Now I will be able to understand R2-D2!

This is one of those do-it-on-yourself experiments that makes you realize your brain is doing all sorts of processing you have no awareness of.
First, listen to this audio clip: Sine Wave Speech. Listen to it until you either make out what is being said or conclude that you will not be able to.
Now, go listen to this audio clip: Clear Speech. After you listen to it once, go back and listen to the first clip….
Think that it only worked because you heard the “decoded” audio? Go listen to this second piece of Sine Wave Speech…
You can hear other examples and read more about the phenomenon at thisintroduction to Sine-Wave Speech. [via Boing Boing] These examples are meant to illustrate perceptual learning or perceptual insight. Even without getting that far into the explanation, I think it is a remarkable illustration of how good our minds are at identifying patterns and generalizing them based on remarkably sparse data.