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If we're all seeing the dress under normal lighting together here, there is zero ambiguity.
如果我们在正常的灯光下一起看裙子，就不会有任何歧义。
The ambiguity comes from the image and that specific image of the dress.
歧义源自照片，而且是那张裙子的照片。
So it's something about the photograph.
所以这和照片有关。
There's information missing in the image … in the image of the dress, the lighting is ambiguous.
图像中缺少了一些信息……在裙子的照片中，光线是模糊的。
Yes, it could be indoor lighting; it could be outdoor lighting.
是的，它可能是室内光线；也可能是室外光线。
I talked to the person who took the picture, and it turns out that it is indoors, but it is so overexposed with a Samsung cell phone camera, it's hard to tell.
我跟拍这张照片的人聊了聊，发现这张照片是在室内拍摄的，但三星手机相机曝光过度，导致它很难分辨。
That's really interesting because I don't remember the image seeming ambiguous at all.
这真的很有趣，因为在我看来那张照片一点也不模糊。
We know from a long history of research on people and their cognition that if there is uncertainty, they don't just say, "Oh, no, I have this uncertainty, and now I can't act."
我们从对人类及其认知的长期研究中知道，如果存在不确定性，人们不会说，“哦，不，我觉得这个不确定，现在我不能采取行动。”
Your brain, your mind, however you want to call that, fills in this uncertainty, but in a smart way.
你的大脑，你的思想，不管你怎么称呼它，会以一种聪明的方式去填补这种不确定性。
It's like autocorrect is, like, smart guessing.
就像自动更正，就像智能猜测。
So how does your brain make its smart guess?
那么，你的大脑是如何做出智能猜测的呢?
Let's try this right now. Imagine you're at a staff meeting at Scientific American, and you are facing the whiteboard, not the door, and somebody was late.
我们现在就试一下。想象一下，你在参加《科学美国人》的员工会议，你面对的是白板，而不是门，有人迟到了。
And in your experience, because you've done it before, Bob is always late.
在你的经验中，因为你以前就这么做过，鲍勃总是迟到。
You don't know who it was because you weren't looking at the door, but who do you think it was, not having seen the door?
你不知道是谁，因为你没有看门，但在没看门的情况下，你觉得是谁迟到了?
Bob! Why--because (it's) always Bob? Yes, exactly.
鲍勃!为什么——因为鲍勃总是迟到吗?是的，没错。
But the difference is that in the staff meeting, I'm consciously making a guess.
但不同的是，在员工会议上，我是有意识地猜测。
With the dress, I never knew there was any uncertainty to begin with.
关于这条裙子，我从一开始就不知道会有什么不确定性。
My brain made its guess on the fly, before I could possibly know what had happened.
在我还不知道发生了什么事之前，我的大脑就匆忙地做出了猜测。
Your brain is doing this for you unconsciously.
你的大脑在无意识地做这件事。
So it's smoothing over the uncertainties by making assumptions about what I'm seeing that are based on my previous experiences.
所以，它会基于我以前的经验来做假设，从而消除不确定性。
Yes, exactly.
是的，没错。
And you're saying that if, say, it's near sunset, and the light is getting dim.
你是说，比如说，快到日落的时候，光线越来越暗。
And then, I see a fire engine come down the road. Probably I'm going to assume that it's red.
然后，我看到一辆消防车开过马路。我很有可能会假设它是红色的。
Correct. That's called the true-color effect.... Your brain is constantly color correcting....
没错。这被称为真彩效应....你的大脑会不断地调整颜色....
As the day progresses, the mix of wavelengths that reaches you from the atmosphere, they shift from, like, bluish during the day (to), in dusk, more reddish.
随着时间的推移，从大气中抵达的混合波长，它们会从白天的蓝色变成黄昏时的红色。
So as these shift, your brain has to take that into account.
所以当这些变化发生时，你的大脑必须把它考虑进去。
Okay, so my brain is like a fancy camera. It adjusts the color balance to make the colors look right in the image I'm seeing.
好吧，那我的大脑就像一台高级相机。它会调整色彩平衡，让我看到正确的图像颜色。
It makes sure the fire truck appears red to me in the morning light and also some shade of red in the evening light.
它会确保消防车在早晨的光线下看起来是红色的，在晚上的光线下也有一些红色的阴影。
People are really good at that. But that presumes that you know what lighting is....
人们真的很擅长这么做。但前提是你得知道什么是光线....
In the dress image, we don't know what the lighting was--could it have been artificial lighting indoors or sunlight.
在裙子的照片中，我们不知道光线是什么——可能是室内人造光，也可能是阳光。
Pascal had a hypothesis: what determined whether you saw the dress as white and gold or blue and black was based on what assumptions your brain unconsciously made about what you were seeing.
帕斯卡有一个假设：决定你看到的裙子是白金相间的还是蓝色和黑色的，是基于你的大脑无意识地对你所看到的东西做出的假设。
If it assumed that the photograph was taken in bright outdoor light and the dress was in shadow, your brain color corrected to account for that, and the dress looked white.
如果它假设照片是在明亮的户外光线下拍摄的，而裙子在阴影中，你的大脑就会根据这一点进行颜色校正，所以裙子看起来是白色的。
If, on the other hand, if you assumed the photo was indoors under artificial light, there wasn't the same shadow to correct for. And therefore you saw it as blue.
相反，如果你假设照片是在室内的人造光下拍摄的，那么就不需要去校正阴影。所以你看到它是蓝色的。
The reason for that is shadows are bluish black if you look at them under (a) photometer.
这样做的原因是，如果你在光度计下观察，阴影是蓝黑色的。
So if you mentally subtract (the) effect of a shadow, it will then look yellowish and whitish.
因此，如果你在心里去掉了阴影的效果，那么它看起来就会变黄变白。
The tricky thing about this is that we were all making these assumptions subconsciously, which meant that he couldn't just ask us.
这个问题的棘手之处在于，我们都在潜意识里做出这些假设，他不能直接问我们。
Instead he had to come up with a proxy. Some other way of getting at what assumptions your brain had made when you first saw the image.
相反，他必须找一个代理人。这是另一种方法，当你第一次看到图像时，你的大脑做出了什么假设。
I knew that people have a chronotype, meaning that some people like to get up in the morning and just rise to the sun, and other people, basically they're like night owls.
我知道每个人都有自己的生物钟，也就是说有些人喜欢在早上起床，也就是太阳升起的时候起床，而另一些人则基本上是夜猫子。
They are staying up late. And this is a genetically set kind of thing.
他们会熬夜。这是由基因决定的。
Okay, this gets a little complicated, so I'm going to pause a moment here to explain.
好吧，这有点复杂，所以我要暂停解释一下。
Pascal guessed that just like we'd assumed that Bob was late to the meeting, our brains would default to the assumption that the light we were seeing in the photograph was the same kind of light we were most accustomed to seeing.
帕斯卡猜测，就像我们假设开会迟到的是鲍勃一样，我们的大脑会自动假设我们在照片中看到的光就是我们最习惯的那种光。
He surmised that over their lifetime, early birds get more short-wavelength blueish natural sunlight.
他推测，一生中，早起的人们接触到了更多短波长的蓝色自然阳光。
On the other hand, people who stay up late get more long-wavelength artificial light.
相反，熬夜的人会接触到更多的长波长人造光。
In other words, he used chronotypes as proxies for what assumptions our brain was subconsciously making about the ambiguity of the lighting.
换句话说，他用生物钟来代表我们的大脑在潜意识中对光线的模糊性做出的假设。
Larks should be more likely to see the dress as white. They're going to fall back on the assumption that it's the brighter outdoor light.
早起型的人更有可能看到白色的裙子。他们会认为这是在更亮的室外光线下拍摄出来的。
They see a lot of that kind of light. So they'll correct for the shadow effect so that it appears white.
他们看多很多那种光。所以他们会纠正阴影效果，让它看起来是白色的。
