Optimal Illusions

How optimization took over the world and the urgent case for a new approach Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underlie everything from airline schedules to dating site matches. We strive for efficiency in our daily lives, obsessed with productivity and optimal performance. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsize cultural shape? And what is lost when efficiency is gained? Optimal Illusions traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America’s founding principles to its modern manifestations, found in colorful stories of oil tycoons, wildlife ecologists, Silicon Valley technologists, lifestyle gurus, sugar beet farmers, and poker players. Optimization is now deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality but what we make of it. Coco Krumme’s work in mathematical modeling has made her acutely aware of optimization’s overreach. Streamlined systems are less resilient and more at risk of failure. They limit our options and narrow our perspectives. The malaise of living in an optimized society can feel profoundly inhumane. Optimal Illusions exposes the sizable bargains we have made in the name of optimization and asks us to consider what comes next.

Contains more than 150 colorful optical illusions just waiting to blur your vision and put your brain in a spin! This book is great for adults and children alike, and the authors explain why it is that your brain and eyes can be fooled so easily.

Containing many new optical illusions, as well as new adaptations of lesser-known optical illusions, this title carries an explanation of how each image works - the story behind it, when it was discovered or who invented it first, and details of why it fools the human brain.

Beginning with the evolution of visual perspective, McNaughton reveals how and why illusions work. She offers optical illusions to suggest to readers that the world they perceive is in fact a complex product of their brains, constructed from the sensory data. Illustrations.

Do things always look smaller when they are further away? Can something be clearly visible but not there at all? Is it ever possible to have a direct and true experience of reality? Are you sure? In this delightful and informative little book Phoebe McNaughton takes us on a classical journey through the history of artistic perspective, showing how the eye can be tricked and confused, the brain befuddled, and the philosopher inside all of us awakened by the nature of illusion. WOODEN BOOKS are small but packed with information. "e;Fascinating"e; FINANCIAL TIMES. "e;Beautiful"e; LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. "e;Rich and Artful"e; THE LANCET. "e;Genuinely mind-expanding"e; FORTEAN TIMES. "e;Excellent"e; NEW SCIENTIST. "e;Stunning"e; NEW YORK TIMES. Small books, big ideas.

Set of optical illusions and explanations.

Looks at various types of optical illusions, including distortion illusions, motion illusions, color illusions and afterimages, and impossible objects and images.