Many areas of human physiology and psychology are important,
even essential, for the designed day to day use, but are problematic
when applied in other areas. Humans often take methods that work
in one area and wrongly assume they work in all areas. Applying
local methods in foreign areas often leads to delusive and even
harmful results. The following are a few examples:
Hunger and metabolism: Our natural food physiology
and psychology was essential for survival in the old olden days
of food scarcity, feast and famine, happy if made it through
the year. We naturally love to eat when food is present, think
about food regularly, often can't help ourselves but overeat,
and our bodies efficiently store fat. With significant lack of
food and exercise our bodies go into starvation mode, lowering
metabolism to conserve calories and fat. These traits are essential
for survival in times of food scarcity, but detrimental in the
modern times of overabundance. With today's plentitude, these
functions have lead to widespread obesity and accompanying health
problems. Millions of dieters know how hard it is to beat their
own body and mind's ability to take in and store fat.
Visual perception: Our optical physiology and psychology
is designed to make snap judgments in the visual ambiguity of
our local environment. It is designed for you to be able to instantly
say that's a dog and that's a tree as you walk around your neighborhood.
The key is speed, a requirement for survival, for getting out
of the way of falling tree limb, running bear, identifying friend
from foe. In a fast moving world, humans require instant perceptions.
That this speed produces a degree of error is a fair price to
pay. When a car is roaring in your path, you don't have time
for perfection, you only have time to make a quick decision what
to do. The physiology and psychology used to make these quick
perceptions, however, results in large errors when applied to
new environments.
As our visual system detects only light in the visual portion
of the light spectrum, our eyes are useless in many areas. A
simple example is when we can't detect a three foot high, solid
wood chair two feet in front of us because it's dark.
One essential technique for quick identification of objects
is pattern/form/shape biasing.
These biases help the viewer instantly identify dogs and coffee
cups in everyday scenses, but produce incorrect and often irrational
results when applied in foreign areas. People will say the see
a horse in a random grouping of stones and other places where
a physical horse can't possibly exist. Despite the nonsensicallness,
people will swear they see people in toast and rust. This mental
technique that produces correct identifications in one area produces
dillusions in other areas..
To judge size, length and distance we in part use biases developed
from personal experience. As the below two situations exemplify,
these biases work in the native landscapes but not in all others.
Example a) involves a perspective bias foreign to most readers.
Example b) involves biases most of us share.
a)
The BaMbuti Pygmies of Congo traditionally
live their entire lives in the dense rainforest, where the furthest
away anyone can see is feet. They learned, loved, played and
hunted in this environment. In his 1961 book The Forrest People,
anthropologist Colin Turnbull wrote how he took one of these
Pygmies, named Kenge, for his first time to a wide open plain.
As the two stood on a hill overlooking the flat land, a group
of water buffalo was seen a few miles away. Having no experience
of how things appear smaller over long distance, Kenge asked
what kind of insects they were. Turnbull told him they were buffalo
and Kenge laughed loudly at the "stupid story." Turnbull
drove Kenge towards the buffalo. Watching the animals growing
visually larger, Kenge became scared and said it was witchcraft.
b)
The yellow lines are the same length, but
appear different lengths due to the faux railroad track and your
diminishing scale bias. Your bias leads you down the wrong track
on this one.
You wouldn't be fooled by what Kenge saw, and Kenge likely wouldn't
fooled by the image in example b.
Our visual systems have met their match with some modern technology.
Our eyes and mind perceive realistic movement on television where
it doesn't exist. Our eyes and mind weren't formed in anticipation
of this technology. We even react emotionally to movies-- becoming
angry, scared or sad-- even when we are well aware we are watching
a projection on the screen, the story is made up and the people
are paid actors.
Danger Assessment. Humans have primordial psychological
biases about certain kinds of cataclysmic situations. This includes
imminent and killer danger like bears, lions, cliff edges, volcanic
eruptions, hoards of foes with weapons, explosive sounds. Even
today, humans react similarly to a an unexpected booming sound.
In the caveman days, people didn't live long enough to die of
cancer or falling out of their wheel chair, but they did die
by attack from animals, enemies and sudden natural events like
land slides and lightening. Psychological reactions to sounds
and visual that evoke these events are related to genetic-based
aversions or even phobias, including of height, closed or open
spaces, sudden loud noises (our ears have physical mechanisms
to protect our hearing from very loud noises). In their assessment
and actions surrounding danger, ancient and modern humans are
focused on the sudden, all-at-once types of evens. In many situations,
this focus can lead illogical and, ironically, dangerous choices.
The following are a few examples of how humans misjudge danger
due to natural biases:
** Due to fear of flying and the sensational plane crashes
they see on television, many people prefer to drive across the
country than fly, even when they know flying is safer.
** People are often far more afraid of an unlikely but sensational
event (terrorist explosion of building where they work), but
not of a much more likely but less sensational situation (death
from slipping in bathtub, the flu).
** People often avoid unlikely dangerous situations (flying,
terrorist attack of building), yet smoke and overeat which is
far more dangerous. That the death from overeating and smoking
is over time makes it less feared than a short big event. A caveman
didn't live long enough to die of smoking. We have this caveman
psychology, but live 60 years longer, a length where smoking
and overeating can and likely will cause serious damage us.
Logic, reason and rational thinking
Many of our delusions and crazy notions are the product of illogical
deductions and irrational thinking. However, many are produced
by what is generally classified as rational, logical, reasonable
thought. Mirages and similar visual illusions happen when the
viewer applies the same rational, logical thought processes used
to make correct visual identifications elsewhere. The logic and
rules that apply to one area, don't apply to others. In a foreign
land of illusions, the logical can appear illogical, right can
appear wrong, and wrong can appear right. People often arrogantly
claim their sensibilities and reason apply everywhere, but one's
logic and sensibilities are often unreliable guides in foreign
realties.
Using past visual experience and rules,
it would be logical and rational, but incorrect, to view the
above horizontal bar as changing in tone.
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