TEDxUIUC - Daniel Simons - Seeing The World As It Isn't

A cool talk from Daniel Simons at the TEDx event held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Simons is not a huge name (yet) but you have seen one of his experiments, the gorilla who walked through a video that nearly half of observers did not see.


While his work focuses on perceptual blindness, I think it also applies to intellectual blindness. When we expect to see the world or experience the world in a specific way, that is what we tend to see. Each of our beliefs and assumptions draws a distinction, and everything outside that distinction (including the distinction itself) becomes essentially invisible - we become blind to everything other than what we are looking for or expecting to see. [Yes, I have been reading G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form.]

Here is his recent talk at TED:

Dan Simons explores why we see the world as it ISN'T.

Daniel Simons is head of the Visual Cognition Laboratory at the University of Illinois. His research explores the ways in which our beliefs and intuitions about the workings of our own minds are often mistaken and why that matters. He is best known for his experiments revealing striking failures of perception and the limits of visual awareness. His research is exhibited in science museums worldwide and his writing has been published in many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Chicago Tribune. He recently co-authored the book, "The Invisible Gorilla, and Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us" (Crown, 2010).

Tags: TEDx, UIUC, Daniel Simons, Seeing The World As It Isn't, The Invisible Gorilla, Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, attentional blindness, Psychology, brain, attention, awareness, perception, limits of visual awareness, beliefs, intuitions, mind, distinctions, G. Spencer-Brown