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I feel like optical illusions are really interesting as well.  I think there's also a really cool parallel between optical illusions and something like the placebo effect.  Our minds work in very strange and powerful ways, and both of these are examples of how we can be, in a sense, trapped by the limitations of our own minds.  People find it difficult, even impossible, to accept a scientific idea that goes against what seems apparent to them.  The same is true of patients who take placebos, who refuse to accept that they've been taking dud pills, and for people who have spent their entire lives accepting an illusion and are then told that they're wrong, and what they think they see is a figment