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A normal photo of a street is wreaking havoc and messing with people’s brains, including my own, because the optical illusion created by it doesn’t seem to make any freaking sense!
That’s because every ounce of logic in my head says that the two photos below, posted to Reddit, show the same street scene shot from two different angles… right?
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“This is the same photo, side by side. They are not taken at different angles. Both sides are the same, pixel for pixel.”
No. They’re not. They can’t be. What is going on here?!
Reddit?
jerrydisco: “For me it looks like the roads are going in different directions, like one road forking off. It’s hard to believe the two streets are actually parallel.”
You’re no help. Next.
Saberfox11: This is super weird. I can tell that it’s the same picture, but something makes my brain not want to believe it. I wonder what specifically causes that to happen?
All-Cal: It’s because the 2 streets come together at the bottom of the pictures. Your brain tries to perceive this as one image with a fork in the road and therefore the street in the picture on the left must be at a different angle than the picture on the right.
Really? Is that really the answer?
NinthFinger: Thank you for the explanation.
As an experiment I covered the bottom half, up to just under the headlight on the white car, and they look the same. As I slowly revealed the rest of the picture it reached a point right around where the sidewalk reaches the edge of the picture and my brain flipped and saw them differently.
Interestingly the difference stuck in my head as I started covering it back up, much farther up the picture than I would have expected.
ChallengerReproaches: I held a straightedge against the two pictures, aligned with the tires on the truck driving down the street
The truck on the left appears “higher” than the truck on the right. I have edge of the ruler flush with my monitor edge, so I’m pretty sure it was level, but anyone want to double check?
I still don’t believe they aren’t two different photos.
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Thank you, BegginStripper. You are a true humanitarian.