Perceiving your own reality
[Music]
what color is this dress
blue with black glaze or white with gold
lace
those were the two sets of very
different colors most people saw
when this wedding dress was posted by a
lady in scotland in 2015.
when the musicians arrived for the
wedding they reposted the picture and it
got over 4
million tweets blue and black or white
and gold
celebrities from all over the world
chimed in on what colors they saw
soon neuroscientists were commenting and
publishing papers about it
yet despite all this attention there is
no clear answer on why different people
perceive different colors for the same
object
in the same year i attended an event at
the world science festival
where alan alda asked an obvious but
impossible question
what is color he talked about how
different people
may see the same thing differently i was
seven
and captivated i recently conducted an
experiment to test our perceptions of
reality
with another illusion it’s called the
benim’s disk
you can see it here it’s just a spinning
disc
what colors do you see on this disc you
may not see colors to the screen
but when people saw this illusion live
they sell colors ranging from earthy
greens
to bright pinks and everything in
between
when the disc stops look what’s on it it
has no colors
it’s entirely black and white the color
is perceived when looking at the
spinning disc
are called fectioner or imaginary colors
the colors on this disc are subjective
some people see bright colors
while others see pastel shades and some
people see
gray and black blurs and curiously
such imagined perceptions exist not only
for our physical reality but they can
also exist
for a social reality for now continuing
with the black and white disc
why do we see any colors at all even
though this disc has been studied for
over 100 years
scientists still don’t know the exact
answer to this question
i wanted to learn more about these
imaginary colors
would these colors behave like real
colors for example
could i change the way we perceive these
colors
even though they were created entirely
inside this perceiver’s mind
i began to learn why we see what we do
scientists show a considerable amount
of our supposed reality is actually our
perception
our brain starts with what our senses
provide as input our sensations
and then our brain adds to that
interpretation of our input
or our perception our reality emerges
from the connection of sensations with
perceptions
and this connection is influenced by
what our brain is expecting
to see i wondered what it would take for
the brain to change what it perceived
there’s a phenomenon called retinal
fatigue that actually changes
how we see real colors imagine this
you stare at a small red square for
about a minute and then look at a white
paper
what you’re going to see is a green
square that is the exact
same size as the red one but why would
you see
green well there are three types of
color receptors in our eyes
they’re called cones there are those
that are stimulated when you look at red
a second type stimulated by green and a
third type
stimulated by blue when you stare at the
red square the red cones become so
overstimulated
that when you look at the white paper
the green cones temporarily take over
for the tired red ones
even the retinal fatigue has been
studied extensively
with real colors it has never been tried
with imaginary colors
so if it were used with the bantam’s
disk would it change the imaginary
colors perceived by the brain
what i found was that imaginary colors
actually did
behave like real colors when it came to
retinal fatigue
in fact 83 percent of the time there was
a change in the colors perceived
even though i was influencing color
receptors in the eye
which was looking at a black and white
disc their brain was responding
by changing what it was create creating
as our perceived reality
as if the discs were actually made up of
real colors
i found that the perception of a reality
can be so subjective
that it can be entirely made up but more
broadly
i learned that when i asked questions
and had no judgment or expectations
about the answer
my brain could not fill in the narrative
and i could
actually discover something new i
started this work trying to understand
how our brain perceives imaginary colors
through this journey i have realized
that our social judgments
can also be affected by imaginary
perceptions
in fact our brain elaborates and
interprets our reality to fit with
scripts
and roles that we expect and anticipate
our perception is made up of our own
narratives and expectations
if i ask you imagine a scientist
do you think of a woman or a man
research shows
that most people think of a man a few
months ago
my science teacher asked my classmates
and me to draw a scientist
i immediately drew a woman in that role
but that was not the majority view
only four out of 83 kids
drew women that’s under 5
what’s even more interesting about the
experiment is that half of those who
drew women
actually knew the intent of the
experiment and so they purposely drew
women
when i say titles like quantum physicist
surgeon
and mathematician most of us don’t
picture women and girls
we are more likely to think of men and
boys but our brain
is filling in details based on what
we’ve been told to expect
if you look at the data unfortunately
these professions have a gender divide
so our brain anticipates and expects
that the person is more likely to be
male
and fills in that detail in our
perception
what happens when we take this to the
next step to thinking that this gender
divide is real
and it exists because there’s an actual
difference
in the capabilities and capacities
between men
and women what does this mean for the
real inequalities for women and girls in
stem
we have now perpetuated based on a
perceived illusion
typically we ask what something should
be
or how is it this way through my
experiments
and experience i have learned that
perhaps the more important questions are
why does it have to be this way and what
if there were another way
i started my project trying to change
imaginary colors
i found myself changing my imaginary
perceptions of what i can
and cannot do i learned that i can
question and change my own narratives
i want to invite you to come on this
journey with me
to individually question and challenge
the narratives that are pre-filled
for all of us there is no reason
that when i say quantum physicist
surgeon
or mathematician every one of us girls
boys whoever we may be isn’t as likely
to think of
anyone in that role we cannot stop at
role models or even just with talk of
allyship
we have to go beyond the division that
limits our perceptions
of what is possible let me leave you
with this request
let us all disrupt the narratives that
stifle us
and recreate them in ways that not only
make us equal
but let us flourish we can perceive
our own reality thank you
you