Optical illusion reveals how your eyes can lie to you

A TikToker is making everyone question their eyesight with an amazing viral optical illusion with traffic lights.

The Red, amber and green of a traffic light is something many people see every day, but Dean Jackson (@beatonthebeeb) has made people look at it differently.

Jackson is well known on the social media platform for posting “sketchy stuff of fascination, fun and puzzlement” and his traffic light optical illusion has been viewed over 16 million times.

In the clip, Jackson said: “This will convince you that your eyes lie to you.”

Behind him was a picture of a traffic light with the red, amber and green lights all lit up. Next, he explained he put a cyan filter over them.

While the colours do appear more muted, our eyes and brains are still able to tell that the colours are red, amber and green.

But, Jackson explained that it is, in fact, an optical illusion.

Jackson continued: “Now, red light can’t pass through a cyan filter, yet you're still seeing the red light, right?

“Well, I can guarantee you that there is no red light there at all. There’s no red at all. It’s your brain working overtime convincing you of the red.”

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In order to prove that we’re not actually seeing red, Jackson blocked out the rest of the traffic light, leaving a small square of the “red” traffic light showing.

With the rest of the image blocked out, it’s easy to see that the red traffic light is in fact a grey colour.

Jackson explained: “Now look, it was grey all along. There is no red.”

One person in the comments simply wrote: “WHAAATTTT.”

Someone else said: “i love this.”

Another person commented: “omg wanted [to try] it again and my brain changed it to grey automatically. you have made my brain go on strike!!!!”

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