Who remembers this?
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The claim mixes up how perception works and what people actually mean when they talk about top-down processing. White and gold viewers aren’t saying the pixels are literally white and gold—they’re saying the colors they perceive match most closely with that label, especially when those were the only options given. Many of them describe seeing pale blue and brown, which are the actual pixel values. That’s not bottom-up processing in the strict sense, because even that perception is shaped by how the brain interprets the image based on assumed lighting. You don’t just see wavelengths—you see surfaces under conditions your brain is constantly estimating. The dress image is ambiguous, so different people lock into different lighting models early in the process, and that influences what the colors look like. The snake example doesn’t hold up either. If the lighting changes and your perception doesn’t adjust, that’s when you’re more likely to get the snake’s color wrong. Contextual correction helps you survive, it doesn’t kill you. As for the brain scan data, higher activity in certain areas means more cognitive involvement, not necessarily error. There’s no evidence those areas were just shutting things down. The image is unstable, people resolve it differently, and that difference shows up in brain activity.
So you're saying if there were a blue and black snake that bites with deadly venom, and a white and gold snake that's harmless to people, you'd gain an evolutionary advantage from seeing the blue and black snake turn white and gold in the sun?
No, being able to see the same snake as the same colour by adjusting for ambient lighting conditions aids survival.
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I literally cannot override my color perception to trick myself [...]
If biology had intent, I'd think this is intentional. You're not supposed to be able to do that.
Once your brain decides on a context, that becomes the (percieved) truth, and it'll take a lot of new information to change your mind because your brain will invent reasons why what you're seeing is correct. Your brain makes up a story, that story seems to make sense, and so new perceptions not only need to make sense but also disprove the story it has.
Take, for instance, this silhouette. It has no lines to indicate depth, but I bet you'll settle on a mental 3D model—you'll be able to see where the hips end, which leg is doing what—and it'll be really hard to switch perception from spinning one direction to spinning the other.
No see, with that, I can switch back and forth. It's trippy, but I can. Which is why the dress thing is so weird: I've tried many times (over the last....shudders decade).
That's why I find the dress kind of an outlier and actual doubt. It just doesn't add up to me because I can't seem to switch to white-gold.
But then, also, going off the different people here, I also find it hard to believe there would be what looks like 40-45% of people who still are the exact opposite, in only being able to see white-gold, rather than blue black.
Like I get how technically, "the pixels...", but that doesn't explain to me how there's like a near-50% of people (at least the English-speaking internet demographic) that are... To put it bluntly, seemingly deficient. It would be one thing if there was no definitive proof of what color the dress actually is, or if it was just "some people see it start out one way and other people see it the other way, but then both people could switch between", but it's evidently NOT that - it's that some people are just stuck unable to interpret the color in a shitty picture correctly, and that other people are unable to interpret it wrongly (and maybe a smaller chunk of people who are able to go back and forth, but then that presents even more discussions).
There's a lot going on here, both psycho-optically, psychologically, and socially, and I don't think internet forums/social media that can't isolate, drill down, and then research the different sections of the blue-black/white-gold dress phenomenon should be bringing it up (though good luck with that) and basically just flaming and trolling each other in such a.... Cognitively shallow way.
It's worth examining, absolutely. But absolutely not in this format.
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Whatever is to the right and behind the dress is definitely in bright yellow light.
Behind the dress, yes. No one's disputing that. The difference between that bright light and the dress itself makes it look like it's in shadow, at least to some of us.
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When that was going around I saw it as black and blue, and my partner at the time saw it as white and gold. When it was revealed that it was actually the former, I made a comment something like "I guess the difference is I see things as they actually are", which got me a sharp look.
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Right. Since we have no context, the dress is white and gold objectively. Assuming context of the color of the light is incorrect, we don't have it. The dress is actually black and purple but the image is doctored to be white and gold. So it's white and gold. The image is not the object. We're talking about the image, not the object.
Zooming up on the checker, it's objectively gray. Zooming out, it's objectively white. The only correct interpretation is the shadow darkens the image. But in the dress picture, we don't know what the color of the light is, so it's not comparable.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Since we have no context, the dress is white and gold objectively.
The actual physical object photographed is black and blue.
White and gold appear when the brain makes the assumption that the dress falls within a shadow (effectively applying a filter that shifts the white balance towards bluer colors and brightness down significantly compared to direct sunlight). Only in real life, the photographed dress did not fall within a shadow, and instead was affected by a yellowish lens flare, so the subconscious color correction that leads a viewer to assume white and gold was erroneously applied.
I see white and gold. But to claim that it's "objectively" white and gold ignores how the human brain perceives color and ignores that the actual photograph was a blue and black dress.
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Behind the dress, yes. No one's disputing that. The difference between that bright light and the dress itself makes it look like it's in shadow, at least to some of us.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yes, and a room with that kind of lighting wouldn't make a white dress look blue. Just the radiant light from those surroundings proves that it can't be in that kind of shadow.
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Literally the entire planet remembers this. Even people who were not born yet.
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It's pale blue and gold, right?
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Yes, I do remember ten years ago.
This concludes your long term memory exam. Please see the lady at the front desk to schedule your short term exam.
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It's pale blue and gold, right?
I see blue and gold too, but you're the first other person I've met who does
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Its so funny that this meme has sparked the exact debate all over again.
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I’m with you. This viral moment never made sense to me cuz I can never see anything else even with my wildest imagination.
That's...why it went viral. So many people couldn't see it the other way, and both sides found it hard to believe that the other side was actually being sincere.
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What always confused me is, the picture clearly seems to be overexposed, which means the blue/black interpretation should be obvious.
It's because we're also very used to seeing photographs of a subject in shade while the background is in full sunlight. If you take a picture of a white and gold dress in the shadow of a patio, with the background all fully lit by bright sunlight, the actual pixels representing white objects in the shade would be that bluish gray tint.
The problem here is that the dress isn't in the shade but those of us who see white and gold simply assume that it is in shade, while black/blue viewers (correctly) assume that it is under the same lighting conditions of the overexposed background.
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Since we have no context, the dress is white and gold objectively.
The actual physical object photographed is black and blue.
White and gold appear when the brain makes the assumption that the dress falls within a shadow (effectively applying a filter that shifts the white balance towards bluer colors and brightness down significantly compared to direct sunlight). Only in real life, the photographed dress did not fall within a shadow, and instead was affected by a yellowish lens flare, so the subconscious color correction that leads a viewer to assume white and gold was erroneously applied.
I see white and gold. But to claim that it's "objectively" white and gold ignores how the human brain perceives color and ignores that the actual photograph was a blue and black dress.
Why do you assume it's a yellow tint? What if all the objects in the back are simply yellow?
The actual object is blue, the actual photograph is white. They are two separate concepts. We only think it's blue because we were told - how do we even know that's true, have you seen the dress in person? Using a color picker is the only objective solution that doesn't rely on flawed interference.
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Yeah but 2012 is like 5 years ago, right? Right?
You're thinking of 1998
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I have always only seen black and blue, even in the light version my brain doesn't make it gold and white. It's strange to me why people perceive this as gold.
Edit this video was the only one to make me see it https://youtu.be/YB36n00NHBw
We'll I watched the other video and I finally saw the blue and black. I've always seen white gold but now I don't. Fucking trippy.
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Were people just stupid or something and not capable of knowing when the ambient light and camera is affecting the colour of the image?
WTF is this about people getting exact pixel colours?! The question is what colour is the dress, not the colour of the picture in which the dress is depicted!
Using pixel colour to determine the colour of a dress is like saying Martin Luther King had grey skin because the photo he's depicted in is in black and white!
wrote last edited by [email protected]Part of the reason it can be hard to tell is because we cannot see a source of the ambient light shining onto the part of the dress we see. The reason I see white and gold is because my brain defaults to the back lighting being sunlight and the overhead being shaded by tent. Not uncommon at rennaissance fairs and the like. But if you see this all as in door lighting it's much easier to imagine bright overhead department store lights or something.
So no, no one is stupid for seeing it one way or the other.
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I swear it was blue and black this morning, but now it's white and gold!
Opposite happened to me, white and gold this morning but black and blue now 🤯
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This is the color picker in the image you replied to. Do you really think the colors on the left are white and the colors on the right are gold?
This person doesn't understand pixels lol. You picked one pixel. Pick 100 of them and average them. It's in the white spectrum with a slight shade of blue hue. If you look at it on the color wheel, it's well within white segment slightly towards the blue. When you zoom out of single pixels, it's white that you get under cool white light. It's still considered white.
As for gold, computer screens do not display gold in specular way how you see it with eyes.When you pick pixels, they will be in range of brown. Again, you don't seem to underetand pixels. And ultimately, this is suppose to be black, remember? Where's the black?
The "after" photos of a dress show dark blue with black lace details because it was not captured in bullshit lighting. Where is that on the picked pixels? Just like years ago we are once again arguing over bullshit doctored/manipulated/bad photo of a dress arguing what color it is. It's beyond stupid and I can't believe people are still this dumb to argue about colors that aren't even there. I don't care how dress actually looks, you showed me the photo of it and you're asking me how the dress looks like on the photo, not in reality. The rest is within the color picker which is mathematical representation of colors that doesn't give a shit how eyes work. And it picks very faint blue and brown (thats perceived by eyes as white and gold). Not dark blue and black.
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It's pale blue and gold, right?
wrote last edited by [email protected]IIRC, it's white and gold, but the lighting is way oversaturated or otherwise fucked up, making it look blue and black.
