Interesting Links for 13-07-2016

[andrewducker]

Theresa May revealed as Margaret Thatcher’s final Horcrux (tags: margaretthatcher harrypotter politics uk funny ) 'Zeno effect' verified-atoms won't move while you watch (tags: physics quantum ) What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (Fascinating, in-depth piece by Michael Chabon) (tags: writing language sleep ) British prime ministerial statistics (

Comments

Psychologists still don't know why you are oblivious

[drdoug]

Man, this one is turtles all the way down.

We're oblivious to our blinks.

Psychologists are oblivious to why we're oblivious to our blinks.

Internet discussion spaces like this one are oblivious to why psychologists are oblivious to why we're oblivious to our blinks.

I suspect that sociologists are oblivious to why Internet discussion spaces like this one are oblivious to why psychologists are oblivious to why we're oblivious to our blinks.

... and I'm having a big attack of that thing where if you repeat a word or phrase a lot, it seems to lose it's meaning. Cognitive scientists have a name for this effect - semantic satiation - but they are obl- ... um ... they don't have a complete explanation for how and why it arises.

[simont]

It struck me that the article has the wrong title. What they don't know is how we're oblivious to our blinks - they're uncertain of the mechanism. But why we're oblivious to our blinks - in the sense of the reason for it being desirable, or the incentive for such a mechanism to evolve - is surely much easier: it would be massively distracting to us all the time if we were not, and we'd constantly get eaten by tigers as a result of blurting "MY GOD, WHAT WAS THAT SUDDEN FLASH OF DARKNESS" in mid-tiptoe, and die out :-)

RE: Psychologists still don't know why you are oblivious

[andrewducker]

I'd imagine that after a while of the black flashes you'd get used to it and it would cease to be quite such a surprise.

I mean, it's not like I'm sitting here in constant surprise at the fact that my chair is touching me, or that people are moving around in my field of vision, or that my cursor is blinking.

Hmm. I wonder if there's a general factor for "adjusting to things that happen all the time", and if so, if it's genetic.

RE: Psychologists still don't know why you are oblivious

[cartesiandaemon]

"I'd imagine that after a while of the black flashes you'd get used to it and it would cease to be quite such a surprise."

I honestly don't know whether or not that IS what happens :)

Successful diets add healthy foods rather than removing

[cartesiandaemon]

I've noticed I almost always find it easier to keep positive resolutions than negative ones. Partly because you only have to keep positive resolutions some of the time and negative ones all of the time. Partly because negative resolutions focus me on what I'm avoiding not what I should be doing. Partly because sometimes what you're not doing needs to be replaced with something else, and it's not clear what "something" is so you don't just go ahead and do it. Partly because you can usually do *more* of a positive resolution, but with a negative resolution, you can only fail more, which is less encouraging

[simont]

especially if someone else seems like they would know better "oh, I never had a problem with addiction, so you should learn from me"

That seems like a particularly backwards piece of reasoning in any context. Surely if I have a problem with X (for a great many X, ranging from addiction to abstract algebra, or indeed X), the kind of person most likely to be able to give me useful advice is not someone who has never had the same problem in the first place, but rather someone who did have exactly the same problem as me, tried lots of things, and found out which one fixed it!

It might very well still not work, of course, but I'd put my money on it generally working better than the other approach. How would someone who's never had the same problem have any idea how they never had the problem, or even whether it was because of something they did or because of something they intrinsically were?

[cartesiandaemon]

Well, yes, exactly! :)

To be fair, I think most people naturally start extrapolating from one example. If you don't know how much it varies, the best guess is that "most people are like you". But it takes a certain amount of practice to realise that if it's easy for you, and hard for some other people, the problem may be that it's naturally harder, not that they didn't try "just giving it a go and see if you quickly succeed". And I wish people more often internalised that realisation...

[simont]

To be fair, I think most people naturally start extrapolating from one example. If you don't know how much it varies, the best guess is that "most people are like you".

That's fine as long as you keep in mind that it is a best guess based on one data point, and show willingness to quickly change your opinion as soon as a contradictory second data point comes along. But extrapolating from one example to a firmly held belief which you retain even in the face of contradictory evidence seems excessive!

Psychologists still don't know why you are oblivious to

[cartesiandaemon]

Oh, that is interesting. I really don't know enough about the science to comment on the details

[asher63]

This is why we blink: to give the atoms a chance to move.

[andrewducker]

I really like that.

[kalimac]

I feel like a horrible bigot for having assumed that any article beginning with a reference to the "Ultracold Lab of Mukund Vengalattore" must be a parody.

Actually, the atoms aren't refusing to tunnel because we're looking at them. They're refusing to tunnel because we're bombarding them with a laser, which is the only way to see them. At that scale, it's like throwing bombs at them.