12 Mind-Bending Illusions, Part 2
Can you trust your senses? These 12 perceptual illusions say nope
The world as you experience it isn’t reality. It’s a story your brain tells itself.
That story is so smooth, so seamless, that you rarely think to question it. You open your eyes, and the world is just… there.
But that sense of direct perception is an illusion. What you’re really seeing is a best guess - a reconstruction stitched together from incomplete, ambiguous, and noisy sensory input.
And every now and then, the guessing game goes awry. These are the moments when the machinery of perception slips into view, and we catch a glimpse of our brains filling in gaps, resolving ambiguity, and sometimes going spectacularly off the rails.
Perceptual illusions are tailor-made to create those moments.
In this second N3 Newsletter compilation of illusions, I’ve pulled together twelve more brain-benders that will unmask your senses and expose the scaffolding of your mind. Some are classics, some are new - but all of them reveal something strange and deep about how we perceive the world.
Get ready to question everything you see and hear.
Missed the first collection? You can check it out here.
1. The Spinning Dancer
Let’s kick things off with one of my all-time favorites.
If you look at the dancer on the left and the one in the middle, the one in the middle spins clockwise.
If you look at the dancer on the right and the one in the middle, the one in the middle spins counterclockwise.
What’s going on? Long story short, the middle dancer is an ambiguous stimulus that can be interpreted as spinning in either direction. The dancers on the left and right, in contrast, include additional details that force one or other interpretation. This interpretation then determines how we perceive the middle, ambiguous figure.
So you’re not just watching a dancer spin; you’re watching your brain commit to one of two equally valid stories - and then change its mind.
2. The T-Rex That Stares You Down
This one is a great example of the power of expectations to shape perception…
We’re so used to faces being convex (bulging outwards) rather than concave (sunken in) that when we encounter a concave face, our brains refuse to see it for what it is. They flip it inside out - and it’s almost impossible to shake off the illusion, even when we know what’s going on.