[asxd]

Very cool. I looked back at the 2020 finalists, and the first video from that list truly boggled me: https://youtu.be/5DYeAkx2IBo. At around 16s in, my vision of the stair case suddenly and completely changes to being upside-down to rightside-up. I know what's going on physically, but it feels like my brain is doing these behind-the-scene calculations and at a certain moment feeds my conscious mind a brand new image. Pretty neat how some optical illusions can put you at odds with your own brain.

quick edit: It doesn't always happen for me when I let the video continue to play, but if I pause it at 16s, then as soon as I hit the pause button, the image completely flips for me. Pretty wild. I think it's probably because I let my eyes drift away from the staircase for a brief moment, and when they return the image is sort of reinterpreted.

[asxd]

It's also interesting how with most visual illusions, you can sort of convince your mind to interpret it one way or another if you try hard enough. I think the simplest example is the necker cube, where you can convince your brain it's either pointing towards you to the left or towards you to to the right [1], seemingly just by visualizing those orientations. In case I'm not the only one who interprets it this way, I'm wondering, is there a name or academic description for that phenomena?

The wikipedia article mentions:

> There is evidence that by focusing on different parts of the figure, one can force a more stable perception of the cube.

Which is pretty interesting by itself, but I think it implies the need to physically move your eyes. What I'm curious about is the ability to alter your perception without moving your eyes physically. It seems like evidence for or against that could lead to some interesting conclusions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necker_cube