice-versa.

For an informative look at illusions on conceptual levels, check out this list of cognitive biases. I seem to have great difficulty with the "planning fallacy" in this group.