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Showing Original Post only (View all)The Invisible Gorilla In The Room: One reason so many people are so ignorant [View all]
Basically you don't see what you're not looking for, combine that with a media designed to take advantage of the fact that people are distracted and aren't paying attention and you get ignorance on a massive scale.
http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html
Imagine you are asked to watch a short video (above) in which six people-three in white shirts and three in black shirts-pass basketballs around. While you watch, you must keep a silent count of the number of passes made by the people in white shirts. At some point, a gorilla strolls into the middle of the action, faces the camera and thumps its chest, and then leaves, spending nine seconds on screen. Would you see the gorilla?
Almost everyone has the intuition that the answer is "yes, of course I would." How could something so obvious go completely unnoticed? But when we did this experiment at Harvard University several years ago, we found that half of the people who watched the video and counted the passes missed the gorilla. It was as though the gorilla was invisible.
This experiment reveals two things: that we are missing a lot of what goes on around us, and that we have no idea that we are missing so much.
Almost everyone has the intuition that the answer is "yes, of course I would." How could something so obvious go completely unnoticed? But when we did this experiment at Harvard University several years ago, we found that half of the people who watched the video and counted the passes missed the gorilla. It was as though the gorilla was invisible.
This experiment reveals two things: that we are missing a lot of what goes on around us, and that we have no idea that we are missing so much.
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The Invisible Gorilla In The Room: One reason so many people are so ignorant [View all]
Fumesucker
Jan 2013
OP
IMO people are ignorant because they don't or can't listen with their senses. All through K-12
jody
Jan 2013
#1
Agree. One must learn to focus on the topic not unlike concentration of an athlete, e.g. golfer.
jody
Jan 2013
#5
Understand, that's why the "quiet eye" concept is so intriguing. Foveal vision feeds one part of
jody
Jan 2013
#10
I've worked on vision concepts for so long as a competitor that it's now purely unconscious.
jody
Jan 2013
#14
I suspect though that those people in their environment could see things you found difficult
Fumesucker
Jan 2013
#15
It is why after every major event, except for plants, eyewitnesses see nothing
graham4anything
Jan 2013
#4
I find it hard to believe you think the average freeper is as well informed as the average DUer
Fumesucker
Jan 2013
#13
Equating basic perceptual processes with purposeful intellectual processes is really reaching
loyalsister
Jan 2013
#17
You don't think perceptual errors have anything to do with people being ignorant?
Fumesucker
Jan 2013
#23
For a lot of people things that conflict with the propaganda are indeed unintentionally ignored
Fumesucker
Jan 2013
#29
Well, all our women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above
Brother Buzz
Jan 2013
#32
It doesn't prove that we "miss" anything of the kind. It proves that we're programmed to be
ancianita
Jan 2013
#37
It wasn't intended as a scientific experiment but as a demonstration of selective inattention
Fumesucker
Jan 2013
#39
Interesting. Part of what's going on in this thread is the collision of two world views.
alberg
Jan 2013
#52
I have the opposite problem... The gorilla made me forget what the assignment was!
reformist2
Jan 2013
#57