Embrace doubt! Doubt is good!

It's a theme in my life lately .. and an unspoken theme underlying the book.

What do we really know? It's a book that will give you doubt to what you really know. Could it be that when we're most confident, that we are most wrong?

The book began with a bang and puttered to the end. The book felt exhausting and perhaps unsettling. It's not that the material was dense, but it's scary to see our shortcomings. ( )

An eye-opener!

Full review on Goodreads. ( )

I pretty much read this in one sitting while at the Atlanta airport awaiting my very late flight. Its enthralling. Using Chris's original experiment, the invisible gorilla, he leaps into discussions on how our memory is highly fallible, how we tend to put too much faith in confidence, how we think we know more than we really do, how we make assumptions and jump to conclusions that aren't there, and how we have this false belief that its possible to get smart quickly (ie: the Mozart craze).

Highly recommended. ( )

What a fantastic book. ( )

Anyone who has read enough Discworld or Harry Potter books knows that we muggles are very good at ignoring what our brains tell us shouldn't be there.

ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ, said Death. ᴀᴍ ɪ ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ʜᴇʀᴇ, ʙᴏʏ?
“Yes,” said Mort slowly. “I… I’ve watched people. They look at you but they don’t see you, I think. You do something to their minds.”
Death shook his head.
ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇᴍsᴇʟᴠᴇs, he said. ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ’s ɴᴏ ᴍᴀɢɪᴄ. ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ᴄᴀɴ’ᴛ sᴇᴇ ᴍᴇ, ᴛʜᴇʏ sɪᴍᴘʟʏ ᴡᴏɴ’ᴛ ᴀʟʟᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇᴍsᴇʟᴠᴇs ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ. ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ɪᴛ’s ᴛɪᴍᴇ, ᴏꜰ ᴄᴏᴜʀsᴇ. ᴡɪzᴀʀᴅs ᴄᴀɴ sᴇᴇ ᴍᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴀᴛs. ʙuᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀvᴇʀᴀɢᴇ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ… ɴᴏ, ɴᴇvᴇʀ. He blew a smoke ring at the sky, and added, sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʀᴜᴇ.

–[b:Mort|828352|Mort (Discworld, #4)|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327866639s/828352.jpg|1857065], Terry Pratchett

It's quite a common trope in any kind of fantasy or science fiction that's set in the real world but that also features aliens or magic or vampires or superclowns. Obviously the real world doesn't have these things (probably) so in the fictional universe it's explained that people simply look the other way in the face of overwhelming evidence. Why does that sound familiar?



As a trope in fiction this phenomenon is known as the weirdness censor, but it's just fiction, right? Just because something is unexpected doesn't mean we wouldn't see it, right? Enter the invisible gorilla experiment. It's a fun experiment, but unfortunately it's one you can't do if you know about it; even knowing the name of the experiment kind of makes doing it pointless. But still, if you want to try it out then it's the first video at this webpage. The other videos are cute little experiments to try too.

Done? Okay. The experiment is easy: a 30 second video is shown of six people walking around in a small area. Three of the people wear white, and three wear black. The people wearing white pass a basketball around amongst themselves, and so do the people in black. The task is simply to count how many times the people in white pass the ball. It's harder than it sounds as everyone is constantly moving and there are two balls flying around, but the answer is about 15 passes. That's not the point. The point was: did you notice the person in the gorilla costume walk across the screen about half way through the video? They stopped in the middle of all the people, started at the camera, and beat their chest. If you did see the gorilla your response to this enquiry is probably “Of course I saw the gorilla, how could anyone not see the gorilla?” If you didn't see the gorilla your response is probably more like “Of course there wasn't a gorilla, I think I'd notice something like that.”

Knowing that the experiment involves invisible gorillas means you'd almost certainly notice the gorilla, but amongst those people who go into the experiment unprimed, i.e. not expecting to see a gorilla, about half of them don't see the gorilla. And now I've written “gorilla” too many times and it looks funny. Gorilla gorilla gorilla. Dammit.

Anyway. Those dry psychology types refer to this real life weirdness censor as inattentional blindness. If you're focusing on one task you can easily be blind to other salient events going on around you. In itself this isn't a problem; the problem arises because of inattentional blindness blindness. Get a large number of people to do the invisible gorilla experiment and about half of them will fail to see the gorilla. But describe the experiment to a large number of people and ask if they would have seen the gorilla and almost all of them will say that they would.

This book discusses various ways in which people are both blind to something, but also blind to their blindness. Being pop-science it leans pretty heavily on anecdotes, but hammers home the fact that anecdotes do not good science make. It provides references to experiments when these have been carried out, and freely admits when such experiments either haven't or can't be carried out. The tone sometimes comes across as kind of self-helpy, which is unfortunate since I'm pretty sure that is absolutely not what the authors are trying to achieve. All in all it's a fun, if occasionally depressing, look at the limitations of how people perceive the world and, more importantly, how they perceive themselves. ( )