The first thing about this article that stood out to me was the mentioning of natural selection. This is something that we continuously talked about in my previous LDST 102 class and a topic I find very interesting. The thought of the “unconscious mind” is one that I wonder how much it affects me in my daily life. I am very curious about how many unintentional mental interpretations I make every day without realizing. I also don’t understand how the people who make these illusions come up with them in the first place if they are not aware yet. Similarly, I find it interesting how I our minds perception can switch once told about a different perception. This also made me think about the unintentional biases and opinions our minds make in society. If we make an assumption strictly through the use of our unconscious mind are we in the wrong, and do we have natural selection to blame (that sounds confusing, so an example would be assuming somebody’s place of origin or gender)? Similarly, the misinformation effect has scary implications as well. Many times, when witnessed are being interviewed I wonder how they could not remember such a crazy event (assuming it is a murder, car accident, ect.) yet there are so many instances where I have made split second decisions and not been able to recall the timeline or my surroundings after. In all, I find this topic of unintentional doings of the mind extremely interesting, but not something I could comprehend well enough to study.
Critical Thinking
I also think it’s interesting how our minds can switch perceptions once given new information. This reminded me of the black and blue vs white and gold dress picture. I at first saw it as black and blue but then once I learned that some people saw it as white and gold, my perception of the dress switched. I also thought about how we can listen to an audio recording and if we are reading one word we will hear that in the recording but if we are reading a different word we will hear that word in the recording. I don’t understand how this mindbug works still but I find it very interesting and frustrating at the same time.
What you said about how our mind’s perception can switch once told about a different perception is really interesting. I wrote about this a little bit in my response but I find it so fascinating the layers to these mindbugs. In the example of the table perception in the book: I looked at it and did believe it was the same shape/size, and when they told me it was, I still didn’t believe it, and when I tested it it was clear that they were identical. But when I took the paper away I KNEW they were the same, but on the most basic level my brain still couldn’t see it. I want to learn more about our changing perceptions and the mental layers of belief and understanding. I feel like that happens to me a lot where I know something is a fact, I really do, but I still doubt it
I agree with everything you said. I often wonder mnay of the same things so about a year ago I took the implicit biases test. It’s crazy to think that we encounter people evryday and immediatley make assumptions about them without even realizing it. It’s definetly very complicated and I’m not sure if I could study it for a livng either.