The human visual system model can produce desired effects in perception and vision.
Originally, it was thought that color television required too high a bandwidth for the then available technology.
Our HVS model says we cannot see high frequency detail, so in JPEG we can quantize these components without a perceptible loss of quality.
Similar concepts are applied in audio compression, where sound frequencies inaudible to humans are band-stop filtered.
Several HVS features are derived from evolution when we needed to defend ourselves or hunt for food.