It doesn't work that way because the brain makes corrections based on the colors surrounding an object.

Oh, it's the whole trick of the eye thing. I get it now, no wonder people are seeing gold when it's obviously not gold even if it was a yellowy colour. Not white either, surely people wouldn't see White white, but like a blue white, as the shade of the dress alone isn't lighter than it's surrounding.

Same effect as this right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

Just quoting what I said elsewhere about this..:

I suppose I can see why this could catch on and cause debate, since at first glance when I scrolled past this on another site I thought it was white and gold and had to so a double take to see how people were saying it was black and blue, now I can see how people can see it either way... But seriously, have people never seen stuff like this before:

Or perhaps a better example in this case:

The square in the middle of each face doesn't look the same colour at first glance (at least to most people), but it is. We see one as brighter / darker because what's around it makes us percieve one as in the shadow and one as in the light.

For that dress picture, obviously the actual colours in the picture are not literally the bold black and blue of the actual dress, or the bright white and gold that it seems many people thought it actually was (you can see that if you try comparing the light bits with the pure white or the dark bits with the pure black on your computer). Taken out of context the colours are probably more a pale washed-out blue and a gold brownish diarrhea colour. 

But I think my eye's original interpretation was that it was a crappy picture of a whitenand gold dress with poor lighting leaving the front (the side we can see) in shadow with bright light coming from behind. But in actual fact, it's a crappy picture of a blue and black dress with bright light coming from in front and / or high brightness settings.

I don't think that it's to do with whether you have "better" or "worse" eyesight, my guess is that the way your brain interprets the lighting (and hence what colour it sees the actual dress as) has to do with the screen you are looking at it on, its surroundings on the page or your surroundings in real life, and let's face it some random chance, considering the way lots of people claim to see it one way then the other each time they see the image.

I know the standard internet culture is more "OMGG is this real life?! Halp im scarred!" but I'm surprised I haven't seen more reasonable reactions (not talking about this thread, just in the general cesspool of the intetnet) after the initial WTF that might occur, like when people see the optical illusion posted above.

I don't know what is going on but I can see gold/white dress
The white is not pure, the shade makes appear to be like a light blue.

Exactly. Some are do color tests on the photo but some of 'em are forgetting it's in the shade. 

I can only see white and gold and nothing else... Can somebody explain this to me?

https://vine.co/v/O2rvPnlEzqi

Yes, as RuRo says it happens to colors as well.

The gold/yellow/black etc thing could be a bit trickier. That part of the dress seems to be transparent, so the color of what there's under it can have an impact, so it's possible that the dress can be black despite the RBY value in the pic for that part of the dress not being black. Furthermore color isn't an intrinsic property of objects and changes with lighting. There seems to be artificial lighting in that pic, which can* make things look redder than they actually would look under sunlight.

* Depends of wavelength (example of this: a light bulb).

What the... Have you changed the startpost?

It's simple, the dress is all those colors.