Let's run a little experiment: I'm going to show you a very short video that consists of a few people tossing basketballs to each other. I want you to watch this video and I want you to count the number of times the ball is passed between the people with white shirts. Only watch the video once because your initial count is what is important.
WARNING: Do NOT press play on the video below until you have read and understood the instructions above.
CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO
To compare your result with the real number, highlight the following white area with your mouse: Did you see the gorilla?
If your results don't match, watch the video again to check.
Before I make my point, a brief story:
There was once an astronomer named Percival Lowell who pointed his telescope at Mars and saw what he believed to be canals running along the surface of the planet. He was so convinced about this phenomenon and its implications of life on Mars that he published three books about it. A hundred years later, we know this man was anything but correct, but what was he seeing if not canals? Would you believe that he was actually observing the blood vessels within his own eye as they appeared superimposed against the image of what he was viewing through his eyepiece. If you want to see your own blood vessels in your eye, all you have to do is stare up at the clear blue sky.
The video above is occasionally shown to juries as a reminder of the worth of eyewitness testimony. Indeed, with the advent of DNA testing, there have been many people found innocent who had been convicted on eyewitness testimony in a trial. The lesson here? Second-hand forensic evidence has been found to be more reliable than first-hand accounts. Why, then, do people dismiss real science and instead favor ideas with "apparent" truths? Belief in god, for example, is not supported by anything remotely substantial in the ways of evidence. On the other side of the coin, it has a great amount of personal testimony to back it up. It should be apparent, after my two examples, that personal testimony means very little.
When I say these things about personal testimony, I want to be clear that I mean even YOU and I can make mistakes with our visual and aural cognition. Here are some reasons for that:
We all see different interpretations of the same thing. Think of the old philosophical nugget that the color I see may not appear the same to you. What I think of as red could be a completely different concept with the eyes of someone else. The same can be said about the scenes we observe. I know, for example, that I am not a very good detector of physical clues. When I see someone, I am often oblivious to any weird actions they make, and it is often afterward when someone comments on the odd behavior that I realize I had missed it. Additionally, it has been noted in a study that "western" and "eastern" cultures interpret facial expressions differently. While differences in cultures may be easy to grasp for this, think of the fact that everyone simply has different personalities and thus has the potential to interpret anything different from the person beside them.
What you see is only a small part of the entire scene. The above video was a prime example of this. In addition to details that skip our attention, there are hidden details that contribute to what we are seeing without us knowing. Motivations, abnormalities, moods, history... all these things contribute to the scene, so even when we stand back and judge what we've seen, we're only working with a fraction of the information. A friend of mine figured his apartment was haunted because a couple of his many The Simpsons toys would occasionally make noise. Isn't it more plausible that the vibrations of an apartment floor and moving air currents caused by frequent movements by multiple guests resulted in hair-trigger toy mechanisms going off? Well, we can't see those factors, so we don't consider them.
Memories are modified each time they are recalled. This means that each time you summon a scene from your memory for the purpose of recollection, you actually change it to adapt to the message you're trying to communicate. This can make recollection-on-demand seem like you're answering a trick question. Imagine a lineup of suspects where none are the actual subject. When asked to identify the culprit, a witness is likely to choose one simply because they try to recall the scene with their choices planted within it. This is what makes a suggestion or a leading question so powerful; it is easier to choose from your options than to independently realize something.
Nobody is immune from the eyewitness fallacy. Though your memories are as real to you as mine are to me, if you apply a little honesty to your recollection process, you'll see that you have some post-production processes that you run them through. Then, when you recall the same memory again, it retains the signature of the changes you last added to it. The story changes through time. If you're like me, it changes into one that is easier to tell, with an emphasis on the interesting or funny parts, with tiny details changed for dramatic or comedic effect. Some stories get this treatment consciously while others are simply recalled because people ask.
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Now that we've torn apart the worth of witness, let's talk about arguments that employ it. A common argument against evolution is that it cannot be observed. Well, as we can see, observation means very little. Conversely, forensic evidence, like a DNA test of blood at a crime scene, is far more conclusive than whatever story we can concoct with our two eyes. The same goes for the existence of god, for which there is no forensic evidence to consider. A story of god revealing himself is of no value when nobody can prove, after the fact, that it happened.
Seeing is believing, but belief is hardly a means to see the truth.
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