I am curious about the human - in fact animal - fact of selective attention. Perhaps it is that I have been reading Ed Yong's wonderful IMMENSE WORLD.
You could lie on a lawn recording the angles and length of grass-blades. You would be there a while, but each one of your observations could be quite true.
I am curious about the human - in fact animal - fact of selective attention. Perhaps it is that I have been reading Ed Yong's wonderful IMMENSE WORLD.
You could lie on a lawn recording the angles and length of grass-blades. You would be there a while, but each one of your observations could be quite true.
We wouldn't, though. We don't have time or attention. These true facts largely do not matter to us. What matters is...
Ah, there's the rub. "What matters" is formed by our needs, sensory abilities, preconceptions. It makes a preprocessor that rejects grass-angle reports and cricket scores. And crucially it rejects much of what gets through the preprocessor of those who do not agree with us, right? There are people world-wide who think cricket scores are important.
Is there any chance of bypassing this filtering? Do we want to?
And if not, is there a way of optimizing (balancing, making more just or more revelatory) these preprocessors?
I am curious about the human - in fact animal - fact of selective attention. Perhaps it is that I have been reading Ed Yong's wonderful IMMENSE WORLD.
You could lie on a lawn recording the angles and length of grass-blades. You would be there a while, but each one of your observations could be quite true.
We wouldn't, though. We don't have time or attention. These true facts largely do not matter to us. What matters is...
Ah, there's the rub. "What matters" is formed by our needs, sensory abilities, preconceptions. It makes a preprocessor that rejects grass-angle reports and cricket scores. And crucially it rejects much of what gets through the preprocessor of those who do not agree with us, right? There are people world-wide who think cricket scores are important.
Is there any chance of bypassing this filtering? Do we want to?
And if not, is there a way of optimizing (balancing, making more just or more revelatory) these preprocessors?