It is the little things
[M]an is easily fooled, either by cleverly thought out manipulation of man, by circumstances occurring by accident, or by very effective manipulation practices that man has stumbled into during “practice evolution” and kept in place because they work so well. One such outcome is caused by a quantum effect in human perception. If stimulus is kept below a certain level, it does not get through.
. . .
And even when perception does get through to man’s brain, it is often misweighted, because what is registered in perception is in shockingness of apparent contrast, not the standard scientific units that make possible science and good engineering against often-wrong effects from generally useful tendencies in his perception and cognition.
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Inadequacy of contrast-based perception (i.e. stick one hand in hot, one hand in cold, and now both in luke warm and they are both hot and cold respectively). One thus sees perception so easily fooled by mere contrast, where a simple temperature gauge would make no error, and realizes cognition mimics perception in being misled by mere contrast. Thus, one is the way to understanding how magicians, and life, fools one. This can occur, through deliberate human manipulation or otherwise, if one doesn’t take certain precautions against often-wrong effects from generally useful tendencies in his perception and cognition.
The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, by Charlie Munger (27-page PDF)
Tags: Bruce Grierson, Charlie Munger, Ellen Langer, pqzcCfUglws, Richard Fernandez, zRyAz9Xk5Ic
