So this is really strange. I followed the link in the post above to look at the dress again and, as always, it’s obviously blue and black, but I kind of stared at the white background of the wiki page, and just barely kept the top left corner of the dress in my vision. I shit you not, the dress slowly turned more white and I looked down at the rest of the dress and the stripes were gold! At first it was subtle but it gradually became blatantly white and gold.

Then I looked away, and it was black and blue again.

Weird.

These guys apparently reproduced the effect.

One apparently either sees white socks and pink crocs, or green socks and gray crocs.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-life-of-the-mind/202502/the-dress-10-years-on

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/b41aa1cd-3d1b-4ef8-886f-2c6494141805.jpeg

If it is true that the differential interpretation of the light source causes the disagreement about the percept, we should be able to recreate the effect de-novo:

And we did: We put a pink croc under green light so it looks grey, then added white socks which — reflecting the green light appeared green. People who know that these socks are white used the green tint as a cue that something is off with the light and mentally color-corrected the image. To them, the croc looked pink, even though the pixels are objectively grey. People who took the color of the socks — green — at face value, saw the croc — consistent with its pixel values – as grey.

EDIT: For me, it’s green socks and gray crocs.