I think I found this explanaiton of why color illusions happen useful after reading this website: https://serendipstudio.org/bb/contrastcolor/ It says that our retina and brain mostly pay attention to edges where there are sharp changes in intensity or wavelength, and the brain makes a guess based on the intensities and wavelength of light from other location in the scene blindspot. I think with this explanation it makes sense that our brain easily infers the same colors differently just because they are surrounded by different colors.