alt Hacker NewsThe flipping-between is a great hack -- as you said your eyes (really, brain) just do the work for you.
I learnt about it in Japan where proof-readers and editors would (or do) quickly lift a top page up and down to spot mistakes with kanji (pictographs). And sure enough, even from a page of dense script the dissonance of the error really does pop out at you.
I likewise tucked that little trick into my belt -- it comes in useful anytime you're trying to manually spot a pattern across complex data. This technique has the same "vibe" as FFTs to me: it's just neat feeling like you're getting computation from the universe for free.
Solar PV in a similar category: free electrons if you can arrange the magic rocks just right :)
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If you put two proofs side by side, you can view from the right distance then uncross or cross your eyes like a stereogram till they converge, which makes differences shimmer.
Instant "spot the difference" solve.
// Long time in print and digital agency
Whoa that's fascinating! Thank you so much for sharing this, I never would've thought of it that way at all.
I use ScreenFloat[0] in a similar way to catch differences between GUI settings, like the cPanel PHP extensions selector, which has tons of checkboxes. Position a screenshot of settings for site A over the settings for site B, adjust the transparency, and any differences will jump out.
[0] https://eternalstorms.at/ScreenFloat/