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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about a certain kind of movie scene.

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Speaker 1: I know you've seen movies like this. I was trying

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Speaker 1: to think of examples, and for some reason, the only

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Speaker 1: really good one I could think of was the Brian

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Speaker 1: de Palma Mission Impossible movie. But there are tons of examples.

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Speaker 1: So here's what the scene is. A character is having

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Speaker 1: a realization about something that happened, and the realization takes

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Speaker 1: the form of remembering something from earlier in the movie

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Speaker 1: and suddenly zooming in on some detail in the background

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Speaker 1: of the shot that was not noticed the first time around.

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Speaker 1: So in the Brian de Palma Mission Impossible, Uh, there's

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Speaker 1: a scene where Tom Cruise is remembering scenes that have

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Speaker 1: and earlier but like zooming in on people in the

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Speaker 1: background and being like, oh, there were other agents there,

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Speaker 1: agents there along which which in the in the structure

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Speaker 1: of the film, it is basically the character is remembering

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Speaker 1: scenes that were already depicted in the film, maybe with

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Speaker 1: a zoom or something, but but but now they have

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Speaker 1: they have additional information regarding what they were looking at.

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Speaker 1: They're able to think back and essentially remember a detail

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Speaker 1: that they had overlooked. Yeah, and that that is often

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Speaker 1: how memory is portrayed in fiction. Right there, And there's

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Speaker 1: this great kind of drama to it, right like, Oh,

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Speaker 1: it was right in front of my eyes, It's right

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Speaker 1: where I was looking, but it was you know, I

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Speaker 1: didn't realize it until now. It's like they they posit

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Speaker 1: that memory works like a camera where you can take

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Speaker 1: a picture of a scene and then later go back

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Speaker 1: and look at that picture again and pick out different

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Speaker 1: details in the background of the picture that you didn't

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Speaker 1: notice the first time. Ah. Yeah, it's it's depending on this.

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Speaker 1: Like you said, I this fallacy of of memory as

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Speaker 1: a recording, as a recording that can be just replayed

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Speaker 1: and then studied again for detail. The same kind of

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Speaker 1: fallacy honestly, that is that has been utilized in um

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Speaker 1: remembering quote unquote remembering ritualized satanic abuse, and all the

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Speaker 1: other such things. Yeah, all the the idea about recovered

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Speaker 1: memory is a highly problematic concept. Um. But yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: not just what I want to emphasize today though, because

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Speaker 1: We've talked about problematic concepts of memory all the time,

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Speaker 1: about like the idea that you can retrieve information you

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Speaker 1: didn't have before very very doubtful. Um, But I want

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Speaker 1: to talk about the idea of seeing itself because another

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Speaker 1: thing that's involved in this movie scene where somebody takes

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Speaker 1: a picture of what's in front of their eyes and

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Speaker 1: then later they go back and zoom in on different

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Speaker 1: elements is the idea that whatever is in front of

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Speaker 1: your eyes is recorded in some way because it, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's apparent, it's obvious that you have access to the

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Speaker 1: information because you looked right at it. And so what

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Speaker 1: we want to talk about today is whether that's actually true,

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Speaker 1: and what it means for information to be obvious visually

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Speaker 1: or otherwise, and what it means to see. And in

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Speaker 1: doing so, we're we are going to discuss the invisible gorilla, uh,

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Speaker 1: classic psychology experiment. But but but as we we look

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Speaker 1: back at this, this particular experiment, it did make me

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Speaker 1: rethink the idea of of invisibility and it reminded me

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Speaker 1: of something I read in a Stephen King novel. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It's particularly The Eyes of the Dragon from did you

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Speaker 1: ever read this one? No, I didn't. It's been a

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Speaker 1: long time. But is this one of the one of

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Speaker 1: the gun Slinger books. It's tied to all of that

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Speaker 1: because it takes place in the kind of its own

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Speaker 1: standalone fantasy world, and there is an evil magician in

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Speaker 1: it by the name of Flag Grandel. Flag is the

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Speaker 1: really the ever present uh Stephen King Nemesis. Right, So

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Speaker 1: there's this point that where the king is describing the

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Speaker 1: magical powers a flag, and flag has this ability to

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Speaker 1: turn invisible, but it's it's less of a complete story

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Speaker 1: book or Lord of the Rings invisibility, and it has

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Speaker 1: far more in common with what we're discussing today. So

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Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quick quote invisibility was out

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Speaker 1: of his reach, but by reciting a number of spells,

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Speaker 1: it was possible to become dim. When one was dim

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Speaker 1: and a servant approached along a passageway, one simply drew

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Speaker 1: aside and stood still and let the servant pass. In

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Speaker 1: most cases, the servants eyes would drop to his own

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Speaker 1: feet or suddenly find something interesting to look at on

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Speaker 1: the ceiling. If one passed through a room, conversation would

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Speaker 1: falter and people would look momentarily distressed, as if all

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Speaker 1: were having gas panes. At the same time tortures and

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Speaker 1: wall sconces grew smoky candle sometimes blew out. It was

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Speaker 1: necessary to actually hide when one was dim only if

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Speaker 1: one saw someone whom one knew well for whether one

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Speaker 1: was dim or not, these people almost always saw. Dimness

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Speaker 1: was useful, but it was not invisibility. Oh, there's an

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Speaker 1: almost exactly equivalent type of magical invisibility that's in um,

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Speaker 1: Philip Pullman's his Dark Materials that the witches and that

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Speaker 1: make use of, where it is a it's a form

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Speaker 1: of invisibility where it's not that they're not seen, but

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Speaker 1: they are not noticed. Um. So people like they'll enter

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Speaker 1: a room they're not supposed to be in and people

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Speaker 1: will glance up and notice them and then just look away.

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Speaker 1: And this is key to what we're talking about today.

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Speaker 1: What is the difference between seeing and noticing? What is

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Speaker 1: the difference between between the obvious and the un obvious? Right?

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Speaker 1: And does does the idea of obviousness itself introduce problematic

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Speaker 1: misconceptions into our mind that that caused us to not

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Speaker 1: really understand how our own site and and recognition and

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Speaker 1: memory works. So this story is going to begin with

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Speaker 1: a very popular, well known experiment. I guess I guess

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Speaker 1: a lot of you, maybe the majority of you out there,

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Speaker 1: have already seen this video by now, but if not,

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Speaker 1: it's definitely worth it to pause the podcast right now

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Speaker 1: and check it out before continuing. Just search on the

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Speaker 1: internet quote selective attention test, and the video should come

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Speaker 1: right up now for all of you who have already

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Speaker 1: seen it before, or if you just came back from

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Speaker 1: checking it out. A quick description of what's going on.

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Speaker 1: It's a video where you've got six people, three of

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Speaker 1: them are wearing white shirts, three you're wearing black shirts,

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Speaker 1: and they're moving around in a sort of circle, passing

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Speaker 1: basketballs back and forth within their teams of the same

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Speaker 1: colored shirts. And the video asks you to count how

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Speaker 1: many times the players in the white shirts past the ball,

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Speaker 1: So it gives you a task. You've got a visual

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Speaker 1: information recording task to keep you occupied. And then in

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Speaker 1: the middle of the video you might or might not

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Speaker 1: notice something which is a person wearing a gorilla costume.

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Speaker 1: And I love it because it's a straight up robot

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Speaker 1: monster b movie ape suit. Oh yeah, yeah, it's not.

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Speaker 1: This is not two thousand and one of Space Odessey

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Speaker 1: this store bought gorilla costing, which I love. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: walks right into the middle of the frame, like, not

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Speaker 1: not in some obscure corner, but right into the middle

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Speaker 1: of the video you're watching, stands there in the middle

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Speaker 1: of all the players. The person in the suit beats

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Speaker 1: their chest and then they walk away. And what's astonishing

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Speaker 1: about this video is how many people do not see

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Speaker 1: the gorilla, or do not recall seeing the gorilla at

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Speaker 1: all when they see the video for the first time.

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Speaker 1: And it's it's a truly Robert I don't know if

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Speaker 1: you've watched one of these videos, one of these types

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Speaker 1: of videos and not seeing the thing, but it is

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Speaker 1: a truly unbelievable, eye opening, mind expanding experience to watch

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Speaker 1: one of these videos for the first time not see

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Speaker 1: the gorilla or the moonwalking bear, which I'll talk about

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Speaker 1: in a second, or anything like that, and and then

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Speaker 1: realize that you were looking right at it and not

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Speaker 1: seeing it. And it really can shake your faith in

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Speaker 1: the reliability of your own senses and attention because it's

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Speaker 1: so obvious in the sense of the way we normally

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Speaker 1: use the word obvious, right, It's the way I was

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Speaker 1: trying to express it was like it'd be like watching

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Speaker 1: a Michael Bay movie and not remembering having seen any explosions. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's difficult for me to look back, and

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Speaker 1: I honestly can't remember how I responded to this video

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Speaker 1: the first time I've viewed it. But I but I

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Speaker 1: have observed the effects of similar experiments in video and

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Speaker 1: can certainly appreciate it. Maybe things a little less obvious.

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Speaker 1: You know, you see videos where it's kind of like

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Speaker 1: a prankster element where you have your switch out people

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Speaker 1: while someone is isn't looking and they don't notice. Oh,

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Speaker 1: there's one of those in just a second I want

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Speaker 1: to talk about. Yeah. So uh. But but then also,

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Speaker 1: once you've seen it, like once the guerrilla has been

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Speaker 1: pointed out to you, you cannot unsee the gorilla in

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Speaker 1: this video. Yeah, the second time you watch it, it's

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Speaker 1: just astonishing. It walks right into the middle of the frame.

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Speaker 1: It's right there. It's a guerrilla suit. I mean, it

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Speaker 1: feels really weird to not have seen it the first time. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and the question is, well, how many people don't

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Speaker 1: see it the first time? This variable can be altered.

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Speaker 1: But I'll get to the number in a second. The

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Speaker 1: video comes from an experiment first published in by Daniel J.

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Speaker 1: Simons and Christopher F. Shabris called Guerrillas in Our Midst.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a play on Guerrillas in the mist.

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Speaker 1: There are gonna be a lot of honey titles studies

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Speaker 1: in today's episode, Guerrillas in Our Midst sustained inattentional blindness

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Speaker 1: for dynamic events, and this was published in the journal

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Speaker 1: Perception and The experiment tested multiple different conditions, including doing

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Speaker 1: the test with both a gorilla and a woman holding

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Speaker 1: an umbrella instead, and then with like different different difficulty

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Speaker 1: levels of the task of counting the basketball passes based

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Speaker 1: on whether the figures were transparent or solid, but basically

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Speaker 1: averaged across conditions. The authors found that roughly half of

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Speaker 1: observers don't notice anything unusual while they're trying to count

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Speaker 1: basketball passes, and something unexpected, like a guerrilla, walks right

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Speaker 1: in front of their eyes. Now, fun fact is we're

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Speaker 1: entering into Ignoble Prize season, but the invisible guerilla was

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Speaker 1: honored with an Ignoble Prize in two thousand four. So

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Speaker 1: if you've heard of this this study, you may have

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Speaker 1: heard it in a number of different ways, but it's

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Speaker 1: possible you picked up on it via Ignoble Prize coverage. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this has become incredibly popular, So I mean, this

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Speaker 1: is one of those where this initial study I bet

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Speaker 1: a lot of you out there have already heard of.

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Speaker 1: But there's gonna be more interesting stuff to come. And

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Speaker 1: there have been plenty of versions of the exact same

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Speaker 1: tests that have been replicated in various ways. One of

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Speaker 1: the best is a UK public service announcement about road safety,

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Speaker 1: and it was a TV commercial that did pretty much

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Speaker 1: the same thing. It asked viewers to count how many

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Speaker 1: times a team of players wearing white shirts passed a

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Speaker 1: ball while a team of players wearing black shirts were

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Speaker 1: also passing a ball around on the screen, and in

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Speaker 1: the middle of the action, a dude in a bear

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Speaker 1: suit moon walks through the middle of the game, and

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Speaker 1: then it asks you if you saw the bear, and

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Speaker 1: then it replays the clip, and finally it tells you

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Speaker 1: look out for cyclists. True story, I legitimately did not

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Speaker 1: see the bear the first time when I watched this,

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Speaker 1: and I don't know if this is supposed to be

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Speaker 1: the effect, but now I worry that I have run

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Speaker 1: over cyclists in my car without noticing. I really hope not, well,

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Speaker 1: I should hope not, Joe. And but if it did happen,

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Speaker 1: I hope that the specter of a moonwalking bear haunts

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Speaker 1: you for it, because I mean, that's ultimately what the

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Speaker 1: the specter of the invisible grill or the moon walking

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Speaker 1: bear is therefore, to remind us how little we perceive

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Speaker 1: while seeing right, how much, how how much of our

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Speaker 1: reception is flawed. Now, you could class this as a

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Speaker 1: good thing or a bad thing, or a mixed bag,

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Speaker 1: as I guess I would, but will explore some of

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Speaker 1: the different ways of interpreting these kind of results as

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Speaker 1: the episode goes on. But Yeah, the general principle is

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Speaker 1: now known as inattentional blindness, and the basic idea is

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Speaker 1: that when you're paying attention to a particular object or

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Speaker 1: task like counting basketball throws, you often fail to perceive

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Speaker 1: an unexpected object right in front of your eyes, even

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Speaker 1: if you're looking straight at it, and in retrospect it

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Speaker 1: seems completely obvious, and you would be astonished sometimes what

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Speaker 1: you fail to notice when your attention is otherwise occupied. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is one of those areas of human perception that

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Speaker 1: really drives home how many of the details we think

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Speaker 1: we have are just kind of filled in for us

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Speaker 1: by our brain. You know, our perception of the world

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Speaker 1: is not an uber detailed painting of the Last Supper,

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Speaker 1: where we can, you know, accurately, pinpoint how each disciple

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Speaker 1: is dressed, and what are their poses? Where? Where where

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Speaker 1: are they looking? Where are they in position to Christ

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Speaker 1: at the center of the table. We might think that

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Speaker 1: we have this level of detail, but as we're seeing here,

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Speaker 1: we might very well fail to notice a full grown

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Speaker 1: guerrilla amidst the disciples at the table. This is a

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Speaker 1: really good point you make about art, Ashley Robert, because

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Speaker 1: I think think about how many famous paintings you have

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Speaker 1: the feeling that you can picture perfectly in your head,

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Speaker 1: like picture, you know, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,

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Speaker 1: one of those scenes you know, Adam and God reaching

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Speaker 1: them together, picture the Last Supper, or you know, any

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Speaker 1: one of these famous paintings. If if you're like me,

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Speaker 1: you have the feeling that like, Okay, I can see

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Speaker 1: it in my head right now, I'm picturing it. It's

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Speaker 1: like I have a photo of it. But if I

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Speaker 1: were forced to like draw from that photo of in

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Speaker 1: my memory. I couldn't do it, yeah, or just to

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Speaker 1: go right from left and tell me you know where

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Speaker 1: everybody is unless you've made an exercise of remembering it, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're probably not gonna be able to do it well.

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Speaker 1: It emphasizes that there's something about the mind's eye that

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Speaker 1: is a trick that can give you the feeling of

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Speaker 1: being able to look at something with full detail and

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Speaker 1: full frame in your mind. Even though you think you're

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Speaker 1: seeing it in your mind's eye right now, most of

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Speaker 1: the detail actually doesn't exist. Yeah, but you know, like

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Speaker 1: you said, it's not this is not all bad because

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Speaker 1: obviously this allows you to know what the last supper is.

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Speaker 1: You can identify it. You you but you know that

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Speaker 1: you know the basic idea, even if you can't reproduce

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Speaker 1: it on paper, and likewise is we're taking in the

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Speaker 1: world around us. We can't we can't be focused on

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Speaker 1: everything and once we have to focus in on particular

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Speaker 1: aspects of our environment, and we can't be distracted by

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Speaker 1: everything around it. Like if you're it's in the same

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Speaker 1: same way that if you're at a dinner party, you

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Speaker 1: need to be able to focus on one conversation and

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Speaker 1: shut out all the rest. We have to be able

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Speaker 1: to focus our attention exactly. And that's one thing that's

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Speaker 1: especially important for auditory attention because the ears do not

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Speaker 1: have a physical focusing mechanism the same way the eyes do.

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Speaker 1: You have directed vision where you you zoom in on

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Speaker 1: a single focal point and make that the center of

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Speaker 1: your attention. With the ears, you can turn your head,

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Speaker 1: but you can't really zero in like you can with

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Speaker 1: your eyes. Even though we might again think of our

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Speaker 1: perception as a painting or as a is a this

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Speaker 1: video footage where everything is complete and we can just

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Speaker 1: go back and and and look at the various details

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Speaker 1: that we weren't focused on. No, if you weren't focusing

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Speaker 1: on the detail, then it is it is likely blurry

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Speaker 1: or loss or just filled in via memory. This nine

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Speaker 1: experiment by Simon's and Shabris it was not the first

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Speaker 1: one to show that people are sometimes blind objects or

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Speaker 1: changes when their attention is focused on another task. One

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Speaker 1: of the earliest major studies of this was by uh

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Speaker 1: Nicer and Becklen in Cognitive Psychology in nineteen seventy five

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Speaker 1: called selective looking attending to visually specified events, and this

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Speaker 1: was a small study twenty four undergrads and subjects were

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Speaker 1: asked to look at two optically superimposed video screens, and

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Speaker 1: they created this by the use of a half silvered mirror.

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Speaker 1: But basically, just just imagine like projecting two different videos

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Speaker 1: onto the same screen at the same time. Obviously that

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Speaker 1: would be difficult to follow, right, um, And these two

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Speaker 1: screens are playing two different videotapes at the same time

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Speaker 1: on top of each other. One was a ball passing

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Speaker 1: game where three people moved around and tossed a ball

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Speaker 1: to each other, and the other one was yie old

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Speaker 1: hand slap game. Robert, did you ever play the hand

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Speaker 1: slap game? Is this where somebody has hands of palm

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Speaker 1: facing up and the other uh, palms facing down right,

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Speaker 1: And a person with palms up tries to slap the

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Speaker 1: hands of the other person and and you take turns

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Speaker 1: trading off to see who can do it, and so

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Speaker 1: the subjects in this experiment, they were asked to pay

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Speaker 1: attention to only one of the two videos that were

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Speaker 1: being played on top of each other from their point

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Speaker 1: of view, and to press a button every time something

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Speaker 1: happened in one of those videos. Say, if you're paying

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Speaker 1: attention only to the handslap video to press a button

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Speaker 1: every time a hand slap occurred, or if you're paying

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Speaker 1: attention only to the ballgame video, press a button every

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Speaker 1: time the ball is passed. And the experiment was testing

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Speaker 1: for several things. One of one of its focuses was

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Speaker 1: to find out how attention selects what information to record

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Speaker 1: when presented with multiple stimuli at the same time. Like

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Speaker 1: the authors were dealing with one idea that, well, maybe

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Speaker 1: the brain has some kind of post perceptual filter that

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Speaker 1: rejects or eliminates unwanted information, and instead they were arguing

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Speaker 1: that selective attention was a result of skilled perceiving basically

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Speaker 1: only recording the important stimuli in the first place, not

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Speaker 1: recording everything, and then weeding out what's unnecessary, And they

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Speaker 1: did claim to find support for their view, But one

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Speaker 1: of the variables they tested in the experiment was whether

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Speaker 1: people paying attention to one of the videos would notice

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Speaker 1: weird stuff happening in the other super imposed video. So,

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Speaker 1: if you are so the videos are playing right on

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Speaker 1: top of each other, you're looking straight at both of them,

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Speaker 1: but you're watching the hand slap game, will you notice

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Speaker 1: if the people passing the ball in the ball game,

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Speaker 1: throw the ball off screen and then keep pretending to

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Speaker 1: pass without a ball, or if the men playing the

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Speaker 1: ball game all walk off screen and are replaced by women,

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Speaker 1: Or if you're watching the ball game, will you notice

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Speaker 1: if the players in the hand slap game stop to

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Speaker 1: shake hands or stop slapping hands and start tossing a

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Speaker 1: ball back and forth? And the authors found that the

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Speaker 1: odd events in the secondary video were rarely noticed and

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Speaker 1: reported at all, but there were some really curious observations.

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Speaker 1: For example, one guy who is supposed to be counting

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Speaker 1: throws in the ball game and ignoring the hand slap game,

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Speaker 1: was in a condition where the players in the hand

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Speaker 1: slap game stopped slapping and started throwing a ball back

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Speaker 1: and forth, and he recorded this as a throw within

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Speaker 1: the ball game, but then later insisted that he had

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Speaker 1: not seen ball being thrown by the hands in the

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Speaker 1: second video. Now this is all that that all this

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Speaker 1: is like the hands throwing balls back and forth. It's

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Speaker 1: not as as dramatic as the gorilla. The gorilla really

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Speaker 1: gives one pause. Well, right, that this was the earlier

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Speaker 1: study because and and so part of what they were

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Speaker 1: following up with with the guerrilla study was well I mean,

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Speaker 1: are people gonna do? Is it? This is the same

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Speaker 1: thing go to happen when you're not trying to manage

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Speaker 1: watching you know, these two things superimposed. Obviously that was

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Speaker 1: a very taxing mental task, and so you're you're gonna

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Speaker 1: be really inattentive to extrane a stimuli. So there was

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Speaker 1: another study from before, before the guerrilla study, that was

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Speaker 1: an experiment by Levin and Simons. And the way this

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Speaker 1: works is you've got an experiment or standing on the

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Speaker 1: street holding a map, so pretending to be somebody lost,

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Speaker 1: and the pedestrian comes by, and the experiment or asks

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Speaker 1: this random pedestrian for directions to somewhere, you know, tell

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Speaker 1: me how to get to the nearest week shot, but

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Speaker 1: tell me how get to the nearest guerrilla suit shop.

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Speaker 1: And then while the pedestrian is explaining how to get there,

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Speaker 1: a couple of experimenters posing as construction workers passed between

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Speaker 1: the participant and the experiment or carrying a big wooden door,

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Speaker 1: and in the moment the door passes between them, the

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Speaker 1: experiment or is switched out with a completely different person,

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Speaker 1: and the person giving directions often does not notice this,

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Speaker 1: and you you'd wonder Okay, how often do they not

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Speaker 1: notice the person that they're giving directions to being switched out? Like?

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Speaker 1: What five percent of the time? No, The study found

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Speaker 1: that about fifty percent of the pedestrians did not notice

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Speaker 1: that they were suddenly talking to a completely different person

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Speaker 1: and that the other one had disappeared. Yeah, this video

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Speaker 1: is also worth checking out though, because it is this

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Speaker 1: one has kind of a candid camera, like a fun

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Speaker 1: do it as well? Yeah, And I think what's probably

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Speaker 1: crucial here is again that you're occupying the person's mind

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Speaker 1: with a with an intention absorbed were being tasked? Giving

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Speaker 1: directions is mentally difficult, right, because you're like having to

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Speaker 1: try to picture places and translate those navigational you know,

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Speaker 1: you don't usually need to translate your own navigational uh

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Speaker 1: data into words, and of doing that is difficult too.

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Speaker 1: So while this person's mind is occupied trying to come

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Speaker 1: up with how to get to the Gorilla suit shop,

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Speaker 1: they're actually incredibly inattentive to visual details right in front

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Speaker 1: of their face, such as like what the person they're

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Speaker 1: talking to looks like, to the extent they don't even

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Speaker 1: notice when the person becomes somebody else. All right, On

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Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take a quick break and

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Speaker 1: when we come back more with the invisible gorilla. Thank alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back, okay. So one thing I would immediately wonder

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Speaker 1: about with something like the guerrilla experiment is is this

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Speaker 1: only because people have sort of have their guard down?

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Speaker 1: You know? Maybe are they are they oblivious to what

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Speaker 1: would seem like really obvious visual data, such as a

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Speaker 1: person in a guerilla suit walking in front of their eyes,

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Speaker 1: or the person they're talking to suddenly transforming into a

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Speaker 1: different person. Are they only not noticing these things because

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Speaker 1: they're sort of in a very casual mode of thinking

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Speaker 1: where they're not expecting anything strange to happen. And so

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Speaker 1: to vary the experiment, maybe we should ask, if you know,

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Speaker 1: to be on the lookout for one unexpected thing, does

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Speaker 1: it help you notice other unexpected things? Like let's say

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Speaker 1: you repeat the basketball guerilla suit experiment, but including some

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Speaker 1: subjects who are aware of what's going on. Maybe they've

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Speaker 1: seen the first video already, they already know that a

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Speaker 1: guerrilla is going to show up, and if other unexpected

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Speaker 1: things happen in that video, will they be more likely

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Speaker 1: to notice them? And so Simon's actually carried out an

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Speaker 1: experiment to test for this that was published in two

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Speaker 1: thousand ten called monkeying Around with the Guerrillas in our

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Speaker 1: midst familiarity with inattentional blindness. Task does not improve the

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Speaker 1: detection of unexpected events. So many bad puns. And it's

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Speaker 1: an not a monkey, right, So that's true, but I'll

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Speaker 1: overlook it. This is uh, this is not this is

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Speaker 1: not this, This This is from a this is a perception studies,

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Speaker 1: not an ape study. Uh So, so Simon's created a

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Speaker 1: second video and ran a new test, and this one

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Speaker 1: starts in a similar way. You got the players in

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Speaker 1: the white shirts and the players in the black shirts,

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Speaker 1: and they're passing a ball between members of the same

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Speaker 1: team and the same color shirts, and subjects are asked

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Speaker 1: to count how many times the players in the white

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Speaker 1: shirts passed the ball. But part of the way through

432
00:23:29,560 --> 00:23:32,480
Speaker 1: the test, a few things happen. Once again, a guerilla

433
00:23:32,520 --> 00:23:34,920
Speaker 1: walks into the middle of the frame, thumps its chest,

434
00:23:35,119 --> 00:23:39,199
Speaker 1: walks away, But also the curtain in the background changes

435
00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:42,440
Speaker 1: color from red to orange. Also, one of the players

436
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: in the black shirts just walks away and disappears from

437
00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:48,720
Speaker 1: the game. And uh, and so the question is if

438
00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 1: you know the guerrillas coming, do you are you more

439
00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:54,760
Speaker 1: likely to notice the other things happening? And this one

440
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:56,960
Speaker 1: got me again. When I watched it, I did not

441
00:23:56,960 --> 00:23:59,760
Speaker 1: notice the curtain color change or the player leaving the

442
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:02,600
Speaker 1: other team, though I did notice the guerrilla. Yeah, I

443
00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: I noticed the guerrilla because I was expecting it right

444
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: and and looking forward to it. Actually, but the yeah,

445
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:12,439
Speaker 1: the background color did not register with me. And I

446
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: certainly didn't notice one random human like disappearing, just wandering off,

447
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 1: Like why would I be paying attention to the humans?

448
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 1: I don't care what they're doing. I'm I've got my

449
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 1: on the ball. And so obviously some of the subjects

450
00:24:26,040 --> 00:24:29,200
Speaker 1: in the sample were already familiar with the original guerrilla video,

451
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 1: and so what were the results among subjects who had

452
00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:35,480
Speaker 1: never heard of the original guerrilla video, so who were

453
00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:38,679
Speaker 1: brand new to this type of experiment. Fifty six percent

454
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:41,879
Speaker 1: noticed the guerrilla so a little more than half saw it. Uh,

455
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 1: And this is roughly in line with what previous experiments

456
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 1: have found. It's gone up and down with various conditions,

457
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's around half. Of course, people who had

458
00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:53,880
Speaker 1: heard of the original video noticed the guerrillacent of the time,

459
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:55,960
Speaker 1: because if you're looking for a guerrilla, of course you're

460
00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 1: going to see one. But what about the new stuff? Well, uh,

461
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 1: sign is found that across both groups, eleven percent of

462
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:06,480
Speaker 1: subjects noticed the curtain change and sixteen percent noticed the

463
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:09,120
Speaker 1: change in the number of players on the black team.

464
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:11,880
Speaker 1: And so the big question is if people were already

465
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:15,159
Speaker 1: familiar with the guerrilla suit test where they more likely

466
00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 1: to see the other stuff, And the answer is no,

467
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,199
Speaker 1: People who were expecting to see the guerrilla were not

468
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:24,040
Speaker 1: anymore likely to see the other stuff change. So if

469
00:25:24,040 --> 00:25:26,639
Speaker 1: you're expecting to see one weird thing, you aren't necessarily

470
00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: any more likely to notice other weird or unexpected things

471
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,280
Speaker 1: right in front of your eyes. And Simon's points out

472
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: that this is sort of in line with a cognitive

473
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 1: phenomenon known as satisfaction of search, which basically means that

474
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:42,120
Speaker 1: people are less likely to search for an additional target,

475
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:46,919
Speaker 1: additional piece of target information once they've already found their

476
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:50,200
Speaker 1: original target information. An example of this might be say

477
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 1: you've got a radiologist looking at imaging results and uh,

478
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:56,640
Speaker 1: they're they're looking for evidence of illegion, and then they

479
00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:59,119
Speaker 1: find one. But if they find one, they might be

480
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:02,639
Speaker 1: less like lead to notice other legions or abnormalities in

481
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,280
Speaker 1: the image because they've already gotten a hit. They already

482
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: essentially hit the the information they needed and closed the

483
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 1: case on the search instead of continuing the search for

484
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 1: more information. Yeah, I found the gorilla. What what more

485
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 1: would you ask of me? Yeah? And I gotta say

486
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 1: that the one complication here is that the color of

487
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 1: the curtain background, which is a digital background in the video,

488
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:28,080
Speaker 1: is a nauseating color anyway, So it's almost like you

489
00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: don't want to pay attention to it. Yeah, it's kind

490
00:26:30,359 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: of this fake looking color or hue. It has this

491
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: kind of early c g I appearance to it, like

492
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:39,919
Speaker 1: it's obviously been digitally manipulated, but in a way that

493
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: not not in a way that I expect anything out

494
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:44,439
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. I wonder if the same would be

495
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 1: true if it was like literally photographed curtain in the

496
00:26:47,760 --> 00:26:50,399
Speaker 1: background that changed colors. I don't know how you do

497
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: that with moving players. You need some real special effects.

498
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 1: But anyway, Okay, so most of these tests, not the

499
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:58,880
Speaker 1: door one, but the other ones involved things like watching

500
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:01,880
Speaker 1: a video, and so you've gotta wonder, can this kind

501
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 1: of inattentional blindness, the blindness to stuff that seems completely

502
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: obvious happening right in front of your eyes while you're

503
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:13,359
Speaker 1: looking at it. Can this be extrapolated to the real world, because,

504
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:15,520
Speaker 1: for one thing, like we were just talking about, I

505
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:18,159
Speaker 1: can see how there might be elements of of a

506
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:22,359
Speaker 1: hypnotic effect or kind of unreality created by the nature

507
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: of visual media and screens. And it's possible maybe that

508
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 1: doesn't apply to our normal attentional capacities for our environments. Yeah,

509
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: because that that last video, it basically looked like footage

510
00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:37,680
Speaker 1: from The Banana Splits, But our everyday reality thankfully does

511
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,240
Speaker 1: not look like an episode of The Banana Splits. So

512
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: do we really fail to notice things around us in

513
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 1: the real world that we would that we would assume

514
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: are completely obvious, like the gorilla in the video? Well,

515
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 1: it would seem so, right. I mean, this is the

516
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: very sort of thing that magic and illusions have preyed

517
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 1: upon since time out of Mind, and not only magicians

518
00:27:56,840 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 1: and illusionists, but also pickpockets and various con artist Well,

519
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 1: this is the very principle of misdirection. Yeah, you're not

520
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 1: looking You're looking at my magic hand. It's doing some

521
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:09,480
Speaker 1: sort of elaborate flourish. You're not looking at the hand

522
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: that's sneaking a page of pigeon out of my pants.

523
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:18,360
Speaker 1: You're looking at the the attractive magicians helper here. You're

524
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 1: not looking at some key aspect of the mechanism for

525
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 1: the trick that's being put into position. This is an

526
00:28:24,840 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: important part of magic that I think a lot of

527
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,360
Speaker 1: people don't realize. I think a lot of times when

528
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: people are trying to picture what it is that stage

529
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 1: magicians pickpockets and all these kind of people do it,

530
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,920
Speaker 1: they they're thinking all about the skill of the tricking hand.

531
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 1: You know, how do how does it get into the pocket,

532
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: how does it loosen the watch, how does it do whatever?

533
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 1: But that's only part of the skill. Part of the

534
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: real skill is making sure your eyes go in the

535
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 1: other direction, you know, using the other hand or using

536
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 1: your props or whatever to keep your attention elsewhere. Yeah, again,

537
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 1: it's not a pain thing of a magician. It's not

538
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,480
Speaker 1: the video footage of the magician. Now, this does make

539
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 1: me wonder how video has changed magic, because, on one hand, yeah,

540
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:11,000
Speaker 1: if if you have the video footage there, you can

541
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: pintentially rewind it and see exactly how the trick was done.

542
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: You have, you have the ability to do what the

543
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: in person um spectator does not. But then on the

544
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: other hand, you have magicians that perform in front of

545
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: a camera all the time. In fact, they're of course

546
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 1: key examples of magicians who have manipulated the use of

547
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: cameras for their benefit. I'm thinking particularly of it was

548
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:38,280
Speaker 1: was David Copperfield above. They made the the Statue of

549
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 1: Liberty disappear, and that was of course a huge, a

550
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:44,760
Speaker 1: huge media sensation. I assume that was not slight of hand,

551
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: but not a slight of hand. But I don't want

552
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 1: to spoil it for anybody, but I believe there was.

553
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:51,959
Speaker 1: I think it's this American Life episode where they go

554
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 1: into that and they discussed the magic of the trick

555
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: and the secrecy of the trick. It's a fabulous story.

556
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 1: But it is certainly a case where where where video

557
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 1: is is manipulated and used, or not so much the

558
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: video footage itself, but just the nature of the media. Well,

559
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 1: I mean it just like the guerrilla video. Many illusions

560
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 1: and stage tricks and pickpockets and all that, they can

561
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 1: be astonishing, how obvious, what's happening is if you just

562
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 1: know what to look for, Like you know, sometimes pickpockets,

563
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 1: professional pickpockets will do this thing where, you know, you

564
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: watch them steal a bunch of their stuff is a

565
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:31,240
Speaker 1: bunch of somebody's stuff, and you're like, well, I didn't

566
00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 1: see that happen at all. How did it happen? And

567
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 1: they might say, well, okay, just rewind the video and

568
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 1: the whole time, watch my right hand, don't look at

569
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: my left hand, or something like that, and then you'll

570
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I see it. It's happening right there.

571
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:45,960
Speaker 1: I was looking at it the whole time and it

572
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:48,720
Speaker 1: just did not register. But I know. We have another

573
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 1: study here, Joe, please share with me. It's a grown

574
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 1: inducing title. Oh it's so, it's a forehead slapper. It's

575
00:30:56,280 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: called you do not talk about fight club if you

576
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 1: don't notice fight club inattentional blindness for a simulated real

577
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:06,720
Speaker 1: world assault in I perception too in two thousand eleven,

578
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 1: and this was by Chabris, Weinberger, Fontaine and Simon's. And

579
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily questioning the results, but I'm surprised this

580
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: methodology got improved, got approved. This this was this sounds

581
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:20,880
Speaker 1: kind of this is a wild experiment. Alright, well, let's

582
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: hear okay. So uh. The authors start by talking about

583
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: there's this famous police incident that took place in Boston

584
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: in n where police were chasing four suspects from the

585
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:34,760
Speaker 1: scene of a shooting and officers arriving on the scene

586
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,719
Speaker 1: of the pursuit caught a guy climbing a fence and

587
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 1: they pulled him down and started savagely beating him. However,

588
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: it turned out the guy they were beating was not

589
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 1: one of the suspects. Not like the beating would have

590
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 1: been okay if he were one of the suspects, but

591
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:51,320
Speaker 1: what they did not expect was that he was actually

592
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: an undercover officer named Michael Cox, who had also been

593
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 1: in pursuit of the suspects. So this underco cover officer Cox,

594
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: he's of heard bad injuries. And there was an investigation

595
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: into the beating and one officer was known not to

596
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:08,280
Speaker 1: have been involved in the beating, but to have run

597
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: right past it in pursuit of the suspect. And the

598
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:15,240
Speaker 1: officer was named Keneth Connley. And when Conley was brought

599
00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:17,640
Speaker 1: before a grand jury to testify in the case, he

600
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 1: claimed that though he had been right on the scene.

601
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 1: He had not noticed Cox chasing the suspect or anything

602
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 1: about the beating, because he'd been focused on his pursuit.

603
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:30,760
Speaker 1: And you can kind of guess what suspicions this would raise, right,

604
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:34,360
Speaker 1: I mean, my reaction to this is, Okay, it sounds

605
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: like he's just lying to protect his fellow officers. You know,

606
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 1: how could he have not noticed something so obvious? But

607
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 1: the invisible gorilla makes it instantly makes this question whether

608
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:48,760
Speaker 1: it's possible. Right, if we can see and yet not

609
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: perceive the invisible gorilla, then what is so unlikely about

610
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:56,320
Speaker 1: this case? Right? And so it certainly isn't a comment

611
00:32:56,360 --> 00:32:58,680
Speaker 1: about whether he was actually in a center guilty. We're

612
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:00,400
Speaker 1: not making the point that he was and sent. But

613
00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: the question is is it plausible that you could miss

614
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:08,480
Speaker 1: in your environment something as totally obvious or seemingly totally

615
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 1: obvious as like a chase or a suspect fleeing or

616
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: a beating. Could you run by that and not see it?

617
00:33:15,720 --> 00:33:18,520
Speaker 1: And so the authors here staged a test. They had

618
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 1: subjects chase after an experiment or at jogging speed, paying

619
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 1: attention to the experiment, or they were following and counting

620
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: how many times the experiment or did something like touch

621
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: their hat. And meanwhile, the experimenter would lead the subject

622
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: right past the scene of a staged fight in which

623
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 1: it appeared that two men were beating down a third man.

624
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:42,719
Speaker 1: And according to the results, in daytime trials, only fifty

625
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 1: six percent of subjects noticed the fight, so in broad

626
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: daylight more than did not notice a fight happening. At night,

627
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: only thirty five percent of subjects noticed the fight, so

628
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 1: almost two thirds did not notice this violent event at all.

629
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:00,040
Speaker 1: And this is one of those that it's kind of

630
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 1: hard to believe those results. But then again, I don't know,

631
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe in an intuitive way. But when

632
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:10,000
Speaker 1: I think to my own experience, there have been cases

633
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 1: in my life where something was happening nearby that I

634
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 1: really would think I should have noticed, but I just

635
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: wasn't paying attention to it. Well, they're kind of built

636
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: in blinders, right, How do we remember that which we

637
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: did not perceive? Yeah, this is all great stuff to

638
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: keep in mind. By the way, the next time someone says,

639
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 1: how did you not notice X, Y or Z, you

640
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 1: just say, well, there's actually this this experiment about an

641
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:38,520
Speaker 1: invisible Gorilla. Well, this is actually terrible because this like

642
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: gives people, I mean, most of the time, when you're

643
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 1: paying attention to things, you should be noticing what seems obvious, right, Um,

644
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: But I mean it does. It does just make plausible

645
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 1: that if your mind was otherwise occupied, you might not

646
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: have seen something that happened right in front of your face,

647
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 1: and other people would assume should have been obvious to you,

648
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:00,719
Speaker 1: Like when people say, Robert, I'm how can you be

649
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 1: so oblivious? I will just I just say, look invisible gorilla.

650
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: That's all you need to know. Maybe I'll even wear

651
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: a T shirt with with this excuse on it. We

652
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:11,480
Speaker 1: are not encouraging you to use this as an excuse

653
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:13,480
Speaker 1: in front of a grand jury or something like that.

654
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 1: But if we make an invisible guerrilla T shirt, you

655
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:19,000
Speaker 1: should buy it at our store, which you can access.

656
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: Is stuff to blow your mind? Dot com? Well what

657
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 1: if we make an invisible money T shirt? Oh? Yes,

658
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: because that's actually the subject of our next experiment here

659
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:30,399
Speaker 1: it's not only invisible money, but an invisible money tree. Right.

660
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: So this was a study by Ira E. Himan Jr.

661
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 1: Benjamin's Sorb and Brienne Wise Swanson that's right. It was

662
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: published a two thousand fourteen Frontiers in Psychology failure to

663
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:44,800
Speaker 1: see Money on a tree in intentional blindness for objects

664
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: that guided behavior, what's weird? Or a person in a

665
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:49,120
Speaker 1: guerrilla suit or money on a tree? I don't know.

666
00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: I mean, the gorilla is potentially dangerous, right, I mean,

667
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 1: I don't know, guerrilla stuck on a video. But but

668
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 1: the money tree, well, we'll get into it here. Okay.

669
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: The author's began this study by invoking the experience of

670
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:06,120
Speaker 1: going on automatic pilot during a drive home from work.

671
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, this is an example that you brought up

672
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 1: in our discussion on Julian Jane's bicameral mind hypothesis that

673
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 1: the appearance of the unexplained on a drive, say a

674
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:20,879
Speaker 1: clown standing on the on the shoulder of the road,

675
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:24,919
Speaker 1: would summon a higher mode of cognition, trans hemispheric thought

676
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:28,839
Speaker 1: that would be experienced in the form of a bicameral hallucination. Right. Yeah,

677
00:36:28,880 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: that was Jane's theory, was that, uh, in his proposed

678
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 1: model of what the bicameral human was like, they were

679
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 1: unconscious most of the time, just acting out of instinct,

680
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,359
Speaker 1: and that when they would need to have a hallucination

681
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 1: to tell them what to do would be when they

682
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:48,359
Speaker 1: encountered novel stimuli, something that was like an obstruction. Yes,

683
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:50,880
Speaker 1: so I just include that for trivia and for anybody

684
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:54,400
Speaker 1: playing the Bicamera Mind drinking game at home. Um, and

685
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: for anybody who wants to buy are by Camera Mind

686
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:58,200
Speaker 1: t shirt at stuff to Play your Mind dot com.

687
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:00,839
Speaker 1: Click on the store. I'm doing some tug and I'm

688
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: trying to some Robert I would call these obvious plugs.

689
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 1: I'm trying to move some merch here. Uh So, anyway,

690
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: there's no bikeameral mind in this study. But they brought

691
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: up that example of autopilot, well specifically to the point

692
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:15,920
Speaker 1: that when you're on autopilot, you don't seem to be

693
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: noticing or recording things, right, It's it's an example of

694
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:24,959
Speaker 1: inattentional blindness. Uh So, the the authors here, they carried

695
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: out two experiments. In one, they found that people on

696
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: their cell phones during walks waited longer to avoid an obstacle,

697
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 1: and we're less likely to be aware that they avoided

698
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 1: one at all, so long as the obstacle in question

699
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,279
Speaker 1: wasn't another walker on the sidewalk. Okay, so they were

700
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 1: they would be less likely to recall the fact that

701
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,640
Speaker 1: they had had to like go around an object, right, So,

702
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: but they still made it around the object, like you know,

703
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 1: like if it were a whole, they made it around

704
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 1: the whole. Uh ceteraly simply wouldn't be a whole. It

705
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:57,440
Speaker 1: would be something more, you know, it would be something

706
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 1: less obvious. Well that's interesting. That seems to indicate that

707
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 1: it's not that they don't see the object, but that

708
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: that maybe there are different modes of seeing. They see

709
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:09,760
Speaker 1: it in one way, but they don't see it in another.

710
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 1: They see it with the part of the brain that

711
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 1: guides the feet, but not the part of the brain

712
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:15,600
Speaker 1: that makes the memories. Yeah. I mean it's like if

713
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:19,319
Speaker 1: you don't remember driving to work this morning, you still

714
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 1: drove to work. Obviously something worked right, something that things

715
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:27,600
Speaker 1: were functioning correctly. Uh, you saw, you just did not perceive,

716
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:30,719
Speaker 1: you didn't encode the memory. So what was the second experiment? Okay,

717
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 1: and the second one, cell phone talkers and textures were

718
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 1: less likely to show awareness of money on a tree

719
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 1: over the pathway that they were walking on. So yeah,

720
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 1: we have basically a literal money tree here. The stuff

721
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:47,360
Speaker 1: of dreams and myths, I imagine. So the key idea

722
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: here in these experiences that our brains can process environmental

723
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 1: information that actually guides our behavior without us necessarily perceiving

724
00:38:57,239 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: it or focusing on it. So we're all wrapped up

725
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: in our phone. Uh, but we're still able to to

726
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:04,920
Speaker 1: get from point A to point B. Now, they point

727
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: out there a few different possible explanations for what's going

728
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:10,479
Speaker 1: on here. One is that people are aware of these

729
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: obstacles presenting themselves, but then they forget them because they

730
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,040
Speaker 1: are ultimately you know, I didn't fall in the hole

731
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 1: or trip over the weird place in the sidewalk. Why

732
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 1: would I remember the weird place in the sidewalk if

733
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:25,120
Speaker 1: it didn't result in injury or embarrassment? So information gets

734
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:28,319
Speaker 1: used for the moment and then just rejected. Right, there's

735
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:30,319
Speaker 1: only so much room in in the in the old

736
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: head cheese. Right, Uh, then they had this. Alternatively, driving

737
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:38,840
Speaker 1: without awareness may represent a form of inattentional blindness, in

738
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: which objects that passed through the focal point of vision

739
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:44,920
Speaker 1: do not enter awareness. So it's not that you code

740
00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:48,279
Speaker 1: the information and then forget, but that you never see

741
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 1: it at all. In a way, because you'd have to

742
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: see it in some way in order to avoid it, right,

743
00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:58,640
Speaker 1: but not in a truly perceptional way. So without attention,

744
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: people may may fail to bind features into objects. And

745
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:04,320
Speaker 1: this would line up with the idea that visual information

746
00:40:04,600 --> 00:40:08,400
Speaker 1: may follow two pathways. They say, there's the dorsal pathway,

747
00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:11,960
Speaker 1: which uses visual information to guide action, and the ventral pathway,

748
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 1: which leads to object recognition and conscious awareness. Oh yeah, okay,

749
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:22,040
Speaker 1: like there's a way of seeing things without recognizing them, right. Sorry,

750
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 1: I'm a little sidetrack because I'm thinking about I'm trying

751
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:28,320
Speaker 1: to write my Twilight Zone episode about the money tree.

752
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:31,319
Speaker 1: Like like what I'm thinking of as a guy gets

753
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:33,319
Speaker 1: a magic lamp and a genie comes out of it,

754
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: but he only gets one wish, and his wish is

755
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:39,400
Speaker 1: that money grew on trees. And then what happens is

756
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: all the trees of the world, their leaves get replaced

757
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:46,360
Speaker 1: with cash, cash, money, and then there's no more photosynthesis

758
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,839
Speaker 1: and then the earth dies. Okay, well that went in

759
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 1: an unexpected direction there. I thought it was just going

760
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,960
Speaker 1: to be about him not noticing the money, like there

761
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: was money on on on trees for one day, but

762
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 1: I was too wrapped up in my phone, and then

763
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 1: you know, it breaks his spectacles. I was, I was,

764
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:05,600
Speaker 1: I can't count basketball passes anymore because I crushed my glasses.

765
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:08,720
Speaker 1: Time enough at last to watch all the Moonwalking Bear videos.

766
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:11,400
Speaker 1: So I have to say that that was This is

767
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:13,960
Speaker 1: a fun and insightful study, but it doesn't really have

768
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:17,359
Speaker 1: a very funny title. What do you have for us

769
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: next here, Joe? Oh, well, here's one I don't. I

770
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 1: didn't know if this was worth mentioning, but this this

771
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 1: was basically just a funny little letter that that included

772
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: a survey. But it's called and now for something completely

773
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: different inattentional blindness during a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch

774
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:39,520
Speaker 1: published in I Perception by Richard Wiseman and Caroline Watt. Yes,

775
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: so the sketch in question. Did you watch this skechu?

776
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:46,000
Speaker 1: I think i'd seen it before. Yeah, I probably had

777
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 1: seen it before, but I had completely forgotten about it.

778
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:50,359
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it's the cool thing is maybe it didn't

779
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 1: register completely the first time I saw it. But it's

780
00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:55,560
Speaker 1: a scene where you have like four is it three

781
00:41:55,640 --> 00:41:58,279
Speaker 1: or four characters. It's in there supposedly like an a

782
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:02,080
Speaker 1: War War One trench and they're talking sob stories about

783
00:42:02,280 --> 00:42:05,279
Speaker 1: playing the harmonica, playing the harmonica, sob stories about life

784
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 1: in the trench versus life back home. And then Terry Jones,

785
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 1: the Python member come runs on scene as a director

786
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 1: and says, cut, cut, cut, We've got to get these

787
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 1: other people out of here, and then he may all

788
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:20,399
Speaker 1: extraneous characters leave the scene immediately, and then that's when

789
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:22,320
Speaker 1: we realize that we have these characters in the background

790
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: that are dressed and completely inappropriate attire for the scene

791
00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:30,760
Speaker 1: that's being presented. There's like a none an orthodox priest

792
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: of Viking, uh, some other people. Yeah, and they're just

793
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:37,879
Speaker 1: made to leave and then all right, let's do it again.

794
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: Let's start from the top. So the authors of the

795
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:44,160
Speaker 1: studies said, hey, actually, this scene is a great example

796
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 1: of an intentional blindness because they're on screen the whole time.

797
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:50,919
Speaker 1: You can clearly see them, but people don't notice them.

798
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: You're just looking at like Eric Idol playing the harmonica,

799
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:57,719
Speaker 1: and you don't see what's behind them, even though it's

800
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 1: right in front of your eyes. And so they did

801
00:43:00,560 --> 00:43:03,320
Speaker 1: a survey. They got fifty four subjects, so they asked

802
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 1: them if they had noticed any of these characters before

803
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 1: the director runs on. Uh, seventy point four percent of

804
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 1: participants failed to notice any of the incongruous characters. And

805
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 1: then of those, seventy eight point nine percent of participants

806
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:20,640
Speaker 1: expressed surprise that they had not spotted the characters. So

807
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 1: python making guerrilla videos of their own. Yeah, yeah, oh,

808
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: they were always doing things to kind of mess with

809
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:31,680
Speaker 1: the audience and mess with your your perception um experimental humor. Now,

810
00:43:31,719 --> 00:43:34,239
Speaker 1: another interesting thing about this this particular study is that

811
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:38,799
Speaker 1: it was the work of Richard Wiseman, psychology professor who

812
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:41,040
Speaker 1: has been mentioned on the show before because he was

813
00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:44,200
Speaker 1: involved in a in a program called laugh Lab that

814
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 1: sought to find the funniest joke across all cultures, regions, demographics,

815
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 1: and countries. And uh, and I'll read it for it

816
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 1: for you for everyone here, if if, if everyone wants

817
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:56,479
Speaker 1: to hear it, what do you say, everybody? Well, let's

818
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: hear it, Okay, alright, So here's the joke. Is it

819
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 1: a knock joke? No, it's not. Two hunters are out

820
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: in the woods. When one of them collapses. He doesn't

821
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 1: seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The

822
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:11,759
Speaker 1: other guy whoops at his phone and calls the emergency services.

823
00:44:11,840 --> 00:44:14,279
Speaker 1: He gasps, my friend is dead? What can I do?

824
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:17,719
Speaker 1: The operator says, calm down, I can help. First let's

825
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:20,239
Speaker 1: make sure he's dead. There is a silence, and then

826
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:23,360
Speaker 1: a shot has heard Back on the phone. The guy says, Okay,

827
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:26,759
Speaker 1: now what I've heard it before, but that's a real

828
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:29,239
Speaker 1: good one. He doesn't really have anything to do with

829
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here today, but here it is. Anyway.

830
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 1: Can you remember what were the qualities that made that

831
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 1: one the funniest? Did they determine that they did? But

832
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: I don't recall any of the details. You have to.

833
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:42,719
Speaker 1: Zara called, there's an episode of stuff to play your

834
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:45,520
Speaker 1: mind about, like a killing joke or something. We go

835
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:47,279
Speaker 1: into it a little bit, and of course that ties

836
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 1: back into Pond because they had that episode about a

837
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:54,120
Speaker 1: joke that was so funny that it would kill people dead. Uh,

838
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 1: and it had to be translated into a language that

839
00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,720
Speaker 1: the carrier did not understand in order for like safe

840
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 1: hand link to occur. All right, we're gonna take one

841
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 1: more break and then when we come back, we will

842
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:10,400
Speaker 1: jump right back into our discussion of the obvious than alright,

843
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 1: we're back. So I think it's worth considering the question

844
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:18,760
Speaker 1: of what it means for something to be obvious, because

845
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:21,279
Speaker 1: we we've been discussing the whole time the idea that

846
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:25,680
Speaker 1: if your attention is otherwise occupied, you miss things, you

847
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:29,799
Speaker 1: don't observe things that we would normally think are just

848
00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 1: obvious things to observe, like how could you not have

849
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: seen it? But maybe we've been thinking about these studies

850
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:38,840
Speaker 1: in the wrong way, maybe that they're giving us the

851
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:41,800
Speaker 1: wrong idea, Not that the results of these studies are wrong,

852
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:46,840
Speaker 1: but that we're extrapolating the wrong implications from them. You know,

853
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:50,920
Speaker 1: one of my favorite gems from old creative writing courses.

854
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:53,080
Speaker 1: I took a lot of gems come out of those.

855
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:55,520
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's so many, like nuggets of wisdom, right,

856
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 1: But one of them was the idea of something being

857
00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 1: a quote outrageous over state men of the obvious um.

858
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:03,799
Speaker 1: And I think about this quite a bit. It was

859
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: originally presented in one of these classes as a criticism

860
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 1: is something to avoid, but I find myself busting it

861
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:13,200
Speaker 1: out as a as a caveat on various tangents that

862
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 1: I go on, because that's the thing. The obvious often

863
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:21,719
Speaker 1: demands outrageous overstatement or something close to it in order

864
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:24,439
Speaker 1: for us to really recognize the guerrilla in the room

865
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 1: with us. I mean, as far as writing goes one

866
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:31,840
Speaker 1: of my it makes me think of Garth Maringuey, blood, blood,

867
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 1: blood and bits of sick. I'm trying to remember of

868
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:40,839
Speaker 1: if Garth ever really engaged, and I guess he. He

869
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 1: did say some things at times that they were definitely

870
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 1: outrageous overstates in of the obvious. Um, like we're just

871
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:50,920
Speaker 1: really you know, driving home a point to the point

872
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: of of nausea. But but uh, but that's the thing,

873
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 1: Like we think back to the to the gorilla, was

874
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:00,800
Speaker 1: the was the gorilla truly obvious? If you didn't notice

875
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:03,520
Speaker 1: the guerrilla to begin with, then am I really being

876
00:47:03,520 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 1: outrageous or overstating anything to shout there's a gorilla in

877
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:09,080
Speaker 1: our midst? Well, think about how often you get into

878
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 1: the frustrating situation of trying to convince somebody of something

879
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:17,840
Speaker 1: that you find totally obvious. It's not obvious if you

880
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: need to convince somebody of it, or it's not obvious

881
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 1: to them, it might be obvious to you. I mean,

882
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:27,279
Speaker 1: this this sort of undermines our concept of obviousness. Yeah,

883
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: I find that the obvious is often invoked sometimes is

884
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 1: is the first step in a process of trying to

885
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:37,960
Speaker 1: convince you of something, like I will say obviously X,

886
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: and therefore why follows? You know, it's a it's a

887
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: first premise that you will surely accept a lot of

888
00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:47,719
Speaker 1: times people don't. Yeah, Like it's to say, like if

889
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:49,799
Speaker 1: I were to say, look, obviously, Stuff to Blow your

890
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:52,960
Speaker 1: mind is the best podcast on the net, the net,

891
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:57,320
Speaker 1: but how the best podcast in the net starring Sandra Bullock,

892
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:01,880
Speaker 1: the best podcast in the iversphere, or whatever whatever term

893
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: we're using for for the Internet. But but what I

894
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:07,640
Speaker 1: did there is I I stated something that as obvious,

895
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: even if it's not obvious or even necessarily true, though

896
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 1: it is um and then and then like forced you

897
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 1: to double down on what I said said was obvious

898
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:19,879
Speaker 1: by asking you the next logical question. Yeah, you're exactly right.

899
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:22,840
Speaker 1: I mean, it serves the same kind of conversational purpose

900
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 1: as the phrase of course, which in most cases you

901
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 1: should probably cut out. Even though I found myself saying

902
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 1: it all the time, I wish I did not say

903
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:32,480
Speaker 1: it at all. But anyway, I was actually reading a

904
00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: piece in Eon magazine, one of our favorites by Tepo Feline,

905
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:39,960
Speaker 1: just published this year in two thousand and eighteen, called

906
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:42,719
Speaker 1: The Fallacy of Obviousness that talks about some of these

907
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:47,239
Speaker 1: studies on inattentional blindness. And Tepo Feline is a professor

908
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:51,080
Speaker 1: of strategy at the University of Oxford said Business School,

909
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 1: and he studies cognition, perception and how these things relate

910
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 1: to economics. And he makes a couple of interesting points.

911
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,560
Speaker 1: So he begins by pointing out the the Invisible Guerilla

912
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:04,840
Speaker 1: Study and others like it have led to this consensus

913
00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 1: in the cognitive sciences, perhaps best summarized by the Nobel

914
00:49:08,640 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: Prize winning psychologist and behavioral economist Daniel Kaneman, who wrote

915
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: that we are quote blind to the obvious, and that

916
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: we are also blind to our blindness. And I do

917
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: think I agree that that is that is sort of

918
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 1: an emerging consensus in the cognitive sciences. Like a lot

919
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 1: of research, especially in the past couple of decades, or

920
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:31,960
Speaker 1: I mean probably you could even go back to the

921
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:34,560
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and with Knemon's work and all that, but

922
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 1: it's been it's been building up this steady uh, the

923
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:43,000
Speaker 1: steady sort of avalanche of research proving that the world

924
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 1: is not how we naively perceive it, and our perceptions

925
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:49,759
Speaker 1: are not as reliable as we think they are, and

926
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:53,000
Speaker 1: that we're guided by bias, and we've got blindness to

927
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. And uh. Philine takes issue with this,

928
00:49:56,800 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: not arguing that the findings of the inattentional line the

929
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:03,440
Speaker 1: studies are wrong. He accepts them, but he thinks that

930
00:50:03,480 --> 00:50:06,279
Speaker 1: they tell us something quite different about our brains than

931
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:11,280
Speaker 1: people usually think. So consider the original Invisible Guerrilla experiment.

932
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: You're picturing this video in your mind. You've got two

933
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:16,359
Speaker 1: teams of players wearing different colored shirts. They move around

934
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 1: passing a ball within their own team. And then you've

935
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 1: got subjects who are asked to count the number of

936
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:24,320
Speaker 1: passes made by players on the white team with the ball.

937
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:26,440
Speaker 1: And then in the middle of the video, you've got

938
00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: the gorilla comes in in the middle of the game,

939
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:32,040
Speaker 1: beats its chess, walks back off screen, and in many

940
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 1: or in some cases most most cases, observers fail to

941
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:38,799
Speaker 1: see the gorilla. Now, remember that the point of the

942
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:42,400
Speaker 1: experiment is not that people in guerrilla suits are difficult

943
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: to spot. It's that we don't notice things that seem

944
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 1: completely obvious right in the middle of our visual field

945
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:53,279
Speaker 1: when our attention is closely occupied on another task, like

946
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:58,040
Speaker 1: counting basketball passes in a chaotic scene. So imagine you

947
00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 1: were asked to watch the clip with out being given

948
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:04,360
Speaker 1: any instructions about what to pay attention to. Do you

949
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:07,479
Speaker 1: think you'd see the see the guerrilla? Robert, yes, yeah,

950
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:09,879
Speaker 1: I absolutely think I would. I mean, it's clear that

951
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 1: what prevents us from seeing it is the close attention

952
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:16,719
Speaker 1: we're paying to the ball and trying to count, you know,

953
00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: manage all of that visual information and manage memory at

954
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 1: the same time. It's our attention on this one isolated

955
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:27,799
Speaker 1: element that makes the guerrilla invisible. And if you weren't

956
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 1: doing that, it would definitely stand out. And Philine asks,

957
00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: what might you describe noticing in the scene if you

958
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 1: hadn't been given any instructions, you might say, two teams

959
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 1: passing basketballs. You might be able to report what the

960
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:44,120
Speaker 1: team's shirts were. But but he points out that there

961
00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:47,960
Speaker 1: are actually tons of details about the scene which are

962
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 1: in fact completely quote obvious, meaning they're in plane view.

963
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: There's nothing that obstructs it. At all, and you could

964
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 1: point out these details if you'd been asked to look

965
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:00,440
Speaker 1: for them, but which you would almost definitely not be

966
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:03,439
Speaker 1: able to point out unless you'd been asked to look

967
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:06,000
Speaker 1: for them, like what were the hair colors of all

968
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:09,719
Speaker 1: the players? How many steps did the players take? What

969
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:12,959
Speaker 1: color was the floor? How many basketball passes where there

970
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:17,800
Speaker 1: by both teams combined? All of this information is completely evident,

971
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:20,919
Speaker 1: there's nothing that obstructs it from our view, and yet

972
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:23,880
Speaker 1: it doesn't surprise us that people would fail to notice

973
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:27,640
Speaker 1: these things in the experiment. Missing the gorilla only surprises

974
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: us because we instinctually assume that a person in a

975
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:32,920
Speaker 1: guerrilla suit walking in front of our eyes is something

976
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,920
Speaker 1: we should happen to notice unprompted, and we don't understand

977
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:41,480
Speaker 1: why we didn't, and Filling calls this the fallacy of obviousness. Quote.

978
00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 1: There's a fallacy of obviousness because all kinds of things

979
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:48,480
Speaker 1: are readily evident in the clip, but missing any one

980
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:51,240
Speaker 1: of these things isn't a basis for saying that humans

981
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:54,000
Speaker 1: are blind. The experiment is set up in such a

982
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 1: way that people miss the gorilla because they are distracted

983
00:52:57,120 --> 00:53:01,200
Speaker 1: by counting basketball passes. Preoccupy with the task of counting.

984
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 1: Missing the gorilla is hardly surprising in retrospect. The gorilla

985
00:53:05,239 --> 00:53:09,120
Speaker 1: is prominent and obvious, So why is it surprising to

986
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:11,919
Speaker 1: miss the gorilla? It's kind of hard to put into

987
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: rigorous terms, isn't it? Like what it is about the

988
00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:18,760
Speaker 1: gorilla that makes that something we think we should have noticed,

989
00:53:19,080 --> 00:53:22,280
Speaker 1: as opposed to any of the other myriad facts about

990
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:25,400
Speaker 1: the visual character of the video? Right, Well, the gorilla

991
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:29,040
Speaker 1: is fun. This this whole video isn't is an utter

992
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:32,919
Speaker 1: bore except for the presence of a gorilla. Sit right, Yeah, yeah,

993
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:35,800
Speaker 1: but I mean that that's a hard That seems so Again,

994
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:39,480
Speaker 1: that fact about what makes the grilla obvious seems obvious

995
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:43,719
Speaker 1: to us. But imagine you were programming a computer to say,

996
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 1: watch this video and tell me anything interesting that happened

997
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:50,400
Speaker 1: in it? Would it notice the gorilla? I kind of

998
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:54,000
Speaker 1: doubt it, right, I don't know. It's it's the most

999
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:56,600
Speaker 1: interesting thing about the video though. It's I feel like

1000
00:53:56,640 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: the the I feel like a computer would pick up

1001
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:01,359
Speaker 1: on the gorilla's present. It's front and center. How would

1002
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:05,040
Speaker 1: it know the gorilla was interesting? It's just another mass

1003
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 1: of colors moving on the screen. I think it would

1004
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:11,279
Speaker 1: be like it would be one of Asimov's laws of robotics,

1005
00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:14,480
Speaker 1: you know, like don't kill your master. Uh. And and

1006
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:18,600
Speaker 1: always are inherently interested right ape suits, Yes, pay attention

1007
00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: to that, but it's I mean, it's obvious that we

1008
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:24,799
Speaker 1: expect to notice the gorilla and don't expect to notice, say,

1009
00:54:24,880 --> 00:54:29,080
Speaker 1: the hair colors of the players, because there's something inherently

1010
00:54:29,239 --> 00:54:32,440
Speaker 1: just like an unspoken rule about what's fun and relevant

1011
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:35,200
Speaker 1: to pay attention to. And guerrillas are on that unspoken

1012
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:39,880
Speaker 1: list filling rights quote one needs to consider relevance, or

1013
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:44,719
Speaker 1: to put it differently obvious to whom and for what purpose? Uh.

1014
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:46,839
Speaker 1: Later in his article, he he talks for a long

1015
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 1: time about comparing human intellect and machine intelligence, and he's

1016
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:54,840
Speaker 1: got all kinds of issues with the general school of

1017
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:58,040
Speaker 1: highlighting human bias and blindness. I don't I don't go

1018
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 1: fully along with his argument. The I do think he

1019
00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:04,040
Speaker 1: makes a good point about how our perception is not

1020
00:55:04,160 --> 00:55:08,719
Speaker 1: just happening in neutral space. It's guided by theories of

1021
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:12,880
Speaker 1: observation that are cognitive. Like he quotes Einstein in nineteen

1022
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 1: six and Einstein says, quote, whether you can observe a

1023
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:20,600
Speaker 1: thing or not depends on the theory which you use.

1024
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:24,840
Speaker 1: It is the theory which decides what can be observed.

1025
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:27,160
Speaker 1: And I think that's true. We we've been talking about

1026
00:55:27,160 --> 00:55:29,040
Speaker 1: this on the show for a while, that that seeing

1027
00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 1: is not like a camera. Seeing is cognitive. You see

1028
00:55:33,200 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 1: not just with your eyes, but with your brain. And

1029
00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:39,720
Speaker 1: if you don't have a schema for what to look for,

1030
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:42,840
Speaker 1: you don't see it. Yeah, and this this video illustrates that.

1031
00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:45,800
Speaker 1: Just one more quote from Feline here he says, quote

1032
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:48,759
Speaker 1: how we interpret the gorilla experiment might be seen as

1033
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:51,480
Speaker 1: a kind of rule shack test. How you interpret the

1034
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:54,360
Speaker 1: finding depends on what you're looking for. On one hand,

1035
00:55:54,640 --> 00:55:57,520
Speaker 1: the test could indeed be said to prove blindness, but

1036
00:55:57,640 --> 00:56:00,880
Speaker 1: on the other it shows that humans attend to visual

1037
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:05,480
Speaker 1: scenes in directed fashion based on the questions and theories

1038
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:08,839
Speaker 1: they have in mind or what they've been primed with. Now,

1039
00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:10,880
Speaker 1: I think that this, in fact is not really this

1040
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:13,440
Speaker 1: is not really a disagreement, I would say, even with

1041
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:16,040
Speaker 1: the authors of these studies, right, because that's exactly what

1042
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:18,920
Speaker 1: they're showing. I mean, they're showing that when when you've

1043
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 1: got your attention trained on one thing, you really miss

1044
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:25,640
Speaker 1: other things you wouldn't expect to miss. But it's I

1045
00:56:25,640 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 1: guess it's just a question of framing it as a

1046
00:56:27,640 --> 00:56:30,520
Speaker 1: positive or framing it as a negative. And he's saying, hey,

1047
00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:32,680
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe we should think about the positive

1048
00:56:32,719 --> 00:56:35,680
Speaker 1: aspects of how selective you can make your attention when

1049
00:56:35,760 --> 00:56:37,480
Speaker 1: you want to. Yeah, it comes back to what we

1050
00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:39,279
Speaker 1: said earlier. You know, we need to be able to

1051
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:42,319
Speaker 1: focus on things. Yeah, you need to be able to uh,

1052
00:56:42,520 --> 00:56:46,000
Speaker 1: you know, do your homework, you know, do your research, whatever,

1053
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:48,840
Speaker 1: even if there's somebody in a guerrilla costume in the

1054
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 1: room with you. Right, We've got limited processing capacity in

1055
00:56:52,160 --> 00:56:55,400
Speaker 1: the brain to devote to perception and recognition, especially in

1056
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:59,440
Speaker 1: complicated perception tasks. And because of this limited capacity, if

1057
00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 1: you were to wish that, you know, you had instead

1058
00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:05,799
Speaker 1: seen the gorilla, that would almost by necessity, mean you

1059
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:09,000
Speaker 1: would be undercutting your ability to count the basketball passes.

1060
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:13,839
Speaker 1: And in our technological environment, you know, with personal devices, phones, computers,

1061
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 1: social media, messaging alerts and all that, I know for

1062
00:57:16,880 --> 00:57:20,280
Speaker 1: a fact that many people spend day after day constantly

1063
00:57:20,400 --> 00:57:24,479
Speaker 1: seeing the gorilla, constantly seeing the you know, the moonwalking bear,

1064
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 1: and finding themselves unable to concentrate on counting the basketball passes.

1065
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:32,440
Speaker 1: The fact that they cannot help but notice the obvious

1066
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:35,919
Speaker 1: thing walking through the frame is actually preventing them from

1067
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: paying attention to the things they care about and which

1068
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:41,160
Speaker 1: bring greater meaning to their lives. Yeah, our lives have

1069
00:57:41,200 --> 00:57:44,200
Speaker 1: become just one big gorilla cost. Think about how often

1070
00:57:44,240 --> 00:57:47,320
Speaker 1: you're on the internet trying to get something done, or

1071
00:57:47,360 --> 00:57:50,480
Speaker 1: trying to or even just trying to have a focused,

1072
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:53,240
Speaker 1: pleasurable experience. So you know, you're trying to watch a

1073
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:55,960
Speaker 1: movie or something, but your phone is blowing up with

1074
00:57:56,000 --> 00:58:00,200
Speaker 1: moonwalking bears. That's right. Uh. If anyone out there his

1075
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:03,360
Speaker 1: finds this resonates with their own experience and you haven't

1076
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:07,520
Speaker 1: listened to our episodes about it was the Great Eyeball Wars,

1077
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:10,360
Speaker 1: highly recommend going back and listening to those. I have

1078
00:58:10,400 --> 00:58:13,280
Speaker 1: another question about this, Actually, I have not seen this

1079
00:58:13,400 --> 00:58:16,080
Speaker 1: tested anywhere. If anybody knows of a study, please send

1080
00:58:16,120 --> 00:58:18,880
Speaker 1: it our way. But I wonder if there's a correlation

1081
00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 1: between people who fail to see the guerrilla suit in

1082
00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:25,720
Speaker 1: the experiment and people who are actually better at focusing

1083
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:29,800
Speaker 1: on work, projects and relationships and other meaningful pursuits while

1084
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:33,760
Speaker 1: blocking out the constant chess beating distractions coming at them

1085
00:58:33,760 --> 00:58:36,880
Speaker 1: through their connected devices are people who fail to see

1086
00:58:36,880 --> 00:58:39,680
Speaker 1: the guerrilla in general, people who are also better at

1087
00:58:39,720 --> 00:58:42,480
Speaker 1: focusing their attention on what they want. It would be

1088
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:44,960
Speaker 1: an interesting spin on the study, for sure, and another

1089
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:48,880
Speaker 1: great excuse for UM for a research facility to purchase

1090
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 1: a nice guerrilla cost him. Yes, really, it's big guerilla

1091
00:58:52,040 --> 00:58:54,240
Speaker 1: cost him that's benefiting from all of this work. If

1092
00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:56,760
Speaker 1: somebody does one of these studies. Again, I don't want

1093
00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: just a regular guerrilla suit. I want the full robot

1094
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:02,240
Speaker 1: Monster suite from the movie Robot Monster. So it's the

1095
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: guerrilla suit on bottom, but the fish bowl thing on top. Okay,

1096
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:07,360
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe they can mix it up with a

1097
00:59:07,400 --> 00:59:09,400
Speaker 1: paink or white gorilla custom. I mean, there there are

1098
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:11,360
Speaker 1: multiple ways you could go with this. So yeah, I

1099
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:13,800
Speaker 1: guess at the end here, I'm still wondering if our

1100
00:59:15,520 --> 00:59:19,200
Speaker 1: our our way of thinking about perception and seeing an

1101
00:59:19,240 --> 00:59:24,360
Speaker 1: attention is really hurt by this concept of obviousness, if

1102
00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:27,280
Speaker 1: we if we need to realize the flaws and the

1103
00:59:27,360 --> 00:59:30,840
Speaker 1: very idea of a thing being obvious. Well, yeah, you

1104
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:33,120
Speaker 1: can certainly argue that it does. And one person that

1105
00:59:33,160 --> 00:59:34,880
Speaker 1: would agree with you, or would have agreed with you.

1106
00:59:35,640 --> 00:59:39,080
Speaker 1: Is a German philosopher, Edmund hust Roll who lived eighteen

1107
00:59:39,080 --> 00:59:43,120
Speaker 1: fifty nine through eight. Okay, well, what was Who's Earle's idea?

1108
00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:46,840
Speaker 1: All right? So basically, like, here's a question, what what

1109
00:59:47,000 --> 00:59:52,600
Speaker 1: is the opposite of obviousness, thing being unexpected or hidden. Well,

1110
00:59:52,640 --> 00:59:56,479
Speaker 1: you could argue that it's astonishment, and that's a that's

1111
00:59:56,560 --> 00:59:58,760
Speaker 1: kind of that's kind of what an outrageous overstatement of

1112
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:01,320
Speaker 1: the obvious attempts to do. Take the obvious and make

1113
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 1: it astonishing. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it falls flat.

1114
01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:08,120
Speaker 1: And generally that's why one might discourage it, is that

1115
01:00:08,240 --> 01:00:11,919
Speaker 1: it might fall flat. But what's so great about astonishment? Well,

1116
01:00:11,960 --> 01:00:15,520
Speaker 1: it's not the invisible guerrilla, but the gorilla made whole.

1117
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:19,480
Speaker 1: It's the unavoidable gorilla. It is the guerrilla itself. It

1118
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:22,320
Speaker 1: is to not only see the gorilla, but to behold

1119
01:00:22,400 --> 01:00:26,360
Speaker 1: the gorilla and be changed by the experience. And in

1120
01:00:26,440 --> 01:00:30,080
Speaker 1: this we touch on the realm of phenomenology, a philosophical

1121
01:00:30,080 --> 01:00:33,760
Speaker 1: approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the

1122
01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:37,479
Speaker 1: objects of direct experience. And it is the largely the

1123
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:42,000
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century work of Edmund Hustril. So, taking

1124
01:00:42,080 --> 01:00:46,040
Speaker 1: up the banner of phenomenology, you could argue that the

1125
01:00:46,120 --> 01:00:50,560
Speaker 1: only true way of knowing something is through astonishment. Every

1126
01:00:50,560 --> 01:00:54,320
Speaker 1: other form of knowing is based upon preconceived notions worldview,

1127
01:00:54,360 --> 01:00:58,680
Speaker 1: accepted facts, or or assignments given to you before watching

1128
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:02,640
Speaker 1: a YouTube video. That's sort of thing to experience astonishment

1129
01:01:03,000 --> 01:01:06,080
Speaker 1: is to experience the thing in absence of of all

1130
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:09,360
Speaker 1: of this, free from the shackles of reason and language

1131
01:01:09,400 --> 01:01:13,800
Speaker 1: and even scientific reason. And as such, a Hustle outlined

1132
01:01:13,840 --> 01:01:19,040
Speaker 1: a process called the phenomenological reduction, a meditative practice by

1133
01:01:19,040 --> 01:01:22,840
Speaker 1: which one liberates oneself from the obvious, and then this

1134
01:01:22,880 --> 01:01:26,600
Speaker 1: would arguably allow us to view the world as a

1135
01:01:26,680 --> 01:01:32,080
Speaker 1: quote world of essences, free from any contamination. I feel

1136
01:01:32,080 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm detecting a sort of connection that Hussle

1137
01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:38,520
Speaker 1: is making between the idea of obviousness and the idea

1138
01:01:38,560 --> 01:01:43,600
Speaker 1: of like the known, because known obvious versus astonishment is

1139
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:48,440
Speaker 1: like known versus unknown. Yeah, and our our tendency to

1140
01:01:48,520 --> 01:01:53,200
Speaker 1: perhaps perceive the known as not even perceived the nome,

1141
01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: but to sort of discount the known, like the known

1142
01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:59,080
Speaker 1: is established ground, and we don't think about the ground.

1143
01:01:59,080 --> 01:02:02,960
Speaker 1: We're standing on unless you know, we're high, or we

1144
01:02:03,080 --> 01:02:05,439
Speaker 1: really stop to think about the ground if someone says, whoa,

1145
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:08,080
Speaker 1: stop what you're doing, look at the ground and really

1146
01:02:08,080 --> 01:02:10,240
Speaker 1: think about what you're standing on. It also brings to

1147
01:02:10,280 --> 01:02:14,040
Speaker 1: mind the Hindu concept of the ultimate underlying reality of Brahman,

1148
01:02:14,880 --> 01:02:16,800
Speaker 1: which we've touched on the show before, you know, so

1149
01:02:17,080 --> 01:02:19,240
Speaker 1: it gets into kind of religious territory, the idea that

1150
01:02:19,280 --> 01:02:21,520
Speaker 1: there is a you know, there is a world that

1151
01:02:21,560 --> 01:02:24,960
Speaker 1: we we kind of see, but we don't really see it,

1152
01:02:25,400 --> 01:02:28,240
Speaker 1: like we've somehow lost or maybe we even never had

1153
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:33,840
Speaker 1: this ability to actually perceive objective reality. And uh, and

1154
01:02:33,920 --> 01:02:35,640
Speaker 1: this kind of leans into that idea a little bit

1155
01:02:35,680 --> 01:02:38,360
Speaker 1: as well. And yes, I think the Invisible Guerrillas should

1156
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:41,880
Speaker 1: be worshiped as a dad in the future. Well, I

1157
01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:45,240
Speaker 1: mean if the real underlying reality is not in fact obvious,

1158
01:02:45,240 --> 01:02:47,760
Speaker 1: which in a way it isn't. I mean, I think

1159
01:02:47,760 --> 01:02:49,960
Speaker 1: of the person walking down the street on the cell phone.

1160
01:02:50,400 --> 01:02:53,200
Speaker 1: Are they wrapped up in the reality in the real reality. No, No,

1161
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:57,280
Speaker 1: they're they're in a they're in a tight bundle of

1162
01:02:57,320 --> 01:03:01,080
Speaker 1: suffocating consciousness, you know, or they need to become less

1163
01:03:01,080 --> 01:03:05,480
Speaker 1: conscious and free themselves to experience the world. But yeah, yeah,

1164
01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:07,960
Speaker 1: I mean I think also about another way that, like

1165
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:12,880
Speaker 1: the fundamental reality is not obvious and it's uh, you know,

1166
01:03:12,960 --> 01:03:17,320
Speaker 1: it's it's science, right, Like our ways of discovering the

1167
01:03:17,400 --> 01:03:20,400
Speaker 1: laws that govern the world around us and understanding where

1168
01:03:20,400 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 1: things came from and what they're made of and how

1169
01:03:22,760 --> 01:03:26,120
Speaker 1: they work. Most of that stuff is not obvious. You

1170
01:03:26,120 --> 01:03:31,000
Speaker 1: you have to put in place very strained, unusual methods

1171
01:03:31,040 --> 01:03:34,560
Speaker 1: of observing and methods of asking questions in order to

1172
01:03:34,600 --> 01:03:37,280
Speaker 1: find the answers to those kind of things. Indeed, and

1173
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:40,000
Speaker 1: I'd love to come back and discuss uh more on

1174
01:03:40,040 --> 01:03:42,400
Speaker 1: this topic in the future. Yeah, it makes me think

1175
01:03:42,400 --> 01:03:45,400
Speaker 1: of there's a classic lecture by T. H. Huxley, you know,

1176
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:49,760
Speaker 1: the on a piece of Chalk lecture, which I've thought

1177
01:03:49,800 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 1: about wanting to maybe do an episode on sometime. It's

1178
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:55,640
Speaker 1: this classic lecture that he gave back in the day

1179
01:03:55,680 --> 01:03:58,240
Speaker 1: to uh, I think a bunch of dock workers or

1180
01:03:58,320 --> 01:04:02,040
Speaker 1: somebody that was just about like finding a piece of

1181
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:04,920
Speaker 1: chalk that came out of the ground and saying, what

1182
01:04:05,160 --> 01:04:07,240
Speaker 1: is this and where did it come from? And it's

1183
01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:10,840
Speaker 1: this massive, interesting way of interrogating the physical world around

1184
01:04:10,880 --> 01:04:15,320
Speaker 1: us through through non obvious means once more, the invisible

1185
01:04:15,320 --> 01:04:17,919
Speaker 1: gorilla made visible. Alright, Well, on that note, we're gonna

1186
01:04:17,920 --> 01:04:21,160
Speaker 1: go ahead and close out this episode. As always, check

1187
01:04:21,160 --> 01:04:22,800
Speaker 1: out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where

1188
01:04:22,840 --> 01:04:26,880
Speaker 1: we'll find all the podcast episodes that we've put out

1189
01:04:26,880 --> 01:04:29,880
Speaker 1: over the years, as well as blog posts and what

1190
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:32,280
Speaker 1: have you links out to our various social media accounts.

1191
01:04:32,320 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 1: There's also a tab at the top of the page

1192
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:37,600
Speaker 1: for our store. You can click there and check out

1193
01:04:37,680 --> 01:04:39,960
Speaker 1: all sorts of cool swag you like our our snazzy

1194
01:04:40,000 --> 01:04:42,640
Speaker 1: new logo. Get it on a T shirt, a toad bag,

1195
01:04:42,880 --> 01:04:46,320
Speaker 1: A pillow. Yeah, you can get a pillow, a nice

1196
01:04:46,320 --> 01:04:48,960
Speaker 1: throw pillow. Uh. If you're one of those people who

1197
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:50,920
Speaker 1: and I know we have a lot of listeners like

1198
01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:53,800
Speaker 1: this who listened to us as you go to sleep, well,

1199
01:04:53,840 --> 01:04:55,760
Speaker 1: then hey, what's better than a stuff to Blow your

1200
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:58,200
Speaker 1: Mind pillow? You gotta have a pillow with words on it.

1201
01:04:58,680 --> 01:05:00,360
Speaker 1: That's how you know you have a real ho. No,

1202
01:05:00,480 --> 01:05:02,960
Speaker 1: but you can get just our logo without words on it.

1203
01:05:02,960 --> 01:05:05,400
Speaker 1: It's just the logo that's that's That's one thing we

1204
01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:08,080
Speaker 1: insisted on for our swag is that sometimes it's nice

1205
01:05:08,120 --> 01:05:10,040
Speaker 1: to flash the logo. But sometimes it's nice to just

1206
01:05:10,160 --> 01:05:12,960
Speaker 1: wink at everyone. Lets you know, like, here's this cool logo.

1207
01:05:13,240 --> 01:05:14,640
Speaker 1: What does it mean? Well, you have to ask me

1208
01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:18,000
Speaker 1: about it. Here's what I recommend. You should get pillows

1209
01:05:18,040 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 1: from our merch store that have our designs on them

1210
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:23,520
Speaker 1: and then use them to sop up spills in your kitchen. No,

1211
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:25,479
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're checked out for that, Joe,

1212
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:28,720
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of cool swag. Check it out

1213
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:31,160
Speaker 1: again the store tab at the top of our home page.

1214
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:33,000
Speaker 1: It's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. It's a

1215
01:05:33,000 --> 01:05:34,760
Speaker 1: great way to support the show, and if you want

1216
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:37,640
Speaker 1: to support the show without spending any money, the best

1217
01:05:37,640 --> 01:05:40,160
Speaker 1: way to do it is to rate and review Stuff

1218
01:05:40,200 --> 01:05:42,440
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind at any website that gives you

1219
01:05:42,480 --> 01:05:44,760
Speaker 1: the power to do so. Big thanks as always to

1220
01:05:44,800 --> 01:05:48,600
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Arry Harrison. If

1221
01:05:48,680 --> 01:05:50,440
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us to

1222
01:05:50,560 --> 01:05:52,680
Speaker 1: let us know feedback on this episode or any other,

1223
01:05:52,720 --> 01:05:54,720
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

1224
01:05:54,760 --> 01:05:56,640
Speaker 1: say hi, let us know how you found out of

1225
01:05:56,800 --> 01:05:59,440
Speaker 1: the show, You can email us at Blow the Mind

1226
01:05:59,600 --> 01:06:11,480
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this

1227
01:06:11,680 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works?

1228
01:06:14,200 --> 01:06:26,160
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