Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Invisible Gorillas

There is a new book out, brought to you by the same people (Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons) that brought us the famous "count the number of times the ball gets passed" experiment (see video below). 

I haven't read the book, but just from this review from Scientific American, I know these guys are on the money: (all italics lifted from the SA review)
We think we see things as they really are, but “our vivid visual experience belies a striking mental blindness,” [the authors] write.


They cover the illusion of memory, how often our memories are born from our own embellished stories; the illusion of knowledge, we think we know much more than we actually do; the illusion of cause, we quickly assume correlation means causation.


Perhaps the worst illusion of all, the failing that leads to others, is the illusion of confidence. We profoundly overestimate our ability to see things as they are. As the physicist Richard Feynman famously said: The first principle is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.


If that one was too easy for you, try this one:

1 comment:

  1. I've seen the first one before, and I've noticed the gorilla each time I've watched it, incuding the first time. But the second one fooled me completely.

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