[ExI] contra Kahneman

[Stuart LaForge]

Bill Wallace wrote:


> I totally agree with the hierarchy idea.  There is always a list of
> things that our minds are set to attend to, which varies by situation,
> such as prompting.  Of course we can prompt ourselves.  No two people will
> see the same thing.  They will filter out, or in, what is important to
> them.  You go looking for something and find it, disregarding something
> right next to it that you also have been looking for.  It may be obvious
> to someone else.  An old saying occurs to me here:  "If it had been a
> snake it would have bitten you."

Yes. But to really fry your noodle, consider that physics at the
fundamental quantum level caters to that same phenomenon! In the
double-slit experiment, when you look for a particle (i.e. which-way
information), you observe a particle. On the other hand, when you look for
a wave, lo and behold, you see an interference pattern indicative of a
wave having gone through both slits at once.

Delayed-choice quantum eraser versions of the double-slit experiment seem
to indicate that an experimenter's ability to observe which-way
information after the fact can change data already recorded in the past.

The implication is that one does to a large degree create ones one own
subjective reality in full, and ones objective reality in part, through
desire and expectation. One shapes and perceives ones experience of the
universe filtered through ones own expectations whether fulfilled or
foiled in the process.

It is our minds that forge reality from chaos by assigning meaning to mere
information. And information is a physical quantity. So it is possible
that optimists create a better world simply by seeing it as already such.

> Not seeing the gorilla is successful processing - basketball passes
> important- the rest not.  Not seeing the gorilla is an asset, not a
> liability.

Yes. Exactly.

Stuart LaForge