[coberst]

Brain: Constructs rather than mirrors reality

Thomas Kuhn, in his famous book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, explains the difficult we have with recognizing and accepting experiences that contradict our anticipations.

Kuhn details some of the problems that arose while scientists discovered such scientific anomalies as X-ray and oxygen.

As Kuhn observed:
“Novelty emerges with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a back drop provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be discovered…Further acquaintance, however, does result of awareness of something wrong…[which] opens a period in which perceptual categories are adjusted until the initially anomalous has become the anticipated.”

He concludes: “What a man sees depends upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.”

Kuhn provides us with an experiment performed by Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman undertaken to illuminate this human characteristic of seeing only what we are prepared to see.

Subjects were shown standard playing cards mixed with the anomalous card a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. Subjects repeatedly and erroneously identified the anomalous cards as a six of hearts or a four of spades. Some, even after the experiment was over, displayed confusion and even anger at the experiment. Only after repeated exposures to the cards did the subjects slowly feel something was askew here. Only after forty exposures did the subjects correctly identify the cards.

[BigTex]

In a previous business I had a customer I had gotten to know well over a number of years. Really nice fellow, probably 45 years old when I knew him. He was an electrician and I had him over to do some work on my house. He said he was going to bring a helper, which is not uncommon, and I didn't think anything about it.

My doorbell rang early Saturday morning and I went to answer the door and let my friend in to begin working. I opened the door and standing there before me was my friend and an exact replica of my friend standing next to him. Exactly the same in every way, haircut, beard, glasses, expression, clothing, toolbelt, boots. They were both looking at me with the same deadpan expression.

I struggled to decide which person's eyes to look at as I spoke.

Then they both started laughing and I realized that his helper was his identical twin brother he had never mentioned. They explained how much they enjoyed playing this trick on people.

It was weird. I was only prepared to see one of him.

[Ludi]

My husband an I had an identical experience of "illusion" or misperception, at the same time. We were driving down the country road and saw a couple buzzards ahead on the side of the road. As we got closer, it turned out there were no buzzards, instead, there was a log with shadows on it that looked like buzzards. I said "I thought there were buzzards" he said he did too. We have often remarked about it since as a clear example of "mass hallucination" of two people, how we both misperceived the same thing at the same time in the same way.

I can only guess this happens many times and is not recognised as misperception.

Both my husband and I have had actual hallucinations as well, not of the same things at the same time, but of similar objects (giant bugs, coils of string or ribbon coming down from the ceiling) and different figures, at various times (probably hypnogogic hallucinations). So we often discuss perception, illusion, and delusion.

[TheDude]

Nate Hagens has written some great articles at TOD about psychology as it pertains to the energy situation, like Peak Oil - Believe it or Not?

A favorite excerpt of mine:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ognitive load theory suggests humans have a maximum capacity of working memory. At around 7 'chunks' of information, our working memory maxes out and we can't accept anything else without losing some of the previous 'chunks'. Try remembering the following numbers 1-9-1-4-7-6-7-5-9-5-9. Its quite hard to do. But if they are rearranged in chunks 1-914-767-5959, it becomes much more manageable. Numerous studies have measured this phenomenon - a notable study by Shiv and Fedhorkhin(1) asked a group of people to memorize a two digit number, walk down a corridor and at the end choose a dessert - either chocolate cake or fruit salad. A different sample of people were then asked to memorize a 7 digit number and walk down the corridor (while internally reciting this 7 digit number) and also choose a dessert. When required to memorize the 7 digit number, almost twice as many people chose the chocolate cake as in the sample only memorizing the 2 digit number - the implication being - 'my short term memory is full - I cant access my rational, long term decision-making hardware - just give me the damn cake'.

Of course, in a society with cell phones, taxi-cabs, internet, coffee, soccer practice, Grays Anatomy, corporate ladders and a plethora of other chocolate cake-like stimuli, meaningful contemplation and education about oil depletion and the environment usually represents the fruit salad. Many people are just too cognitively taxed to take on much more.

[ivanillich]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('coberst', 'B')rain: Constructs rather than mirrors reality

Thomas Kuhn, in his famous book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, explains the difficult we have with recognizing and accepting experiences that contradict our anticipations.

Kuhn details some of the problems that arose while scientists discovered such scientific anomalies as X-ray and oxygen.

As Kuhn observed:
“Novelty emerges with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a back drop provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be discovered…Further acquaintance, however, does result of awareness of something wrong…[which] opens a period in which perceptual categories are adjusted until the initially anomalous has become the anticipated.”

He concludes: “What a man sees depends upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.”

Kuhn provides us with an experiment performed by Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman undertaken to illuminate this human characteristic of seeing only what we are prepared to see.

Subjects were shown standard playing cards mixed with the anomalous card a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. Subjects repeatedly and erroneously identified the anomalous cards as a six of hearts or a four of spades. Some, even after the experiment was over, displayed confusion and even anger at the experiment. Only after repeated exposures to the cards did the subjects slowly feel something was askew here. Only after forty exposures did the subjects correctly identify the cards.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ivanillich', ' ')the idea that science is getting closer and closer to that reality over time is false. .

[SchroedingersCat]

You cannot observe something without affecting it. I'm hoping nobody opens my box. At least in here I'm the one who constructs my reality.

Another interesting thought is how can you objectively measure a physical system with tools that were created within that system? That ruler over here says it's 43 cm. Over there it says the same, because the system is homogeneous.

We both look at a color and call it red. I know what that means to me, but I can never know how you perceive it.

Time and space are constructs that we agree on. That doesn't make us right.

[s0cks]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SchroedingersCat', 'W')e both look at a color and call it red. I know what that means to me, but I can never know how you perceive it.

[evilgenius]

I think this type of subject gets most interesting when it begins to involve itself in arguments about the existence of God. If you think about it it makes some sense that the best way to go about proving the existence of God is to finally disprove it. Think about it and about the nature of reality and natural selection and you might see what I mean.

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('s0cks', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SchroedingersCat', 'W')e both look at a color and call it red. I know what that means to me, but I can never know how you perceive it.

[coberst]

There is indeed some sensory input that stimulates the reality we create. It is a difficult thing to discuss because we do not have a vocabulary suitable for discussing it. Kant speaks of the thing-in-itself as being that reality out there and we speak of the reality that we know. Our problem lies in that we use the same word "reality" for both because up until recently everyone considered what we know is what is out there.

[ivanillich]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('coberst', 'T')here is indeed some sensory input that stimulates the reality we create. It is a difficult thing to discuss because we do not have a vocabulary suitable for discussing it. Kant speaks of the thing-in-itself as being that reality out there and we speak of the reality that we know. Our problem lies in that we use the same word "reality" for both because up until recently everyone considered what we know is what is out there.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('s0cks', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SchroedingersCat', 'W')e both look at a color and call it red. I know what that means to me, but I can never know how you perceive it.

[Ludi]

Color vision and color perception varies greatly from person to person. Color naming is another problem. It's difficult to determine if we see the same colors if one person calls a color "red" and another calls it "orange."

[BigTex]

One solution to figuring out what "objective reality" is might be to have 100 random people describe the same thing and then average their responses.

OTOH, this approach might actually give you a reality that exists for NO ONE, since you wouldn't be describing exactly what any one of the 100 people experienced as reality.

I really think the true objective reality road is a dead end. How could one ever be certain that the final objective reality had been reached?

Another problem is the point at which description stops and interpretation starts. Even if you could establish an objective reality based solely upon description--something like physics where there may only be one explanation for an event, even there virtually any element of the purported objective reality can be characterized as interpretation rather than description, and then you are back to something that is very subjective.

For example, if I say that according to physics principles, there is an objective reality to the way an object travels through space and time, you could say fine, there may be elements of objective reality to what I said, but how can I know that there are not other dimensions that are also acting upon the object, the exclusion of which makes the application of time and space ONLY very much an interpretation of a larger objective process.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

A famous one...

What do you see? And old woman or a young girl?

[Hagakure_Leofman]

OR...



Both of these are interesting studies on what the mind 'brings with it when judging the nature of things.

[BigTex]

Here's a sure to be famous one:

What do you see?

[BigQuake]

Minds are in flux and always in process of programming themselves.

Whatever you look at, you become, wether you like it or not.

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigQuake', 'M')inds are in flux and always in process of programming themselves.

Whatever you look at, you become, wether you like it or not.