Book Eighteen: The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us

Forget about the elephant in the room.  Did anyone see the gorilla?!  Based upon their study of the same name, authors (and Nobel-prize winners) Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons explore how our brain deceives us.  Not to infer our brains are out to betray us; but rather, examine how society has come to think our memories are infallible.

Under the illusion of attention, I am scared enough to minimize the time I spent driving and talking.  In short, we simply cannot 'multi-task'--our brains won't let us, but we think we can.

Under the illusion of memory, I'm not sure I can ever retell another story.  Why?!  I don't know if it's my story anymore.  Has my brain highjacked and distorted it based upon what I know today?

While I am sure it is not the authors intention, I was indeed fascinated when they 'called people out'.  Again, it was not confrontational.  It was simply to show that while Malcolm Gladwell can infer from his examination of the Hush Puppies company in The Tipping Point that the result of there success was from trendy subculture, the authors call Gladwell's hand in saying 'you didn't prove anything, you just read the results to mean this'.  Don't get me wrong, Gladwell's books are certainly counted as some of my most favorite reads; it was just interesting to see them from another point of view.  As polarizing a topic of autism and Jenny McCarthy's fight against vaccination--again, it's a fascinating look at how data can be skewed to any one's favor.

And on a personally self-righteous note, I am glad to see them take to task authors of such business texts like 'Good to Great'.  Again not for blatant lies--only for not disproving their theories.  You can infer anything from the data gathered; but you haven't proved anything until you examine the companies that have failed.

For my fellow cinephiles, Chabris and Simons goes to Trudy Ramirez a long time Hollywood script supervisor to examine why continuity errors can appear so glaring to the cinema-obessives.  It's not so much that Spielberg doesn't care it could just be the shot is just too good to leave on the cutting room floor.

After reading The Invisible Gorilla, there is only one thing that I am sure of--I don't  know anything.  Herein lies the success.  Self-awareness of over-confidence or memory distortion allows you and I, dear readers, to observe human nature in a new light.  It allows us to question our intuitions thoughtfully and as the authors conclude, "before you jump to a harsher conclusion."