{"id":1503,"date":"2023-08-09T19:56:51","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T19:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/?p=1503"},"modified":"2024-10-06T11:06:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-06T11:06:34","slug":"perception-interpretation-pt-1-identify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/perception-interpretation-pt-1-identify\/","title":{"rendered":"Perception (interpretation) pt. 1 (identify)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">An intro<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here is a woman seen on a street:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"303\" height=\"377\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/street-woman-artur-tumasjan-vjdZSfC9ZFg-unsplash.jpg\" alt=\"photo of woman in red shirt with sunglasses on a city street, with her hand resting on an orange stick in front of her\" class=\"wp-image-1677\" style=\"width:152px;height:189px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/street-woman-artur-tumasjan-vjdZSfC9ZFg-unsplash.jpg 303w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/street-woman-artur-tumasjan-vjdZSfC9ZFg-unsplash-241x300.jpg 241w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 303px) 100vw, 303px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She has an unusual style maybe, but&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s zoom out a little:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"634\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/street-illusion-crop-artur-tumasjan-vjdZSfC9ZFg-unsplash-634x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of same woman, except zoomed out to show that the is apparently floating in the air. She is sitting cross-legged, up off the ground, The orange stick her hand is resting on does go down to the ground, where it is sitting on a yellow cloth. This is a real street performer, not a photo edit.\" class=\"wp-image-1678\" style=\"width:317px;height:512px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/street-illusion-crop-artur-tumasjan-vjdZSfC9ZFg-unsplash-634x1024.jpg 634w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/street-illusion-crop-artur-tumasjan-vjdZSfC9ZFg-unsplash-186x300.jpg 186w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/street-illusion-crop-artur-tumasjan-vjdZSfC9ZFg-unsplash.jpg 663w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 634px) 100vw, 634px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">She&#8217;s&#8230; floating in the air? (<a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/photos\/vjdZSfC9ZFg\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/photos\/vjdZSfC9ZFg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">credit<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Huh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is not a photo edit. She is a street performer &#8211; perhaps you have seen this type before, they are quite popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People stop and stare at them because their eyes say she is flying, and their brain says that she isn&#8217;t. That internal argument can have an arresting effect on a person.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The point here is that we think of perception as just seeing what is there, but it&#8217;s a little more than just that. Our eyes and ears tell our brain what they sense, but on its own that often isn&#8217;t enough information to really understand what is happening around us, and so our brain seamlessly fills in the blank spots. They go back and forth like this constantly, but we rarely notice it. Not unless something unusual makes their debate fizz so actively that we can&#8217;t look away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">This all sounds like hard work. Why bother?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our perceptual system help us to do three thing<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Identify things\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;Ah, it&#8217;s my orange mocha frappuccino#up&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Evaluate those things\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;it is good\/bad\/useful\/dangerous\/the happiest drink ever&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Act on them\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;glug glug glug&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. All due appologies for any obscure 90's comedy movie references<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s unpack those three things a little more, and explore what they mean for CB. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ll do function 1 on this page, and then 2 and 3 on our next page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Function 1: Identifying things<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This might seem obvious, but there is a surprising amount to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">CONCEPT: Perception as Bottom-up &amp; Top-down<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh look#up, here are some pixels:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. Much of this page assumes you are sighted, which you may not be. Our other senses do roughtly analagous things though. Please substitute other senses as suits you<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/tan-and-white-short-coat-dog-laying-down-in-a-brown-wooden-floor-128817\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"442\" height=\"324\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog1-pexels-bruno-cervera-128817.jpg\" alt=\"Closeup of a golden retriever dog\" class=\"wp-image-1733\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog1-pexels-bruno-cervera-128817.jpg 442w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog1-pexels-bruno-cervera-128817-300x220.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 442px) 100vw, 442px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Aww. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/tan-and-white-short-coat-dog-laying-down-in-a-brown-wooden-floor-128817\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/tan-and-white-short-coat-dog-laying-down-in-a-brown-wooden-floor-128817\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">credit<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, that was fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Out of curiosity, you don&#8217;t happen to be thinking &#8220;dog&#8221; do you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What a coincidence!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fine, we all know what happened: it&#8217;s a picture of a dog. But let&#8217;s break down what happened inside your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog1-pexels-bruno-cervera-128817.jpg\" alt=\"Closeup of a golden retriever dog\" style=\"width: 200px;\"><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"163\" class=\"wp-image-1736\" style=\"width: 150px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg\" alt=\"mini version of the page head - a diagram with a cross section of a head showing the brain inside, and highlighting the eye (looking to the left) connected to the visual cortex (at the right of the photo) by the optic nerve\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420-276x300.jpg 276w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/node-dog.svg\" alt=\"Oval containing the word &quot;dog&quot;\" style=\"width: 150px;\"><\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Pixels you see&#8230;<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Converted by your brain<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">To an activated thought in STM<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your screen activated pixels which sent coloured light into the world. Some of that light went into your eyeball where (again, assuming you are sighted) it was detected by a wall of photoreceptor cells (i.e., your retina#up). These sent a cascade of electrical activity back to the &#8220;visual cortex&#8221; area of your brain (strangely, at the back of your head &#8211; it&#8217;s the red bit in that picture), starting a process that split it into edges and shapes, and so on, until it had assembled a vector understanding of what it was looking at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre id=\"block-a34c840b-b0df-4c72-a586-677f837fafcd\" class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">#down. Did you know that your retinas are the only part of your brain that you can see without chopping your head open? Yes, it's actually a part of your brain and starts the processing of the images it sees: detecting the edges of objects, decoding colours, and even picking out features that it has learned might be key to gaining rewards <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-7UUEG7EA--wp1503 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:7UUEG7EA}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span> - all of that before the information leaves your eyeball. Perceiving is for doing<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is called &#8220;<strong>bottom-up<\/strong>&#8221; perception: assembling information from your senses into meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s a bit of a strange term, but the analogy is to a big company whose branches call the head office saying: &#8220;sales are dropping, and our customers are angry&#8221;, so the big boss knows what is happening out in the world. Information comes in from the <strong>bottom<\/strong> of the organization and is fed <strong>upwards <\/strong>to inform the headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group definition_block has-background is-content-justification-left is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-14d7fe8f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#fcb90017\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"definition_term wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Bottom-up perception<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"definition_definition wp-block-paragraph\">Constructing an understanding of our surroundings by analysing the information that arrives from our senses<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now we know what you are thinking: &#8220;bottom-up&#8221; is as pointless as calling eating: &#8220;food-in&#8221;. What other direction is it supposed to go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That does seem vexing so here is another set of pixels to help you feel better:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"540\" height=\"236\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog2-puppy-2785074_640.jpg\" alt=\"closeup of a spaniel dog with big liquid eyes and floppy long ears\" class=\"wp-image-1734\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog2-puppy-2785074_640.jpg 540w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog2-puppy-2785074_640-300x131.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Double aww. (<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/picsbyfran-6087762\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2785074\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/picsbyfran-6087762\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2785074\" target=\"_blank\">credit<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Different shapes, different colours, different everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wait, what&#8217;s that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"109\" class=\"wp-image-1734\" style=\"width: 250px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog2-puppy-2785074_640.jpg\" alt=\"closeup of a spaniel dog with big liquid eyes and floppy long ears\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog2-puppy-2785074_640.jpg 540w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog2-puppy-2785074_640-300x131.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"163\" class=\"wp-image-1736\" style=\"width: 150px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg\" alt=\"mini version of the page head - a diagram with a cross section of a head showing the brain inside, and highlighting the eye (looking to the left) connected to the visual cortex (at the right of the photo) by the optic nerve\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420-276x300.jpg 276w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/node-dog.svg\" alt=\"Oval containing the word &quot;dog&quot;\" style=\"width: 150px;\"><\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Pixels you see&#8230;<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Converted by your brain<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">To an activated thought in STM<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh, hm. But those pictures were pretty similar. So let&#8217;s find some really different ones, and put them in motion:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"128\" height=\"125\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog3-pixabay-3343_128.gif\" alt=\"crude cartoon gif of a brown dog waggling its tail and head\" class=\"wp-image-1735\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Sort-of aw? (<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/winterflower-17292963\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=animation&amp;utm_content=3343\" target=\"_blank\">credit<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See, there, you can&#8217;t possibly say&#8230;?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"128\" height=\"125\" class=\"wp-image-1735\" style=\"width: 128px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/dog3-pixabay-3343_128.gif\" alt=\"crude cartoon gif of a brown dog waggling its tail and head\"><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"163\" class=\"wp-image-1736\" style=\"width: 150px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg\" alt=\"mini version of the page head - a diagram with a cross section of a head showing the brain inside, and highlighting the eye (looking to the left) connected to the visual cortex (at the right of the photo) by the optic nerve\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420-276x300.jpg 276w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/node-dog.svg\" alt=\"Oval containing the word &quot;dog&quot;\" style=\"width: 150px;\"><\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Pixels you see&#8230;<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Converted by your brain<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">To an activated thought in STM<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh, for heaven&#8217;s sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So what is going on here? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bottom-up perception can&#8217;t explain how three completely different sets of pixels all lead you to think basically the same thing. So how?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s because your brain is taking the visual bottom-up patterns it detected through your senses and combining it with information that you already have stored, to help interpret what it means. Specifically, it is matching fuzzy floppy-eared shapes with a concept stored in your long-term memory: dog. And so your brain &#8220;assimilates&#8221; these ideas, and this &#8216;dog&#8217; vector pops into your working memory#up. <\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. A similar thing happens every time you hear the person who raised you telling you to sit up straighter and eat nicely: You match the sound coming from your ears to information from your LTM, and this this all assimilates to the meaning \"ugh, Aunt Sally nagging again\". <\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s a sort-of negotiation that happens in your head. Sensory information comes bottom-up from your eyes, and if your brain can find a match with meanings that come <strong>top-down <\/strong>from your memory, then it can assimilate them into one representation. That lets it stop the hard work of processing the image, and say &#8220;ah ha, got it, I know what I&#8217;m seeing now.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group definition_block has-background is-content-justification-left is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-14d7fe8f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#fcb90017\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"definition_term wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Top-down perception<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"definition_definition wp-block-paragraph\">Interpreting our surroundings by considering them in the context of information that we already hold.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Top-down and bottom-up are a package deal, not either\/or<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Students sometimes get stuck trying to decide whether a given instance of perception is happening top-down or bottom-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s not how it works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The difference between them is in where they take their information from (i.e., the outside world vs. your memory), but the way your brain understands the world is by synthesizing (combining) information from both places. Why? Because going from images to meaning is hard! It needs all the help it can get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading interest\" id=\"grass-example\">Is it really so hard? I need an example<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sure. What do you see in this picture?<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"523\" height=\"593\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/grass-iStock-1405384579.jpg\" alt=\"An image of long yellow grass from a prairie or savannah\" class=\"wp-image-1760\" style=\"width:392px;height:445px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/grass-iStock-1405384579.jpg 523w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/grass-iStock-1405384579-265x300.jpg 265w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 523px) 100vw, 523px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15030\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Hint 1<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15030\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Long grass<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hmm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15031\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Hint 2<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15031\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What if I mention that tigers have been seen in the area&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe yes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15032\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Answer<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15032\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s un-crop it just a little&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"593\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/grass-with-tiger-s-iStock-1405384579.jpg\" alt=\"The same picture before, but cropped in less closely - you can clearly see a tiger's head hiding in the grass - and now that you are aware of the head you can see it's body hiding in the grass that you previously saw too... The body was always there, but now you see it\" class=\"wp-image-1761\" style=\"width:600px;height:445px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/grass-with-tiger-s-iStock-1405384579.jpg 800w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/grass-with-tiger-s-iStock-1405384579-300x222.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/grass-with-tiger-s-iStock-1405384579-768x569.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now go look back at that original picture&#8230; It&#8217;s there, right. Once you&#8217;ve seen it, you can&#8217;t unsee it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is why top-down can be so useful. It helped you understand some pretty important things about how to interpret the bottom-up information from your eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-150315\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Ummm.. can you explain it in terms of computer graphics?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-150315\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is actually a really good way to think of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here is the same image stored as two very different types of files:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" class=\"wp-image-1714\" style=\"width: 40px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/blue-target.png\" alt=\"A .png of a small blue circle with an X in it\"><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1713\" style=\"width: NaNpx;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/blue-target-1.svg\" alt=\"An .svg of a small blue circle with an X in it\"><\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Method 1<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Method 2<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spot the difference! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s behind the scenes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See what happens when we ask the computer to show the exact same files again, except bigger:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" class=\"wp-image-1714\" style=\"width: 250px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/blue-target.png\" alt=\"A .png of a small blue circle with an X in it\"><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1713\" style=\"width: 250px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/blue-target-1.svg\" alt=\"An .svg of a small blue circle with an X in it\"><\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Method 1<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Method 2<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Method 1 is a &#8216;raster&#8217; format (in this particular case it&#8217;s a .png file, but the .jpgs and .gifs you are likely familiar with are also raster images). These files are all basically long lists of instructions, telling the screen what colour to make each pixel in the image#up (&#8220;make this one blue and the next one white,&#8221; etc). When we told your web browser to make the image larger, it had a problem because its list of pixels wasn&#8217;t long enough to cover all the new screen space we asked for. It did its best to guess when to switch from white to blue pixels, but those guesses were pretty fuzzy around the edges.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. The difference between .jpg and .gif etc is the clever math they use to squeeze that list of pixel colours into a smaller file size; Basically fancier versions of saying \"300 white pixels\" instead of having to write \"white white white white\" 300 times over<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is how your eyeball works: when light bounces off a thing in front of you, some of those photons go through your pupil and hit the retina at the back of your eye. This activates photosensitive cells (assuming you are sighted) which tell your brain: &#8220;hey, there&#8217;s green light in this spot right now&#8221;. Each of those cells is like a pixel, so this information starts out as a raster input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Method 2 uses a &#8220;vector&#8221; format (this is an .svg file, but many .pdfs, are raster too). This works more like your visual cortex does. It describes what the shape means instead of listing its individual pixels: &#8220;draw a blue circle with an X inside it on a white background&#8221;. If you want to change the image it can easily draw those things as big or as small as you like. It could even make just the cross a different colour, or have it rotate slowly. Your brain can make those same transformations &#8211; you could easily draw your own version with a red circle and green cross &#8211; that&#8217;s how you know you have a vector-type image in your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So our eyes take in raster images and our brains turn them into (sorta-kinda) vector understandings. If you recall on our memory page we talked about our brains turning thousands of words (say from Harry Potter) into a small-ish set of interconnected nodes. This is a similar concept, except replace &#8220;words&#8221; with &#8220;pixels&#8221; (i.e., those light-sensitive cells going &#8216;ping&#8217; in your retina).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The funky thing is that the way our brains work here is basically the opposite of how computers make animations. <\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"498\" height=\"569\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/wireframe-guy-s-iStock-147291310.jpg\" alt=\"a wireframe model of a man in a suit standing in a black background with pale blue gridlines. He is standing with his feet slightly apart and his arms held out to each side at shoulder level.. You can see the outline of the polygon shapes that his image is made of\" class=\"wp-image-1725\" style=\"width:498px;height:569px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/wireframe-guy-s-iStock-147291310.jpg 498w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/wireframe-guy-s-iStock-147291310-263x300.jpg 263w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 498px) 100vw, 498px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Computers use these wireframe vector models to animate characters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Somewhere in Pixar&#8217;s computer are thousands of &#8216;wireframe&#8217; vector images of your favourite characters and objects. Pixar tells one of these wireframes to bend its arm and blink cutely, and their computer will do this then &#8220;render&#8221; these movements into flat 2-dimensional recordings that your screen can play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This math is hard: it takes big studios like Pixar years (literally!) to render all the images for a full high-end movie, using huge farms of specialized computers. And yet your brain takes in that 2D image and decodes it into vector meanings nearly instantly. You are more clever than you thought!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15033\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">This bottom-up vs. top-down language is still confusing. Is there a nice short corporate metaphor?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15033\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ok, but only because you asked nicely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you recall, we had this firm&#8217;s branches calling their headquarters telling them that sales are terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bottom-up processing in this scenario could be someone in HQ looking closely at this data and realizing that: &#8220;sales are really bad, but only in Australia and New Zealand, nowhere else&#8221;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Top-down processing could be someone in HQ combining this insight with other information that they already know, such as that a major shipping crisis is gripping Australasia, or a brutal land war being fought over intractable and conflicting demands (New Zealanders famously say that &#8220;yes&#8221; should be pronounced &#8220;yis&#8221;, while in Australia they are belligerently committed to saying it as: &#8220;yeh-ay-ah&#8221;).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(note: these are not actual historical events&#8230; at the time of writing)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js applied\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15034\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Strategy takeaway: Show don&#8217;t tell<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15034\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Show don&#8217;t tell&#8221; is actually a mantra from the world of drama more than branding or commercial communications, but it applies well here. The idea is that our perceptual system is powerful, and we tend to trust it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a drama context, if you want to show that a character is smart, then a bad writer will have other characters saying: &#8220;wow that guy is smart&#8221; and &#8220;oh yes, he&#8217;s the cleverest of all of us&#8221;. Viewers will get the point from this, but not with a very strong impression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A better writer will have this smart character fiddle with a Rubiks cube while chatting with someone, and casually put it down, solved, at the end of the conversation. If viewers see them doing a clever thing, it will make them infer &#8220;oh wait, this one is smart&#8221;, and they will hold that impression more strongly because they came up with it themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is this mantra true? Writers developed it within a feedback loop where they write things for the public, and then the public very quickly read\/watch\/like it, or don&#8217;t. That tends to give them a pretty strong sense of what &#8220;works&#8221; and what doesn&#8217;t. And this does accord with what psychologists know about the fast and automatic ways that people form impressions of others that they see <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-MWZQQB8A--wp1503 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:MWZQQB8A}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So if you want your audience to believe things, don&#8217;t just tell them, show them.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">CONCEPT: Naive realism<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People have a tendency to assume that the world is WYSIWYG (an old computer nerd acronym for &#8220;what you see is what you get&#8221; &#8211; pronounced wiz-ee-wig). This is not a crazy thing to believe most of the time. If you see a dog, it&#8217;s probably because there is a dog there. If you see a cool car, it is probably because there is a cool car there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Psychologists call this idea &#8220;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/thedecisionlab.com\/biases\/naive-realism\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/thedecisionlab.com\/biases\/naive-realism\" target=\"_blank\">naive realism<\/a>&#8221; <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-4BNJ25SW--wp1503 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:4BNJ25SW}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>, which seems perhaps a little condescending, but all they really mean is that it is a cognitive bias that most of us suffer from, much of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Or maybe that still feels a bit condescending. Who are these lousy psychologists to tell us we&#8217;re full of naive cognitive biases?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tell you what, no more animal pictures, we know those just end up in psychology theories. Maybe this time we&#8217;ll make ourselves feel a bit better by learning&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A fun party trick:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Want to know how to win friends and influence people? Us too. But while you&#8217;re working on that, here&#8217;s something you can do with a couple of your buddies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15035\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">1: show this to half of them<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15035\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"303\" height=\"103\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-letters.jpg\" alt=\"Says &quot;A B C&quot; in big block letters\" class=\"wp-image-1757\" style=\"width:227px;height:77px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-letters.jpg 303w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-letters-300x102.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 303px) 100vw, 303px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Good work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15036\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">2: Now show this to the other half<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15036\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"304\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-nums.jpg\" alt=\"says &quot;12 13 14&quot; in big block numerals\" class=\"wp-image-1758\" style=\"width:75px;height:228px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-nums.jpg 100w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-nums-99x300.jpg 99w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You&#8217;re a star.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now show all of them this last one. And have them all read it out loud at the same time. The real trick here is to count them in so they all say it together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15037\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">3: All together now:<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15037\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"102\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-target.jpg\" alt=\"Could be a B, or a 13 - it's ambiguous (there is a slight separation between the 1 and 3, but they are so close together that they could easily be read as one character, B\" class=\"wp-image-1759\" style=\"width:75px;height:77px\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They didn&#8217;t all say the same thing did they? But they didn&#8217;t say random things either. You made some of them say &#8216;B&#8217;, and some of them say &#8217;13&#8217;. How very clever of you#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. As far as I can tell <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/coolopticalillusions.com\/abc-123\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/coolopticalillusions.com\/abc-123\/\" target=\"_blank\">this place<\/a> deserves credit for finding this trick<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But how did you do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can probably see the trick already: That target character is ambiguous &#8211; It&#8217;s possible to read it either way. But it wasn&#8217;t random which one each of your buddies said. You steered them to read it one way or the other by manipulating their top-down processing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s go step by step just for practice:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>You show them some letters <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You show them the target. Their bottom-up processing works out the shape of the thing they are looking at<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The target matches one of the letters they have in their memory, and so their perceptual system tries to assimilate them together<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The assimilation fits (i.e., the idea matches closely with what they are seeing), and so whoomph (you have to imagine this as the sound of a magician&#8217;s puff of smoke when things are made to appear), they announce that they are seeing a letter B. Well, that was easy, on to the next thing!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you draw it, it might look like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">&#8220;I&#8217;m looking at <strong>letters<\/strong>&#8220;<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">&#8220;yes, that looks like a <strong>letter<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"75\" height=\"77\" class=\"wp-image-1759\" style=\"width: 75px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-target.jpg\" alt=\"Could be a B, or a 13 - it's ambiguous (there is a slight separation between the 1 and 3, but they are so close together that they could easily be read as one character, B\"><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"163\" class=\"wp-image-1736\" style=\"width: 150px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg\" alt=\"mini version of the page head - a diagram with a cross section of a head showing the brain inside, and highlighting the eye (looking to the left) connected to the visual cortex (at the right of the photo) by the optic nerve\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420-276x300.jpg 276w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1874\" style=\"width: 100px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/node-B.svg\" alt=\"An oval saying &quot;B&quot;\"><\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Pixels you see&#8230;<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Converted by your brain<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">To an activated thought in STM<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your other buddies will have gone through the exact same four steps, except their bottom-up perception would discover that the shape it is deciphering assimilates well with the top-down idea that they were seeing numbers, and so they confidently announced: &#8220;thirteen&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">&#8220;I&#8217;m looking at <strong>numbers<\/strong>&#8220;<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">&#8220;yes, that looks like a <strong>number<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"75\" height=\"77\" class=\"wp-image-1759\" style=\"width: 75px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/ambig-stim-target.jpg\" alt=\"Could be a B, or a 13 - it's ambiguous (there is a slight separation between the 1 and 3, but they are so close together that they could easily be read as one character, B\"><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"163\" class=\"wp-image-1736\" style=\"width: 150px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg\" alt=\"mini version of the page head - a diagram with a cross section of a head showing the brain inside, and highlighting the eye (looking to the left) connected to the visual cortex (at the right of the photo) by the optic nerve\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/eye-to-brain-mini-iStock-1389110848-e1690322536420-276x300.jpg 276w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1873\" style=\"width: 100px;\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/node-13.svg\" alt=\"An oval saying &quot;13&quot;\"><\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Pixels you see&#8230;<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Converted by your brain<\/td><td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">To an activated thought in STM<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What makes this amusing is that your buddies were probably surprised when other people read the letter B as 13 (and vice versa), and then they probably had a chuckle when you showed them how it works, and they realized that they&#8217;d overlooked this alternate reading (which is what makes it a good party trick &#8211; if, possibly, for the less exciting types of party).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can we pause here to make an awkward observation?- When your friends thought it was funny that people read that letter &#8216;wrong&#8217;, it&#8217;s because they didn&#8217;t realize that it could have been seen a different way, right? So does that maybe sound a little like the naive realism that we were so offended by a few paragraphs ago? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe just a little?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And while we are being awkward, can we&#8230; Well, can we make a confession to you? Just a little one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See&#8230; That might not have been the only example of naive realism that we tried to slip past you in this section. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Did you spot the other one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15038\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">It&#8217;s here:<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15038\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Remember when we said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;This is not a crazy thing to believe most of the time. If you see a dog, it&#8217;s probably because there is a dog there. If you see a cool car, it is probably because there is a cool car there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you see it now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you see a dog, it&#8217;s probably because a dog is there, but the &#8220;cool car&#8221;? Who thinks it&#8217;s so cool? Maybe you do, and so to you that&#8217;s obviously &#8220;what it is&#8221;. But other people might think that your same car was just kind of pretentious or show-y off-y, or impractical, or just a boring car. On some intellectual level we probably know that other people might see it differently than we do, but on a deeper level, in our &#8220;heart of hearts&#8221; we probably believe that we are right, it&#8217;s cool, and everyone else&#8217;s dissenting opinions are just so many different flavours of deluded and wrong#up. And we don&#8217;t even really care that a psychologist would call this naive.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. For some reason, this seems doubly true for music. The types of music we like are inherently full of emotions, but other forms are just annoying noises. We are aware that other people claim to enjoy those noises, but we tend to see this as a character flaw in them, rather than as a legitimate difference in how their brains process aural stimuli<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A tricky thing in marketing is that our naive realism can get in the way (until we get very good at sidestepping it). It can be surprisingly hard to see how differently other people think about products than we do. Listening to focus groups talk about your product can be jarring &#8211; &#8220;How on earth do they think <strong>that<\/strong>?&#8221;. And if we don&#8217;t do that marketing research, then we just do our marketing wrong. We assume that they see the world the way we do, when they don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">CONCEPT: Gestalt<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is your brain hurting from all the clever letter\/numbers, and cute dogs? Poor thing! Here is a soothing grey blotch to give your poor eyes a rest:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/gestalt-s-iStock-1413799148.jpg\" alt=\"grey blotches on a white background. One of the grey blotches forms the outline of a gymnast standing on her hands. One of the white spaces forms the shape of a rabbit. The shapes are cleverly mixed, so that the contour of the gymnast's back forms the front contour of the rabbit.\" class=\"wp-image-1813\" style=\"width:338px;height:338px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/gestalt-s-iStock-1413799148.jpg 450w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/gestalt-s-iStock-1413799148-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/gestalt-s-iStock-1413799148-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh come on now, it&#8217;s just a blotch!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, yes. We see you there, bracing for another psychology explanation &#8211; probably a complicated one with a long German name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Good news: The name is German, yes, but it isn&#8217;t long and the explanation isn&#8217;t very complicated (look, this is a textbook, 1 out of 3 ain&#8217;t bad!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Gestalt&#8221; is the German word for unified whole. A hundred years ago (yes, in the 1920&#8217;s) some very clever and influential German psychologists started working out that our minds don&#8217;t process images as a series of elements, but rather as coherent wholes <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-KGBQ84ZY-_-4193465-I6PUGCVF--wp1503 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:KGBQ84ZY},{4193465:I6PUGCVF}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They came up with a series of principles that describe how your brain clumps different bits of an image together into one &#8216;vector&#8217; thing. For example, the white hole in the grey blob above is not a picture of a bunny&#8230; but it has the outline shape of one, and your brain automatically groups those edges together as one meaningful object &#8211; a bunny rabbit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We won&#8217;t list the gestalt principles here because they generally aren&#8217;t particularly important to most of CB. They do matter a lot to designers though, so if you are interested here are some resources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li> <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/literature\/topics\/gestalt-principles\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/literature\/topics\/gestalt-principles\" target=\"_blank\">A page where<\/a> Interaction Designer people do a really nice job of describing four of the main principles<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.usertesting.com\/resources\/topics\/gestalt-principles\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.usertesting.com\/resources\/topics\/gestalt-principles\" target=\"_blank\">Another page where<\/a> User Experience Design people describe an even larger set, and give some really nice commercial examples (logos that use them, etc).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What is important from our current perspective, is that your brain is very good at patching bits and pieces of information together to make a coherent understanding. If you see the logo for a familiar restaurant your brain will interpret that as announcing a place to eat if it is attached above a door, but as an advert if it is on a billboard. You won&#8217;t be aware that it has done this situational calculus, you just see it and think &#8220;ah, dinner!&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js interest\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-15039\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">But I&#8217;m curious. Which principle is that bunny \/ gymnast one using?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-15039\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This picture uses the Gestalt principle of &#8216;closure&#8217;. Because our brain is looking to find meaningful shapes, it will latch onto partial shapes, and fill in the missing elements. In this case, one of the grey blotches forms the outline of a gymnast, and one of the white spaces forms the outline of a bunny rabbit. Our brain quickly spots this, and fills in enough detail that we imagine the gymnast and rabbit to be visible despite their just being solid blotches of grey or white.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If that all sounds a bit abstract, take a look at this image:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/gestalt-side-face-s.jpg\" alt=\"weird illusion. It is the face of a black man that has been manipulated so that part of it is looking towards the camera, and part of it is looking sideways. You can see it as half a face that is looking towards you, or the profile of a face looking sideways, but your brain won't let you see both of those at once\" class=\"wp-image-1814\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/gestalt-side-face-s.jpg 400w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/gestalt-side-face-s-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/gestalt-side-face-s-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moillusions.com\/front-side-view-optical-illusion\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.moillusions.com\/front-side-view-optical-illusion\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">credit<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is he looking at you? Or off to the right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With a little practice, you can see it both ways (if you are struggling, use your hand to cover up just the left side of the face, and then just the right side).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If that isn&#8217;t trippy enough for you, try to see the face both ways at the same time. Can you do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can probably make it flip back and forth whenever you want, but your brain won&#8217;t let you see it as both at the same time. It&#8217;s just not able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-150310\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">And this is another of those gestalt principles is it?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-150310\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a variant of the figure\/ground principle. The most famous example is <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rubin_vase\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rubin_vase\" target=\"_blank\">Rubin&#8217;s vase<\/a>. You almost certainly know it already; It&#8217;s the one that you can choose to see as either a vase, or as two faces that are looking at each other. This perception is &#8220;multi-stable&#8221;, meaning that it doesn&#8217;t flicker back and forth, but rather you choose one, and it just stays steadily the same to you until you want to switch. So it&#8217;s stable in multiple states: &#8220;multi-stable&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why? Because one of the things your perceptual system does to help handle the firehose of information that is often spraying into it, is to pick out only one part of what you are seeing as the &#8216;figure&#8217; .(i.e., the key most interesting part that it makes its vector model of) and then it dismisses the rest of the image as merely &#8216;ground&#8217; (i.e., background &#8211; it&#8217;s there, but it is not so important). That simplifies its job a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the case of the vase illusion, you can choose to see the center block as the figure. If you do that you experience the picture as being of a vase. Alternately, you can see the side blocks as the figure, in which case you experience it as showing two faces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the case of our face illusion above, you can make the ear and eye the figure, by focussing on them, in which case you experience the face as looking towards you. Alternately, you can make the lips and nose into the figure by focusing on them, in which case you experience the face as looking sideways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In both cases, you can only choose one part to be the figure, and the rest is relegated to being ground.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your brain can&#8217;t understand the face as looking forwards and sideways at the same time because our top-down understanding says very strongly that this is not how faces work. It can latch onto <strong>one <\/strong>interpretation or the other, but then it has to see this one as the truth, and then ignore any details that don&#8217;t fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gestalt perception says that we take information from many sources (our eyes, ears, memory), and fuse it into one coherent whole understanding. If the stimuli are confusing (like the face above, or a promotional offer that you can&#8217;t wrap your head around) then it might flip back and forth between seeing it one way or the other, but at root your brain is equipped to simulate the world only one way at a time, and it does its best to arrive at the most unified understanding it can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is part of why naive realism is so convincing. It is hard for us to see that a car can be cool and also not-cool at the same time. Our brains want to settle on one view that it can work with. With the right market research we might be able to learn to switch into other people&#8217;s way of seeing it &#8211; that&#8217;s a critical skill for marketers, but the difficulty of seeing it multiple ways makes your brain tend to assume that whatever it is seeing now <strong>is<\/strong> the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Well that is annoying<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It sure is. But there are some big advantages of it too: It simplifies and corrects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s talk about those quickly<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Simplifies<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think back to chapter 1, and what we learned about thinking fast and slow. Our perception runs on system 1 &#8211; it is fast and automatic and nearly effortless pattern recognition. Our example then was the differently shaped squiggles that your brain decodes effortlessly in less than a fifth of a second. Reminder:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"524\" height=\"182\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/letter-a.jpg\" alt=\"the letter a repeated in different fonts 14 times in lower case and 14 in upper case. Some versions look very different to others. Some look hand drawn in fancy ways or childish ways, others with computer precision. Some have serif accents, others don't. Lower case a's cover both shapes (i.e., some a circle with a flat side, and others have that plus a big curl that comes up from the right side and extends all the way over the top, but doesn't touch on the left side\" class=\"wp-image-945\" style=\"width:262px;height:91px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/letter-a.jpg 524w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/letter-a-300x104.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 524px) 100vw, 524px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Your brain doesn&#8217;t really notice that they are different unless you pay atention. It just sees: &#8220;aaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&#8221; <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same thing happens when you see an image of your friend, or a toaster, or a bottle of Channel No 5. It doesn&#8217;t even matter if you change the image by rotating your toaster to a different angle, or putting your friend under weird lighting so they look to be a different colour, or if you change changes the shape of the object itself (withon bounds) &#8211; our brain cuts straight through all that complexity and says &#8220;it&#8217;s a pickaxe, only it&#8217;s a bit dented and rusty&#8221;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our brains are amazingly efficient and flexible at taking a near infinite variety of sensory stimuli and turning them in a fraction of a second to McDonald&#8217;s, Starbucks, Apple, or pitchfork, immediately making any associations accessible too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js interest\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-150311\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Sure. Now explain that as a put-down to an ancient philosopher<\/h5><div id=\"ac-150311\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fine, but only because we like you. How about Heraclitus?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His famous quote (circa 500 BC) is that <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/you_can't_step_in_the_same_river_twice\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/you_can't_step_in_the_same_river_twice\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">you can&#8217;t step in the same river twice<\/a> &#8211; because the second time it&#8217;s a different river. What he&#8217;s trying to say there is that everything changes all the time. We live in a world that is in constant flux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your perceptual system does not hold with this philosophy. It doesn&#8217;t care that every single water molecule in the river has moved since you last stepped in it, or that the ripples you can see are all in different places. It just says &#8220;Nope, it&#8217;s still the Dnipro river&#8221;, same as it was (or the Amazon, Ganges, Nile, Yangzee, Missouri, Manchester Ship Canal, etc).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Similarly your brain can look at a dozen different Starbucks artefacts (a paper cup, a shop sign, a TV ad, etc), and immediately connect all those things together as part of the same drink-serving entity &#8211; no matter how many other of their details may have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to your brain you can not only step into the same Starbucks repeatedly, but you can step into many different Starbucks that are all fundamentally the same too.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Our understanding corrects what we are seeing<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s an old meme:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn&#8217;t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.<\/strong><\/p>\n<cite>Is this really true? It turns out&#8230; <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk\/people\/matt-davis\/cmabridge\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk\/people\/matt-davis\/cmabridge\/\" target=\"_blank\">it mostly is (but in an interesting way)<\/a>!<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even though the &#8216;signal&#8217; is somewhat degraded here your brain&#8217;s top-down understandings are pretty helpful at quickly unscrambling it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js interest\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-150312\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Did you notice that you were using top-down processing to help with that? <\/h5><div id=\"ac-150312\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you read the link you&#8217;ll learn that one of the ways that this works is because your brain constructs meanings for not just individual words, but also for the entire sentences that the words are embedded in. This provides a source of information that can help it guess answers to trickier puzzles. For instance, if it got stuck on &#8220;wouthit porbelm&#8221;, it knows that these words are describing something that is easy, so it would be something like &#8220;without a problem&#8221;, and aha! Mystery solved! It doesn&#8217;t have to grind through a dozen permutations, it can just quickly confirm: &#8220;yep, that fits&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another fun demonstration is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/jamiejones\/the-ultimate-logo-quiz\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/jamiejones\/the-ultimate-logo-quiz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">this BuzzFeed quiz<\/a>. It asks you to identify correct corporate logos (Burger King, Apple, Domino&#8217;s, NASA, etc) from fake versions that rearrange elements from the real one. This is difficult because the altered logos are so similar to the real ones that your brain recognizes the intended meaning and matches it regardless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(don&#8217;t worry, you can go play with the quiz a while &#8211; we&#8217;ll still be here)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js interest\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-150313\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">But now explain this using&#8230; the nerdiest joke in existence?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-150313\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My goodness, really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh boy&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An astronomer, a biologist, and a mathematician go on holiday to Australia. They see a black swan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Ah ha,&#8221; says the astronomer, who is used to generalizing widely from small samples, &#8220;all swans in Australia are black.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;No no,&#8221; says the biologist, who is used to being a bit more precise, &#8220;at least one swan in Australia is black.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;No no no no no,&#8221; says the mathematician, who is used to being far more precise still, &#8220;at least one side of one swan in Australia is black&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your perceptual system tends to be with the astronomer here, or maybe the biologist at best. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The humour (if you find it funny) lies in the tension between being strictly logical about the bottom-up information available (as the mathematician is) vs. our tendency to correct what we see using top-down information (i.e., our awareness that swans generally aren&#8217;t totally different colours on their front and back). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Look, you did ask.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is maybe why those &#8216;levitating&#8217; street performers are so arresting to look at. They put us face to face with something that our top-down model of physics says shouldn&#8217;t happen. It is confounding, Our system tries to &#8216;correct&#8217; the image, and just can&#8217;t. So we feel perturbed enough to stop and stare, and are compelled to try to work out what the trick is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even once we know the trick (there is a hidden metal frame holding her up) we still tend to want to gaze at it for a while. Our perceptual system really isn&#8217;t used to being stumped like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-fe48e5de wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-black-color has-luminous-vivid-amber-background-color has-text-color has-background has-text-align-center wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/?p=1851\">For functions 2 &amp; 3, see Part 2<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">{pods_post_review}<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div id='zp-InTextBib-zotpress-0bd47a132c55efbf4816e75ce09df074' class='zp-Zotpress zp-Zotpress-InTextBib wp-block-group zp-Post-1503'>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_ITEM_KEY ZP_ATTR\">{4193465:7UUEG7EA};{4193465:MWZQQB8A};{4193465:4BNJ25SW};{4193465:KGBQ84ZY},{4193465:I6PUGCVF}<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_STYLE ZP_ATTR\">apa<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_SORTBY ZP_ATTR\">creator<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_ORDER ZP_ATTR\">asc<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_TITLE ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_SHOWIMAGE ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_SHOWTAGS ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_DOWNLOADABLE ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_NOTES ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_ABSTRACT ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_CITEABLE ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_TARGET ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_URLWRAP ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_FORCENUM ZP_ATTR\">0<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_HIGHLIGHT ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_POSTID ZP_ATTR\">1503<\/span><div class='zp-List loading'>\n<div class=\"zp-SEO-Content\"><\/div><!-- .zp-zp-SEO-Content -->\n<\/div><!-- .zp-List --><\/div><!--.zp-Zotpress-->\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What we see is not the same thing as what we are looking at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"chapter":[13],"exclude_from_index":[16],"class_list":["post-1503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","chapter-3-memory-perception","exclude_from_index-include"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1503"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3943,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions\/3943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"chapter","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chapter?post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"exclude_from_index","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exclude_from_index?post=1503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}