How eyes work
One day in high school, when I fancied myself a budding cognitive scientist, a rather gullible (but very respected) friend said she would like to understand how vision worked.

Thinking it would be absurd enough to make her laugh, I said "It's actually incredibly simple. When your eye is pointing at something, the light reflecting off of it temporarily burns its image onto the surface of the eye, and then the eye rotates back to face your brain, where the brain reads the image again off of the surface. Then the eye rotates back forward to capture the next image. It all happens incredibly fast like a movie reel."

After that I was waiting for a laugh, but she just stared. "That is amazing. I had no idea it was like that." she replied. (My friends and I tend to do a lot of bullshitting and most of us can keep a straight face, so I assumed she was bullshitting me back.)

"The human visual system is an extremely intelligent design," I added.

"Well, if that's true, then why can't we see each other's eyes going backwards all the time?"

"That's the weirdest part. They are all synchronized. Every person's eyes rotate at the same frequency, all in the same phase."

"And... And animals?"

"Yes, indeed. Even animals..."

At this point I was pretty amazed at her deadpan technique, as she became visibly excited. "That means we're all connected! Everyone on the planet, and all the creatures, we are all actually in synch with each other. That is such a powerful message!"

"...Yes. Yes. In synch." My stomach turned as I realized something wasn't right, but it was too late to turn back. It would seems so rude and condescending to explain that this was just a joke- more like a cruel trick from her point of view. So eventually the subject changed and I completely forgot about it.

Apparently she hadrelated the science fact to a mutual friend the next day, and after getting set straight on the deception she didn't talk to me for a week. I still don't know what I should have done or at what point.
( the prick of misery pierced my foot on a spiiiike on, Tue 18 Jan 2011, 3:22, Reply)