The Image You Can Only See Once 

This subject is fascinating! For anyone interested in reading about it, Lisa Feldman's book "How Emotions are Made" delves into more examples of this new theory of mind.

For some reason I expected the audio to say "like and subscribe", the fact that it wasn't that baffled me

Y'all never disappoint...

i heard "hello, speak to the sign!" i have very bad social anxiety and i'm always worrying about talking to people, interacting with others, etc. i think maybe i heard the sentence command me to speak to 'the sign' because of this. very very cool! on a separate note, they'll probably never see this, but i've loved asapSCIENCE since i was probably like 9 years old. i'll turn 18 this summer. thank you asapSCIENCE for making life a bit happier and a bit smarter

I heard "I'll (pause) paint you a sign", which is really close. It's still hard for me to see the woman and the horse afterwards though. It's there if I look for it but I see a person juggling a ball on very abstract art.

I personally understood "like and subscribe" which I think perfectly fits with the context you talked about. Freaking awesome great video!

"Hello, thank you for calling" I love these quirks of perception so much.

"Hello, thank you for calling." was first thing I heard. But there is also the FACT that the human brain CAN be Manipulated into thinking that it is hearing things it isn't. Or seeing, feeling and taste, even smell. It would have been interesting to hear that in the video. It's an all around cool subject, thank you!

The sentence sounded like "Hello! Everything's fine!" to me. It took seeing the image side-by-side both ways before I could see the original shapes in the hard-to-see version, and it's still hard for me to see the ground truth in the test image. In my human-computer interface class back in the 90s we had a similar example of a cow that you can't unsee, and even 25 years later I can still see the cow when I see the test image.

I assumed the sentence said " dont worry, everything is fine." Which makes sense because my boyfriend and I have been in and out of the airport the past 2 days, and life has been crazy and we've been reassuring each other that everything will be okay!

"Hello, thank you for coming" or "Hello, thank you for calling." I think this is how EVP's work. People fill in the blanks. I was still able to see the illusions even after knowing what they really were. Matrixing makes it easy to see multiple images in the picture.

"Hello, the issue is fine" is what seemed that sentence to me.

I heard "yeah, he seems fine" Remember The Dress or Yanny/Laurel? Difficult to believe, but I could actually "see"/"hear" both. I could switch it to see/hear it in both ways. So there's something to learn about consciousness. P.S. You went to Colombia and didn't tell me?! Come on, I live there.

“Wow, i baked you a sign” I honestly couldnt really hear anything out of the middle part so the baked part is just cuz it at first reminded me of the muffin song where it says “i baked you a pie” I also had to listen to it several times because at first i just heard nothing but a tune going up and down

0:21 I hear either "and gives you sign" or "and it's designed"

It sounded like, “wow, this is fun” to me. once your aware of the answers you can’t unsee it, until you forget again and you hear what you want to hear.

As an artist, I was taught in art school to “draw what you see, not what you THINK you see”. A guy I used to work with dropped out and said it was because that phrase was stupid, your brain is what you think you see. I had to explain to him this whole concept, you have a vision of what your brain think “a dog” looks like and it’s not nearly as accurate as looking straight at a dog, dropping preconceived ideas of what “a dog” is, because your brain is probably wrong.

I actually saw the picture 4 times because you showed it in four separate instances before you revealed what it depicts

“The world thinks you are fine” I saw the woman’s face after a while but I couldn’t recognise the horse at all haha I thought the horse was some distorted man’s face lol

The book The Developing Mind (I've only read part) explains consciousness in a very interesting way, would recommend! Also, it explains that the mind isn't just the brain, but the neural pathways as a whole system heavily including some parts of the body like the gut and heart.

“A man, painting a sign” is what I heard. Interesting video!

"Oooh, what you see" is what I heard. Crazy and cool stuff! On a similar note about the colors, this is probably also why when you tint an image with any given color, your brain can still tell which parts are supposed to be red or blue or green, because they see them in relation to others, even when the _actual_ color is actually a grey without that color in it at all! It does the same thing as the image of shadowy tiles in the video. I think that one exists in particular because the sun tints the world around us in different tones depending on time of day and weather conditions. We still need to be able to identify colors in relation to each other and identify shapes and find faces. The black and white photo makes me think of those visual illusion drawings where you can see either a little girl or an old woman.

Sure I can see the horse and the girl now when I couldn't before, but I still see the robot girl and the dragon skull walking along the bridge in front of the city scape rotated like 120 degrees. I can still hear what I thought the original sentence was too. And still see the changed color of the checkerboard after it's shown. Something with heavy disassociation maybe since that affects consciousness? No idea. I can't recognize faces so. I dunno.

Now, even knowing what the picture is (though I kinda managed to see the eyes/ear/snout before the reveal) it's actually still pretty difficult to not see the picture as abstract nonsense

so you dont know what something is until you are told what it is. kinda like learning. wow mind blown

"Hello, space is fine!" This is still what i hear after the video. I can sort of make out the other ones people got (and the one it actually was) by thinking of them when listening to it, but "Hello, space is fine!" is still my default.

What I heard: "Woo-hoo! Painting is fun!" Of course, my hobby is creating 'paintings' with needle and thread (cross stitch) and - at a distance - some of the pieces I've completed have been mistaken for paintings. So, there's that. Now. On to see what this is all about.

I constantly bump into things, especially door frames. I recently found out that I have a medical condition that affects my proprioception. It’s genetic, so it probably explains why my sister bumps into everything too. I thought the audio clip was saying something like “I feel fine,” then my brain started hearing something about “science.” In the picture, I saw what looked like a woman’s face, but didn’t make out the horse or her hat. Honestly, my brain was going for a 1980’s abstract rock poster-type image of Pat Benatar. lol

"Wow, ancient sign!"

I first heard it as "wow i saved your life" but then i heard what the comments said in reference as to the tiktoks that have multiple words and says you hear what you are reading

I heard "hello I feel fine", and I actually feel like after the answer was revealed, I can flip back and forth in my perception, kinda like the whole Laural Yanny thing from a few years back. I really find it fascinating how priming in terms of sound can colour our perception so much.

I replayed that sound bite in the beginning a few times and it sounds like "Blalls seem to is fine" or something

I heard nothing at first. then, I paused the video and spoke to my partner for a while and felt really happy and grateful, then heard "alright, thank you it's fine." 🥺💜

"the way I speak to you is fine" is what I understood initially.

I saw the picture as a fairy walking on a branch. I personally dont remember seeing that alot in my day to day live, but maybe they made me forget it all. I have figured it out😂

Great video! As a musician I often find this to be the case like a musical illusion. I am often craving to "unhear" what comes after a songs intro because it gives my ears context to hear that introduction the "right" way. I find i have some of the most fun in those unknown few seconds before my brain can reliably predict how the melody or rhythm is supposed to fit giving the extra context from the rest of the performance. Great vid glad to have a way to label it!

I feel like this is actually why I can hear and understand better when there are accurate subtitles

i smoked some weed the other day and it was so intense that when i started to fall asleep i could sense how everything we experience is just a vibration or frequency of some sort

I heard "No, it's safe to sign." before and even after the context. Personally I think it reveals that I always have a worry something isn't safe which does make sense I'm the oldest of my siblings. I guess it can also allude to my trust issues, but that's just my guess.

0:06 "eh, makes you fine" "Hey, makes you fun" "Oh 825"

"Congrats ! Thank you for coming" "Hello ! Said you were funny !" "Hello ! Thank you, we're fine !" (yeah, each time he played it it looked a little different)

The sentence says “woah, this seems fine!”

00:20 "Oh speak to a sign!"

I actually thought it said “man sees the signs” which is shockingly close to “the man’s painting a sign”. Idk how it was so close! Maybe I thought of this because I always try to break things down and understand reality from the little bits I can see and think of all “the signs” in my life and what they mean 🤷‍♀️

"Oh I turned into a sign" thats what I though it was. No clue where this comes from lol

The sentence I heard was "lemme sing you a song." so interesting to see so many different perceptions of the same thing!

"You speak to a time", oddly enough. Also, I have a hard time distinguishing girl & horse even after looking at the photo. My sight seems to prioritize white blob of the black background, and only after mentally "reminding" myself of the photo I can see its outlines.

I revisited this video after a year and a half, and I forgot what the image was. So, I saw the image twice before relearning what it was.

3:17 I unsaw it, I looked at B and tried focusing on its raw color out of context, then compared it with A in the corner of my eye and they were the same. It’s difficult but doable, and really cool. I bet artists that color realistic scenes and need to be able to figure out which exact colors to use when coloring from a reference may have an easier time at this than others since they need to be able to look at a color and then see it out of context. I am not one of them, but I often try looking at colors out of context and I definitely used that skill here.

All I can hear in the sentence is “whoa, thank you so”

It's: "I'll send you a sign." for me, I tried multiple times to see if it would change but my brain has already associated the sentence with it. Also at first it sounded a little like "I'll sing you a song." but I needed to listen to it multiple times to make it clearer.

"Hey, I made you a song!" I'm guessing the picture is a person walking into a room with a balloon in hand, with someone else lounging on a recliner in the room (to their left). I could hear the audio after, which makes sense, but I can't see the picture after. It just still makes no sense to me. I see the same thing. Oh, and I've never had temperature sensing. I just realize I'm sweating or that I'm shivering and I'm like, “Ah.” I believe this is due to autism or dyspraxia. I am also face blind, so I can somewhat understand the horse, but I cannot see the person at all.

I heard “the world has gave me a sign” so I’m just happy I got SOME of it

I heard it as "hey, look inside!"

**looks at art** **exits video** **goes back on video and looks at art** There looked at it twice

Prediction: The secret phrase is "Please like and subscribe."

It is weird. I heard "Hello, I feel fine." Even after hearing the full featured sentence. The soundbyte still sounds like its was saying what I heard the first time.

Hello! thank you for calling!

I heard "no, I speak to a song" Very interesting indeed how different each and everyone hears.

Interesting! Myself and it seems a few other commenters correctly identified the “aɪ” vowel sound in “sign” I wonder if more people from the same region as the speaker were able to understand the sentence than other English speakers?

First time i heard the sentence i heard something like: “well thank you i’m fine”

That was fascinating! I heard "Hello! I feel fine." Oh and Hablo is pronounced ah-blo' the 'h' is silent 😊 Have a great trip!

This is fascinating. It reminds me of when you look at an illusion and you can see it in two different perspectives. Does anyone else have those ceilings where it looks like someone sponged it incrementally? Idk what that is called but I've had ceilings like that before, very fancy looking. Anyways, look up at it, and if you convince your brain that the shadows and highlights are backwards, it'll appear as an inverse of itself. Like instead of the orange like concave shapes, it turns into bubbles in your ceiling. I wonder if that's a way of changing your prediction by tricking your own brain. Anyways, the image and the audio I couldn't even come up with a prediction. I'm autistic so I'm guessing I'm just not that great at language processing so I was not as well inclined to even come up with a guess

I saw the pic as a figure walking on a moon and heard 'wow its really a science!' in a distinct english accent

2:50 - Square A and B are actually not the same color. They are slightly different. You can confirm this by taking a screenshot of the video and then using an image editor to juxtapose the squares and remove context. The colors are more similar than they appear, but are noticeably different. Also, the vertical bar near square A is not the same color as square B.

the thing about the painting is that is also actually looks like a pure white drawing of a godzilla like thing on a black canvas

I love your content, have been following for few years now, and you always put out great videos. I have interesting idea, could you do video on "Free will". Do we have it or is it just an illusion. For example: our guts, which in neuroscience is basically called the second brain, as it holds many bacteria(our guts have 10x more bacteria than we have total cells in our body), neurons, pathways and hormones which are all tightly connected along with the brain itself. The whole structure of our bacterial flora in the guts depends on what we eat, so depending on what we eat, our guts start creating certain chemicals which starts affecting our brain so we start to crave for similar food so that bacterial flora can be satisfied, leading to eating only certain types of food more than the other. Of course, this habit can be changed. But the question is - do we have free will at all, is it just an illusion and are we being controlled by the bacteria ?

“Hello, thank you for calling”

3:11 My brain is so confused rn xD

"Thanks, today's just fine!" pretty much my response when I'm under mountains of stress like today lol.

I am so surprised to see what many people heard and how its so different from what I did, incase your curious, I heard "Hello, thankyou it's fine " Can anyone relate?

I can actually see the image I first saw even after seeing the picture it's based on because I like it more. I have to flip it back, but that's easy. Is it actually hard for people to see what they first saw or is that just clickbait? I saw an explorer walking through a library that was coming apart and floating away while walked on. Which probably printed me hearing "Come on, we need to get going"

What does it mean if I could already see the woman and the horse before that was revealed? The checkered tiles being the same shade of gray completely blew my mind though!

0:22 "hello thank you for calling"

I heard "well you seem to be fine" and that makes sense. Lately I've been having a lot of anxiety but nobody around me seems to take it seriously lol

Okay, things I learned: I DID HEAR "painting a sign" before the sentence was revealed. Also, it is impossible that those two colors on the checkerboard are the same, due to the laws of physics with shadows, and how a checkerboard pattern works... That's not an optical illusion. I STILL see a King walking in a back alley and a body on the ground even when the initial image is uncovered. I can't see the horse image in the original image even after it was shown.

“Hello Thank you and goodbye” is what I heard

Kind of related to the call center example, I thought the sentence said "Make sure to like and subscribe" for a second

"I, will speak to you a song" Idk why "I" and "will" would have such a long pause but thats what I hear

i hilariously heard hello this is asap science and i saw two astronauts originally in the photo and i think it was the fact that i had asap science on my mind as obviously im watching your video... which made my brain deem it relevant info and made that sentence make sense by saying that like a intro

I heard “no thank you, I’m fine!”

"Moms, speak to your son." "Lungs bring to your song." "All hands, get to your soul." Even after hearing the real sentence, it's still hard to hear it in the distorted version. Like, I know that it's the real meaning, but it still sounds just as valid as any other prediction.

"Hey, it's your time." The voice is cheering for me 😅

"woah! thank you for calling" was what i heard when i heard it :)

“Oh thank you for calling.” Also “oh space is coming.”

"im going to speak to you soon"

0:20 “Wow, this was fun!”

Me: "hisshouw sanksee is fine." I think my brain let most of it be nonsense sounding because I study foreign language a lot, so it refused to make a solid prediction. My spouse: "Hello, thanks. It's fine" My spouse writes a lot of professional emails.

I thought the audio was saying “Yay! Thank you for subscribing!”, with the last word slightly altered. Probably because of all the RU-vid vids i’ve been watching lol.

“Woah, that looks fine” or “Woah, Frankenstein” Also I see a girl walking into the room but nothing else.

"Hello, thank you its fine." in the image i can see something with 2 legs. The fun thing after watching the video, I still heard my version of the sentence and didn't saw the image. Also i can change what is being said. I can change to the Real sentence and my "Version".

When you played the sound after showing the coffee cup, I heard “hey, thanks for the food!”

The funny thing is I keep seeing this picture like its the first time over and over again.

I heard "man I feel fine" I saw a bird and leaves, and still only saw that after the edit.

I heard "Hello, thank you for calling."

I heard "hey are you fine?" Weird nobody in my country speaks English on daily basis... idk how did i hear this then

“Thank you the same”

I heard "Hey, thank you, sorry"

So I just proved you can’t see this only once. I watched this a year ago, and now I’ve watched it again after forgetting it, and have seen it twice!

I heared first: Hey, get well soon. Then: Hey, this is cool.