Monday, October 12, 2020

What you see is what you see

Daniel Kahnemann includes the first of the above two images in his book <i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i>, which in general is a good book about human psychology and cognition. It's dense but readable, if not necessarily a quick read. Anyway, it's a tricky exercise. Without the answer key I knew it, but I think only because I had come across similar puzzles before. It's nearly impossible for most of us not to see the lines in the background as creating 3-d space. Which both sides are confused by.



 

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2 comments:

susan said...

I liked that example of a perspective drawing. Despite the fact I know my perception of the reality is being tricked it always takes a second look to see what's going on in these cases.

If you've had 10,000 hours of training in a predictable, rapid-feedback environment―chess, firefighting, anesthesiology―then blink. In all other cases, think.
~ Jim Holt, NYT Book Review

Oh, I definitely see the point of this book. As Jer just said when we talked about it the internet most definitely promotes the fast way of thinking because it's so easy to miss out on being noticed - fomo, in other words. By keeping an audience emotionally engaged there's tons of room left for the power brokers to manipulate situations to their own advantage.

It sounds like a wonderful book and well worth the time it takes to read if it will simply allow us to consider thinking a situation through rather than the fight or flight approach that is part of our most basic nature.

October 14, 2020 at 10:37 AM
Ben said...

Yeah, and that kind of perceptual trick is, whatever else you might say about it, why representational art works. Children who draw mostly don't realize that. They see in three dimensions, but in drawing they represent a two dimensional one where any two people who are subjects are about equal distance from you.

Holt's quote is very good. There are a few professions where practitioners will often have to function without thinking. For the rest of us that's a bad idea.

On the internet you can see in real time how that works. Someone will make a judgment, someone else agrees with it: Pretty soon everyone is trying to outdo each other in agreeing. It's best not to get drafted into the mob, though.

The book is lengthy and dense, but I would say I've learned a few things and had other things confirmed.

October 24, 2020 at 10:32 PM

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