Related papers: The Moon Illusion explained by the Projective Cons…

We present another explanation for the moon illusion, the phenomenon in which the moon looks larger near the horizon than near the zenith. In our model of the moon illusion, the sky is considered a spatially-contiguous and…

The moon illusion, in which the moon appears larger at the horizon than at higher altitudes, has been investigated since antiquity, yet it remains not fully explained. Our method of investigating the phenomenon is based on that attributed…

Ptolemy's model of the Moon's motion implied that its distance varies by nearly a factor of two, implying that its angular size should also vary by nearly a factor of two. We present an analysis of 100 naked eye observations of the Moon's…

Recognizing that all mental processes have to be unfree and passive, we develop a model of behavior and perceptions. We shall see how misleading our intuition is and shall understand how consciousness arises.

The moon, moonlight, phases of the moon and its relatively simple recurring cycle has been of interest since time immemorial to the human beings, navigators, astronomers and astrologers. The fact that its orbit is elliptical as well its…

The Expanding Hole Illusion is a compelling visual phenomenon in which a static, concentric pattern evokes a strong perception of continuous forward motion. Despite its simplicity, this illusion challenges our understanding of how the brain…

Illusions are fascinating and immediately catch people's attention and interest, but they are also valuable in terms of giving us insights into human cognition and perception. A good theory of human perception should be able to explain the…

Illusions are entertaining, but they are also a useful diagnostic tool in cognitive science, philosophy, and neuroscience. A typical illusion shows a gap between how something "really is" and how something "appears to be", and this gap…

The Machine Consciousness Hypothesis states that consciousness is a substrate-free functional property of computational systems capable of second-order perception. I propose a research program to investigate this idea in silico by studying…

We draw on the predictive processing theory of perception to explain why healthy, intelligent, honest, and psychologically normal people might easily misperceive lights in the sky as threatening or extraordinary objects, especially in the…

Large Language Models often generate factually incorrect but plausible outputs, known as hallucinations. We identify a more insidious phenomenon, LLM delusion, defined as high belief hallucinations, incorrect outputs with abnormally high…

Recently, there has been an explosion of large language models created through fine-tuning with data from larger models. These small models able to produce outputs that appear qualitatively similar to significantly larger models. However,…

A model based on celestial geometry and atmospheric physics predicts the dimming and the color of lunar eclipses. Corresponding visual magnitudes and color indices for eclipses from year 2000 through 2050 are listed. The enlargement of the…

The leading theory for the origin of the Moon is the giant impact hypothesis, in which the Moon was formed out of the debris left over from the collision of a Mars-sized body with the Earth. Soon after its formation, the orbit of the Moon…

This theoretical work examines 'hallucinations' in both human cognition and large language models, comparing how each system can produce perceptions or outputs that deviate from reality. Drawing on neuroscience and machine learning…

Visual illusions in humans arise when interpreting out-of-distribution stimuli: if the observer is adapted to certain statistics, perception of outliers deviates from reality. Recent studies have shown that artificial neural networks (ANNs)…

The Platonic Representation Hypothesis suggests that neural networks trained on different modalities (e.g., text and images) align and eventually converge toward the same representation of reality. If true, this has significant implications…

We look at what astronomy from the Moon might be like in the visible over the next few decades. The Moon offers the possibility of installing large telescopes or interferometers with instruments larger than those on orbiting telescopes. We…

Visual illusions may be explained by the likelihood of patches in real-world images, as argued by input-driven paradigms in Neuro-Science. However, neither the data nor the tools existed in the past to extensively support these…

Imitation learning often assumes that demonstrations are close to optimal according to some fixed, but unknown, cost function. However, according to satisficing theory, humans often choose acceptable behavior based on their personal (and…