Decoding Academia 33: The Great Müller-Lyer Debate from Fish Tanks to Eye Operations *Patreon Preview*
Decoding the Gurus
Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to another enlightening episode of Decoding Academia. In this bonus preview of our highly secretive Patreon content, we are discussing a controversial paper by Dorsa Amir and Chaz Firestone that challenges the established notion of the Müller-Lyer illusion being a product of cultural environments.
Prepare yourself for some high-level discussions of the visual processes of guppy fish and bearded lizards, as well as the remarkable lengths that psychologists will go to in order to get people to complete their tests. Will our seasoned scholars unravel the illusion, or is this debate another eye-catching mirage? <wink, wink>
Sources
- (forthcoming) Amir, D., & Firestone, C. Is visual perception WEIRD? The Müller-Lyer illusion and the Cultural Byproduct Hypothesis. Psychological Review.
- Dorsa's summary thread on the paper
- Joe Henrich's critical thread on the paper
- Chaz's response to the Joe Henrich thread
- Paul Bloom's Substack articles on Nature vs. Nurture debates and clever experiments
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Hello and welcome to decoding the gurus, |
| 0:30.3 | Decoding academia with the psychologist, Matthew Brown. |
| 0:34.9 | And today I'm going to be a psychologist, too. |
| 0:37.0 | I'm a psychologist. I'm a psychologist. I'm going to be a psychologist, too. I'm a psychologist. |
| 0:38.5 | I'm a psychologist named Chris Kevner. I can appoint you an honorary psychologist for the purposes of this. |
| 0:45.9 | Because I am already, I'm an associate professor of psychology. I might be a food professor if you just give me a little while. |
| 0:53.4 | And then you'll have to recognize me. |
| 0:55.1 | That's how it works. |
| 0:55.9 | That's how it works. |
| 0:56.9 | Someone from another software discipline hangs around for long enough. |
| 1:00.1 | Eventually, we annoyance you. |
| 1:02.2 | Just give it. |
| 1:04.2 | I'm not like Sam Harris saying, I'm a neuroscientist, or I'm actually in a department teaching your undergraduates, my your subject. So there we go. |
| 1:16.6 | My undergraduates. I like the sound of that all over the world. You are, Mr. Psychology. All of the |
| 1:22.4 | failures are at your feet. And all of the wins too, Chris. |
| 1:28.2 | All of the wins too, |
| 1:29.1 | which will include the paper |
| 1:31.2 | we're reviewing today. |
| 1:32.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:33.7 | All your wins, all your P under |
| 1:35.5 | 0.05. I know how you guys |
| 1:37.5 | are all. Everyone a win. |
... |
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