Your Brain Can’t Handle the Moon - Issue 19: Illusions
▻http://nautil.us/issue/19/illusions/your-brain-cant-handle-the-moon
What is this new theory?” the long-retired New York University cognitive psychologist, Lloyd Kaufman, asked me. We were sitting behind the wooden desk of his cozy home office. He had a stack of all his papers on the moon illusion, freshly printed, waiting for me on the adjacent futon. But I couldn’t think of a better way to start our discussion than to have him respond to the latest thesis claiming to explain what has gone, for thousands of years, unexplained: Why does the moon look bigger when it’s near the horizon? He scooted closer to his iMac, tilted his head and began to read the MIT Technology Review article I had pulled up.1 I thought I’d have a few moments to appreciate, as he read, the view of New York City outside the 28th floor window of his Floral Park apartment, but within a (...)