I am listening to The Great Ideas of Psychology on CD, narrated by Daniel Robinson, a professor at Georgetown University.
I have spoken in previous posts of the brain's imperfections in perception and memory. Professor Robinson summarized the case nicely: we constantly filter the information coming to us, so it should not be a surprised that, at times, we cannot later accurately restate what truly happened.
The filtering occurs at a physical and cognitive level. At the physical level, our eyes will not respond to light with a wavelength of infrared or longer, nor to with a wavelength of ultra-violet or shorter. Our eardrums will not mimic vibrations in the air occurring more frequently that 20 thousand times per second nor less frequently than 20 times per second. There are many chemical compounds in the air we label "odorless", but in fact they are detectable, just not by human noses.
Even with these limitations there is still a lot of information impinging on us at all times. We would not be able to function if we attempted to process all of it. The human brain, over eons of natural selection, has become adept at focusing on just those things we need to maximize survival. Our cognition is so adept, in fact, that we approximate it as perfect, so that cases like The Invisible Gorilla become fascinating.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
Book review: The Man in the Rockefeller Suit
Authored by Mark Seal in 2011 (ISBN 978-0-670-02274-0).
I very nearly did not read this very enjoyable book. The first couple of pages read with a overdone gasping excitement. Luckily, I had nothing else to read, and the story, to date unfinished, held me.
The author is a Vanity Fair reporter. I first read Vanity Fair a few years ago and liked it, but a few issues later I found myself regarding it as an upscale, liberal-oriented People magazine. Liberal, yet willing to exploit scantily-clad females on the cover.
Seal interviewed over 200 people in writing his book. In his Acknowledgments he thanks his magazine and editor for allowing him to pursue the story. I had not thought of it before, but authors of stories like this one put hundreds of hours of research and investigation into an effort that might not lead to a book. I wonder was the success rate is? 90%? 9%? One-in-a-million? Do they at least have an inkling that the effort might lead to at least a magazine or newspaper article (this story, in abbreviated form, was first published in Vanity Fair.
Christian Carl Gerhartsreiter is a German national (meaning he is originally from Germany but not here permanently) who arrived on United States soil in 1978. The author, despite all those interviews, could not establish his birthdate. Upon arriving he started lying about his name and history, and has not stopped. The author covered six names that Gerhartsreiter has used; perhaps there are others. As he moved from the East coast to California and back he relied on the kindness of strangers and the awe he struck with his tales of fortune. He relied on the truism that the best lies are the most far-fetched.
We was finally arrested in Baltimore for kidnapping his daughter. As part of his divorce settlement he was allowed supervised visitation. He enlisted two innocent helpers to screen (as in basketball) the court-appointed supervisor while he pushed his daughter into a waiting car that drove him to Manhattan. He took another vehicle to Baltimore. The FBI chased several dead-end leads, as Gerhartsreiter had told acquaintances different stories about where he would be: Peru, some Caribbean islands, etc. Upon arrest, and to this day, he insists his name is James Frederick Mills Clark Rockefeller, even though there are no birth records of such a person and his fingerprints match those of Gerhartsreiter upon his entry to the U.S.
He pled insanity at his 2008 trial but was convicted and sentenced to four-to-five years. He will be eligible for parole shortly. However, seven months ago a Los Angeles county Grand Jury indicted him for the 1985 murder of a California woman, where he was living at the time.
I very nearly did not read this very enjoyable book. The first couple of pages read with a overdone gasping excitement. Luckily, I had nothing else to read, and the story, to date unfinished, held me.
The author is a Vanity Fair reporter. I first read Vanity Fair a few years ago and liked it, but a few issues later I found myself regarding it as an upscale, liberal-oriented People magazine. Liberal, yet willing to exploit scantily-clad females on the cover.
Seal interviewed over 200 people in writing his book. In his Acknowledgments he thanks his magazine and editor for allowing him to pursue the story. I had not thought of it before, but authors of stories like this one put hundreds of hours of research and investigation into an effort that might not lead to a book. I wonder was the success rate is? 90%? 9%? One-in-a-million? Do they at least have an inkling that the effort might lead to at least a magazine or newspaper article (this story, in abbreviated form, was first published in Vanity Fair.
Christian Carl Gerhartsreiter is a German national (meaning he is originally from Germany but not here permanently) who arrived on United States soil in 1978. The author, despite all those interviews, could not establish his birthdate. Upon arriving he started lying about his name and history, and has not stopped. The author covered six names that Gerhartsreiter has used; perhaps there are others. As he moved from the East coast to California and back he relied on the kindness of strangers and the awe he struck with his tales of fortune. He relied on the truism that the best lies are the most far-fetched.
We was finally arrested in Baltimore for kidnapping his daughter. As part of his divorce settlement he was allowed supervised visitation. He enlisted two innocent helpers to screen (as in basketball) the court-appointed supervisor while he pushed his daughter into a waiting car that drove him to Manhattan. He took another vehicle to Baltimore. The FBI chased several dead-end leads, as Gerhartsreiter had told acquaintances different stories about where he would be: Peru, some Caribbean islands, etc. Upon arrest, and to this day, he insists his name is James Frederick Mills Clark Rockefeller, even though there are no birth records of such a person and his fingerprints match those of Gerhartsreiter upon his entry to the U.S.
He pled insanity at his 2008 trial but was convicted and sentenced to four-to-five years. He will be eligible for parole shortly. However, seven months ago a Los Angeles county Grand Jury indicted him for the 1985 murder of a California woman, where he was living at the time.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Book review: Sleights of Mind
Authored by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde in 2010 (ISBN 978-0-8050-9281-3). The authors interviewed many magicians and got themselves invited to magicians' trade shows, and these experiences form the basis of the book. They provide some very nice examples on their website.
This is another book in the vein of how our brains fail to grasp reality. I have enjoyed magic since I was a child. One of my fondest memories is of a David Copperfield show I attended in my 20s in Boston. Among other things, he performed card tricks with a camera and an audience member watching from inches away. The things he did were plainly impossible, yet they were happening. He closed his show by flying around the stage, through hoops to show that no wires were involved. To this day I do not know how he did that, and I am ambivalent about knowing.
The book describes how magic tricks work, both from a general theoretical perspective and a this-is-how-this-particular-trick-is-performed perspective. The latter is called out by "Spoiler Alert" in bold letters before and after each such section, and such sections comprise a good quarter or third of the book. I skipped these sections, as I hope to attend more magic shows in my life and do not want the tricks "spoiled".
The general theoretical perspective is this: our brains excel at recognizing patterns, to the extent that we tend to observe patterns even when they do not exist. Further, our brains try to reach conclusions quickly, as that gives us our best chances in identifying prey and avoiding predators. The modern world does not resemble the world of 10,000 years ago, even though our brains have changed little, so magicians, through careful analysis of how our brains short-circuit careful observation with pattern recognition, can devise sequences that encourage, perhaps demand, careless observation.
One common illusion is that our eyes see everything there is to see. The invisible gorilla is one example of this falsehood. It is true that all available light enters your pupil. But your retina contains a blind spot and unevenly distributed rods and cones. It converts the light energy into electrical energy, which triggers certain neurons. These neurons trigger certain emotions that adjusts the "plain" light energy, and that is what you "see". You are not a video camera.
Optical illusions are commonplace. Staring at a waterfall causes the objects nearby to appear to float upward. Observe a flash of light contemporaneously with hearing multiple beeps and you report that you saw multiple flashes. We learn as infants and toddlers that objects have size, shape and color constancy. The magician need only change one or more of those things to cause you to (falsely) believe an object is moving. The McGurk effect shows that what we hear is influenced by what we see.
Beyond visual illusions there are cognitive and memory illusions. For an example of a cognitive illusion, a magician named Apollo pickpockets a man on stage, taking advantage of the fact that we can really concentrate on only one thing at a time, no matter how much folks want to brag about their multitasking abilities. An example of a memory illusion is the common trick of misstating what is transpiring. The magician will pull a cloth here, wave a wand there, position a person, and so on. Near the end of the trick the magician will repeat, in words, what has happened, and will lie about it, and because our memories are confused by the constant patter and unusual circumstances, we believe the lies.
The next Informatica World conference is in Las Vegas. I attended the 2009 version, also in Las Vegas. It was my first visit to that city and I will not be unhappy if it is my last, also. If I end up going, though, I will be sure to take in a magic show.
This is another book in the vein of how our brains fail to grasp reality. I have enjoyed magic since I was a child. One of my fondest memories is of a David Copperfield show I attended in my 20s in Boston. Among other things, he performed card tricks with a camera and an audience member watching from inches away. The things he did were plainly impossible, yet they were happening. He closed his show by flying around the stage, through hoops to show that no wires were involved. To this day I do not know how he did that, and I am ambivalent about knowing.
The book describes how magic tricks work, both from a general theoretical perspective and a this-is-how-this-particular-trick-is-performed perspective. The latter is called out by "Spoiler Alert" in bold letters before and after each such section, and such sections comprise a good quarter or third of the book. I skipped these sections, as I hope to attend more magic shows in my life and do not want the tricks "spoiled".
The general theoretical perspective is this: our brains excel at recognizing patterns, to the extent that we tend to observe patterns even when they do not exist. Further, our brains try to reach conclusions quickly, as that gives us our best chances in identifying prey and avoiding predators. The modern world does not resemble the world of 10,000 years ago, even though our brains have changed little, so magicians, through careful analysis of how our brains short-circuit careful observation with pattern recognition, can devise sequences that encourage, perhaps demand, careless observation.
One common illusion is that our eyes see everything there is to see. The invisible gorilla is one example of this falsehood. It is true that all available light enters your pupil. But your retina contains a blind spot and unevenly distributed rods and cones. It converts the light energy into electrical energy, which triggers certain neurons. These neurons trigger certain emotions that adjusts the "plain" light energy, and that is what you "see". You are not a video camera.
Optical illusions are commonplace. Staring at a waterfall causes the objects nearby to appear to float upward. Observe a flash of light contemporaneously with hearing multiple beeps and you report that you saw multiple flashes. We learn as infants and toddlers that objects have size, shape and color constancy. The magician need only change one or more of those things to cause you to (falsely) believe an object is moving. The McGurk effect shows that what we hear is influenced by what we see.
Beyond visual illusions there are cognitive and memory illusions. For an example of a cognitive illusion, a magician named Apollo pickpockets a man on stage, taking advantage of the fact that we can really concentrate on only one thing at a time, no matter how much folks want to brag about their multitasking abilities. An example of a memory illusion is the common trick of misstating what is transpiring. The magician will pull a cloth here, wave a wand there, position a person, and so on. Near the end of the trick the magician will repeat, in words, what has happened, and will lie about it, and because our memories are confused by the constant patter and unusual circumstances, we believe the lies.
The next Informatica World conference is in Las Vegas. I attended the 2009 version, also in Las Vegas. It was my first visit to that city and I will not be unhappy if it is my last, also. If I end up going, though, I will be sure to take in a magic show.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Book review: Brain Bugs
Authored by Dean Buonomano in 2011 (ISBN 978-0-393-07602-8).
My wife likely picked this book for me from the library shelf because of my recent interest in psychology. I have been listening to psychology lectures via CD while commuting, enjoying Robert Cialdini's columns, and relating my recollections of The Invisible Gorilla.
The thesis running through these sources is that our brains strongly resemble the brains of humans from 10,000 years ago because little natural selection has occurred since then, both because of the relatively short time elapsed (merely 500 generations) and because few modern-day humans are unable to reproduce due to the inability to survive until reproductive age. The human brains of 10,000 years ago were well adapted to life at that time. The human brains of today, being largely the same, are perhaps not so well adapted, as the world has changed substantially during that time: agriculture, the industrial revolution, the computer revolution, and now the information revolution.
Buonomano introduces us to the brain as neural network, rather than computer. The brain primarily works with associations, and he gives the following example. Answer these questions: 1) What continent is Kenya in? What are the two opposing colors in the game of chess? Name any animal. 20% of us answer "zebra" to the third question when it is asked after the first two. If the first two are not asked, less than 1% of us answer "zebra". Plainly, the relationship between zebras, chess colors and Africa influences our answer. As another example, try to memorize these words: rest, bed, dark, snore, wake, slumber midnight, dream, snooze.
This quirk of answering "zebra" is the rule, not the exception. Our ability to recognize patterns is at the heart of our humanness. Language is all about patterns, and computers, for all their wonder, are not so good at them, as anyone who has suffered through a call-center's voice recognition software can confirm. A five-year-old is much better than the strongest computer at understanding speech (at least what words were said, if not their meaning). Likewise, a two-year-old can recognize Grandma even after not seeing her for some time, and even if Grandma changes her hair and glasses. Computers struggle, and that is the basis for CAPTCHA tests.
Recalling the list of words from two paragraphs ago, do you remember the word "sleep"? If yes, check again, it was not on the list.
This facility with patterns was probably very helpful to early humans attempting to find prey and avoid predators. Precision, as is sometimes required in our modern world, was less valuable. Even today, some hunter-gatherer cultures do not employ numbers beyond 1; everything is labeled "zero", "one" or "many". As Buonomano explains, when faced with a den of snakes or surveying a herd of deer, a human able to form the concept of "many" is just as well prepared as the one who can distinguish between 42 and 43.
As a former attorney I am particularly interested in human perception and memory, as it forms the basis for most evidence introduced in courtrooms. The legal field has long recognized that testimony is potentially inaccurate owing to defects in one or more of the following: perception, memory, communication and bias. Cross-examination is designed to allow the opposing party to highlight these sources of error. Most people recognize that memory degrades after time, but I was fascinated by the experiments conducted by Elizabeth Loftus.
After learning about her work I strongly suspect my memory and the memories of others. She would show a movie and split the observers into two groups, say 20 people in each group. The movie consisted of scenes from a suburban school. There was a school bus, children milling about, but no child entered or exited the bus. She would question those in the first group, including "do you remember a child entering the bus?" Perhaps a few would answer yes. (This by itself is an interesting result.) She would not ask that question of the second group. A week later she would invite both groups back; this time, both groups were asked that question. With the second group, again a few would answer yes. With the first group, those that were "primed" with the question a week earlier, many would answer yes. The conclusion: one can influence the memory of another person about a past event just by asking about that event. I have always been ambivalent about the death penalty because so many convictions rely on eyewitness testimony.
Some people suffer injuries to their brains that cause them to think abnormally. Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat covers many such cases. Buonomano describes Capgras syndrome and phantom limbs. People who lose limbs often continue to "feel" them; the feelings can be painful and no intervention has proven effective in all cases. There is a converse condition called somatoparaphrenia: patients deny that a portion of their body belongs to them, stating calmly and bizarrely that they have never seen that limb before.
Scenario 1: a plane crashes because of a never-before-observed, unpreventable mechanical failure. Scenario 2: a plane crashes because of a terrorist attack. Which scenario generates more anger? Scenario 2, of course, but why? Terrorism has killed a few thousand people over the last decade, as against 450,000 motor vehicle accidents. Humans instinctively fear other humans and animals, and that made sense 10,000 years ago when fights for territory and survival were critical to perpetuating your genes; death from mechanical failure was unknown and death from poor health habits was at the least poorly understood. Darwin commented on this instinctive fear when describing the Galapagos Islands, which contained some species with no natural predators. Guns were unnecessary to shoot birds. He could walk up to a bird and with his gun push if off a branch.
For me, the most humorous, yet dark, examples of maladaptive brain functioning is in marketing. Whereas we have the power to reason carefully and analytically, our brains have a strong preference for shortcuts: fast, contextual analysis. Baby ducks will imprint on the first thing that moves. 99.9% of the time thing will be Mom, but experiments have shown that a man in a white lab coat will suffice, too. 99.9% of the time the brain activity from 10,000 years ago is sufficient for us, too, but marketers are keen to exploit the remaining fraction. Much has been written on this subject, so I will comment on one Buonomano includes. Monkeys tend to spend more time looking at dominant members. They will do so even at the expense of missing out on a treat. "Mirror" neurons are activated by these visual impressions. And so it is with us, explaining why Accenture showcased Tiger Woods, even though we are aware Mr. Woods probably knows nothing about business process re-engineering.
My wife likely picked this book for me from the library shelf because of my recent interest in psychology. I have been listening to psychology lectures via CD while commuting, enjoying Robert Cialdini's columns, and relating my recollections of The Invisible Gorilla.
The thesis running through these sources is that our brains strongly resemble the brains of humans from 10,000 years ago because little natural selection has occurred since then, both because of the relatively short time elapsed (merely 500 generations) and because few modern-day humans are unable to reproduce due to the inability to survive until reproductive age. The human brains of 10,000 years ago were well adapted to life at that time. The human brains of today, being largely the same, are perhaps not so well adapted, as the world has changed substantially during that time: agriculture, the industrial revolution, the computer revolution, and now the information revolution.
Buonomano introduces us to the brain as neural network, rather than computer. The brain primarily works with associations, and he gives the following example. Answer these questions: 1) What continent is Kenya in? What are the two opposing colors in the game of chess? Name any animal. 20% of us answer "zebra" to the third question when it is asked after the first two. If the first two are not asked, less than 1% of us answer "zebra". Plainly, the relationship between zebras, chess colors and Africa influences our answer. As another example, try to memorize these words: rest, bed, dark, snore, wake, slumber midnight, dream, snooze.
This quirk of answering "zebra" is the rule, not the exception. Our ability to recognize patterns is at the heart of our humanness. Language is all about patterns, and computers, for all their wonder, are not so good at them, as anyone who has suffered through a call-center's voice recognition software can confirm. A five-year-old is much better than the strongest computer at understanding speech (at least what words were said, if not their meaning). Likewise, a two-year-old can recognize Grandma even after not seeing her for some time, and even if Grandma changes her hair and glasses. Computers struggle, and that is the basis for CAPTCHA tests.
Recalling the list of words from two paragraphs ago, do you remember the word "sleep"? If yes, check again, it was not on the list.
This facility with patterns was probably very helpful to early humans attempting to find prey and avoid predators. Precision, as is sometimes required in our modern world, was less valuable. Even today, some hunter-gatherer cultures do not employ numbers beyond 1; everything is labeled "zero", "one" or "many". As Buonomano explains, when faced with a den of snakes or surveying a herd of deer, a human able to form the concept of "many" is just as well prepared as the one who can distinguish between 42 and 43.
As a former attorney I am particularly interested in human perception and memory, as it forms the basis for most evidence introduced in courtrooms. The legal field has long recognized that testimony is potentially inaccurate owing to defects in one or more of the following: perception, memory, communication and bias. Cross-examination is designed to allow the opposing party to highlight these sources of error. Most people recognize that memory degrades after time, but I was fascinated by the experiments conducted by Elizabeth Loftus.
After learning about her work I strongly suspect my memory and the memories of others. She would show a movie and split the observers into two groups, say 20 people in each group. The movie consisted of scenes from a suburban school. There was a school bus, children milling about, but no child entered or exited the bus. She would question those in the first group, including "do you remember a child entering the bus?" Perhaps a few would answer yes. (This by itself is an interesting result.) She would not ask that question of the second group. A week later she would invite both groups back; this time, both groups were asked that question. With the second group, again a few would answer yes. With the first group, those that were "primed" with the question a week earlier, many would answer yes. The conclusion: one can influence the memory of another person about a past event just by asking about that event. I have always been ambivalent about the death penalty because so many convictions rely on eyewitness testimony.
Some people suffer injuries to their brains that cause them to think abnormally. Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat covers many such cases. Buonomano describes Capgras syndrome and phantom limbs. People who lose limbs often continue to "feel" them; the feelings can be painful and no intervention has proven effective in all cases. There is a converse condition called somatoparaphrenia: patients deny that a portion of their body belongs to them, stating calmly and bizarrely that they have never seen that limb before.
Scenario 1: a plane crashes because of a never-before-observed, unpreventable mechanical failure. Scenario 2: a plane crashes because of a terrorist attack. Which scenario generates more anger? Scenario 2, of course, but why? Terrorism has killed a few thousand people over the last decade, as against 450,000 motor vehicle accidents. Humans instinctively fear other humans and animals, and that made sense 10,000 years ago when fights for territory and survival were critical to perpetuating your genes; death from mechanical failure was unknown and death from poor health habits was at the least poorly understood. Darwin commented on this instinctive fear when describing the Galapagos Islands, which contained some species with no natural predators. Guns were unnecessary to shoot birds. He could walk up to a bird and with his gun push if off a branch.
For me, the most humorous, yet dark, examples of maladaptive brain functioning is in marketing. Whereas we have the power to reason carefully and analytically, our brains have a strong preference for shortcuts: fast, contextual analysis. Baby ducks will imprint on the first thing that moves. 99.9% of the time thing will be Mom, but experiments have shown that a man in a white lab coat will suffice, too. 99.9% of the time the brain activity from 10,000 years ago is sufficient for us, too, but marketers are keen to exploit the remaining fraction. Much has been written on this subject, so I will comment on one Buonomano includes. Monkeys tend to spend more time looking at dominant members. They will do so even at the expense of missing out on a treat. "Mirror" neurons are activated by these visual impressions. And so it is with us, explaining why Accenture showcased Tiger Woods, even though we are aware Mr. Woods probably knows nothing about business process re-engineering.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
My Wife's Foot, Part III
It is now 114 days since my wife broke her foot. The cast came off in early August, replaced by a boot. She wore the boot all day for three weeks, removing it for sleeping and bathing. Then she started walking on her foot without a boot, gingerly, around the house, but still wearing the boot much of the time. Progress was steady, until a few days ago, when her foot began to ache after a long day on it (with and without the boot).
She is scared that the pain means she will never be able to walk without pain. I do not know what the eventual outcome will be. I encouraged her to take ibuprofen and keep off her foot for a few days, much as she would if she had never broken her foot.
She is scheduled to have the screws surgically removed on October 12; the pre-op meeting is October 5.
She is scared that the pain means she will never be able to walk without pain. I do not know what the eventual outcome will be. I encouraged her to take ibuprofen and keep off her foot for a few days, much as she would if she had never broken her foot.
She is scheduled to have the screws surgically removed on October 12; the pre-op meeting is October 5.
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