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Scientists Find Believing Can Be Seeing
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Scientists at University College London have found the link between what we expect to see, and what our brain tells us we actually saw revealing that the context surrounding what we see is all important — sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things which aren't really there. A vague background context is more influential and helps us to fill in more blanks than a bright, well-defined context. This may explain why we are prone to 'see' imaginary shapes in the shadows when the light is poor. "Illusionists have been alive to this phenomenon for years," said Professor Zhaoping. "When you see them throw a ball into the air, followed by a second ball, and then a third ball which 'magically' disappears, you wonder how they did it. In truth, there's often no third ball — it's just our brain being deceived by the context, telling us that we really did see three balls launched into the air, one after the other." The original research paper is available on PLOS, the open-access, peer-reviewed journal."
Link in parent is malicious. Do not click.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Indeed. I took an Advanced Drivers training course from a police officer about a month ago, it really 'opened my eyes' so to speak. I'd been pretty appalled at my driving before, I didn't see any reason to keep to speed limits, but once you start trying to take in all the information you can from roadsigns and such, and you go on a skid course that demonstrates the braking distance difference between 20 and 30mph, you start to see the justification in having 20 limits outside schools and stuff like that. Save driving isn't about driving slowly of course - you can be perfectly safe at 110 (our instructor demonstrated this on a long straight, was funny to be doing that kind of speed legally :D ), but as you say training is very useful to get your brain noticing the right kind of things and not just going along on autopilot. After a while your driving will of course automatically incorporate the things that you have trained yourself to look out for, but it's still best to keep an active interest in what's happening all around your vehicle. I feel a bit of a hypocrite talking about road safety after the reputation I got for speeding around all the time, but hey I've not got any points on my license and I've not had an accident for a few years, because I was still sticking within what I considered to be my personal safety limits..
which is totally what she said
Well, here's an example. Suppose some guy picks up various scattered bits of facts -- a story on slashdot here, something about Mars kooks there. Now, he has an instinct -- or maybe it's hardwired at an even lower level than that -- to make up patterns around those scattered facts, to fill in the blanks. So he imagines a category of people who 'see things where nothing exists'. Before long, he's convinced enough of this specific phenomenon -- of this entity which is purely a product of his own tendency to create patterns to explain the phenomena he senses -- that he actually starts posting about this group of people on slashdot, as if there actually were one specific kind of person who has this trait!
And then other factors, psychological, move him to assume that he's 'better' than this entity that has popped up in his mind and that he now believes is an actual thing. He even begins to give patronising advice. To him, it's just as if he's *interacting* with this thing, this 'people who see things where nothing exists'. His self-deception is complete!
Far fetched? Maybe. But maybe not...
HTH
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I write sci-fi for metalheads