XKCD: It's more than a comic

Am I the only one who sees the colors literally instead of trying to think in lighting and shadow? It's possibly because I saw the xkcd strip before the original one, and that shows a part of that dress completely out of context. Of course, the people seeing black and blue are the ones who are right. But even after seeing the original dress, I still see the "context-free" colors on the photo.

Oh! That could be it. That might be the "false cue" I was speculating on.

There is no intense backlighting. That's a glare produced by poor camera quality— the actual light in that situation wasn't so super bright. But if someone thought it was a real light, I think I can begin to see why they expected to see shadows.

edited 28th Feb '15 9:17:14 AM by Ishntknew

I saw blue and brown, honestly.

If you look in the lower left, you can see actual fabrics hanging there that are clearly black and white and not washed out. They're also further away from the camera, so they couldn't be washed out as a result of the flash being left on, whereas the dress itself could.

When I saw that dress I wasn't thinking "which color is it?", but "that's kinda tacky".

Beret Guy runs a company.

"How many do we have of whatever it is that we make?" "As many as we've made minus the quantity we've sold."

I liked the ending of the alt-text the best.

"Our quantity of widgets sold exceeds the number of widgets created."

"They're breeding! How cute!"

Insurance

"I see a lot of programmers here."

Huh, I never thought abut that. You CAN just steal everyone else's luggage! I guess I've always been so focused on finding my own it never occurred to me what a ripe opportunity it was

One more reason you don't put valuables in your luggage. An interesting thing is that a luggage bag is a pretty expensive thing by itself.

But I have a combination lock on mine, with a really secret combination that no one will guess!

In an example of rubber hose cryptanalysis, bolt cutters are $7.99 on Amazon (free shipping and handling!)

Yeah, a combination on your luggage stops snoopers and casual thieves. Real thieves are stopped by the fact that if you can already afford a plane ticket, you're not desperate enough to gamble being caught stealing in a public place (where the owner might spot you at any time) against the small chance of something you can easily sell for nontrivial cash being in that suitcase.

Which interestingly makes advising everybody to not put valuables into their luggage a social good, because your chance of getting your own luggage stolen (costly even if the thief got nothing useful) is proportional to what percentage of people (thieves think) put valuables in their luggage.

It's kinda amusing to think of all forms of premeditated crime as "life hacks", since they give you an advantage that you're not meant to have. Of course, the rules which govern other people's behavior are subject to much more unpredictable change if they notice someone's stolen from them than any computer program, so said "hacks" are likely to be invalidated if you actually use them unskillfully. (Plus, you know, they're all at the expense of other people).

edited 4th Mar '15 4:50:13 AM by Brickman

Pfft, it's just a fancy way of saying that you're going to break the rules at other people's expense. You know, why we have a social contract, laws, police, etc. in the first place. Do it enough and there will be guards and ID checks at baggage claims, making flying more expensive for everyone.

edited 4th Mar '15 5:01:10 AM by Fighteer

...Guess I should have been more heavy-handed in the reference.

Maybe saying it's a planetary-security-grade code...

Pffahaha.

I would not bet my freedom that they don't have security cameras watching the baggage carousels and could not check the footage if someone reports something missing.

Or 666 (in the case of baggage whose combination can only have three numbers).

edited 4th Mar '15 2:50:15 PM by Quag15

To be honest, I spend a lot of time noticing this sort of thing. It's sort of, umm, interesting I guess how much of society relies on us trusting each other. Even if you were stealing luggage at an airport and got caught, you could easily pass it off as an honest mistake, so honestly it's pretty low-risk on the face of it.

Society in general only functions because we agree not to be dicks to each other all the time. Indeed, it's only possible because of that.

Of course you have people like Frank Abagnale, Jr who will tell you exactly what you can get away with basically by exploiting everyone's trust and behaving as if you're obviously right and everyone else is wrong.

He's still a cooler guy than Jordan Belfort, though.