Blindsided: Gorilla in The Mist

Christpher Chabris and Daniel Simon conducted a study on a group of people. They showed them a video of a group of people in a place of what's look like a corridor passing around a two basketballs. The sample were asked to count the number of passes performed by one group while ignoring the other. In the middle of the video, for 9 seconds straight a man in a gorilla suit strolled in, beats his chest at the camera and then walked out.

After the video, the audience were asked whether they see a gorilla in the video, and most of them say no. They are so absorbed with their task at hand that they failed to notice something as conspicuous as a gorilla in the video.

Do you remember chatting with your friend while window shopping, and then you notice a hot guy coming from the opposite direction. You try not to notice him and told your friend that there's a sales in Parkson. The thing is he did not answer you. After a couple of seconds when the hot guy passed through us, you asked your friend why he did not answer you, you realize your friend was trying hard not to notice that hot guy that he was phased out when you asked him question.

You failed to use your senses as occupied with something else. It's quite simple actually to understand this. Your ear is always open right? Meaning you always taking in audio messages. Why is it that you will not hear if your boyfriend whisper something in your ear? This is the simplest way of phasing out of the call. But Chabris and Simon goes further than that. They said that illusions and beliefs could lead us to see things we want to see and not to see things we don't want.

In short they listed down 6 common intuitive errors one could commit:

1. Inability to see something at plain sight
   
2. Belief that our memory is more reliable than they are
   
3. Belief that just because someone has confidence, they are competent
   
4. Belief that we remember more things than we do
   
5. Belief that just because two things occurring at the same time, it's causally related.
   
6. Belief that cognitive exercise works better in gaining your intelligence than physical exercise.
   

The thing is we are all aware of this in someway or another, just not entirely, because if we think we are entirely aware of this, then we're committing an error. This book says that we'll never be perfect, no matter how much perfect we think we are.