Yanny or Laurel Justice

May 18, 2018 – Have you caught wind of this Yanny/Laurel thing yet?

There are few things that can cause you to question your own sanity more than being positively convinced of something that others are equally convinced is untrue.

I listen to this clip and hear Yanny. Absolutely, 100%, no doubt about it.

But according to more than 50% of the people who voted for Laurel, I’m wrong.

How can this be?

“Tomato, tomahto, potato, potahto, let’s call the whole thing off.”

– Ira Gershwin –

This isn’t some difference in regional dialect conversation we’re having. This gets to the very essence of how wildly our senses can vary when responding to the exact same stimuli.

What This Means for Our Civil and Criminal Justice Systems

Forget the unreliability of memory.

Going forward, every claims representative taking a recorded interview and every attorney deposing a witness no longer need concern themselves solely with whether that person is telling the truth. They need to account for the possibility that a person can be truthful but still contradictory.

“Who ya gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”

– Rufus T. Firefly –

Do we need to allow for the possibility that Yanny could commit a crime for which Laurel is convicted? Before I heard the Yanny/Laurel audio clip, I would have considered such a notion absurd.

Now, I’m not so sure.

When coupled with its white/gold, blue/black dress visual cousin, Yanny/Laurel forces us to doubt much of what we think we see and hear. We now have no choice but to accept that our senses can mislead us in ways we never imagined possible.

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

– Jacob Marley –

For those who prefer a black/white, right/wrong world, now might be an appropriate time to take an extension course in Grey Area 101 to help with the confusion you’re experiencing. Understanding and acceptance is not likely to come easily, but it just might help prepare you for the world that isn’t all we thought it was.