Kazan accepted the second “pill”. Dead zone of attention, errors of thinking and card tricks on a scientific 4D lecture

On October 15, more than five hundred people gathered in the conference of Kai Kai to be disappointed in the possibilities of their own mind. Cognitive psychologist Igor Poychkin , an employee of the Institute of Problems of RAS Information Alexander Panchin and the mentalist, mentality Nikolai Fomushin, did everything possible to expose the great illusion of consciousness: we think that we perceive, remember and correctly understand everything that our eyes falls on , but there are thousands of ways to deceive human eyes and mind. Says Elena Chesnova.

“Intellectual Balagan” is a format of an event called “Red Pill - 2”. Mind Games "was designated by the founder of the initiative group" Think! " Peter Talents . About “Think!”, Or, as they write on the official website of the organization, “the unification of people who believe that science and common sense can help better understand themselves and others,” in Kazan they first heard a year ago. The debut event of the popularizers of science was the open discussion of creationists with the evolutionists “Adam and Monkey. Whose children are we? ” Then there was the first “red pill”: the author of the video blog “Everything like the animals” Evgeny Timonov , scientific journalist Asya Kazantseva and neurobiologist Vasily Klyucharyov acted with lectures about morality, altruism and the basis of decision -making. In early summer, activists "Think!" They clamped in the public dispute of supporters and opponents of GMOs, and now the turn of the “red pill -2” has come. This time it was about the little -studied gaps of human thinking, which are actively used by pseudo -scientists and psychics.

Igor Pogochkin, professionally engaged in perception, attention and memory, began a performance with an experiment. A photograph of a clutched desktop appeared on the screen, the scientist asked people in the hall to clap every time they find the object he mentioned. Headphones, scissors, keys, book - all those present found at different speeds, and individual claps stretched in time created the effect of applause. “Our attention to objects and our ability to accurately localize, identify and perceive them are individual and limited,” Dogachkin explained.

In the next experiment, it was necessary to compare two sequentially shown pictures and clap at the moment when you notice changes. For a second, the audience showed three geometric figures: a red square, a yellow circle and a blue triangle. The next slide: the location of the objects remained the same, but the blue triangle was replaced with green. After making sure that everyone noticed the substitution, Igor moved to the second pair of pictures. Now there were nine objects, but the time to study the starting image remained the same. On the blue triangle, which became in the second slide a blue square, noted attention. “The experiment proves that the average person is able to simultaneously hold attention to no more than three or four subjects,” the cognitive psychologist summed up. Nikolai Fomushin ’s magician came out onto the stage and finally knocked out the soil from under the feet of the audience: a trick with two peak four and one worm ace (how many cards the artist used, it is not known) proved that even the maximum concentration on three objects does not guarantee that the person will not be deceived.

In the scientific community of Igor Pogochkin, they know how the opener of the “blind zone of attention” phenomenon - he also demonstrated this effect on the “red tablet - 2”. And again there are two replacement pictures: on one tiger with open eyes, to the second animal lowering the left eyelid. “I think everyone noticed what changed: see how he winks,” the scientist commented and asked to take a closer look at the images. According to Igor, the pictures had more than one discrepancy, however, to find the second excellent detail, the audience needed much more time. A large black spot disappeared directly above the winking eye of the tiger. “Our perception is arranged in such a way that we simply do not pay attention to objects located very close to the center of interest,” Dogachkin explained. “Usually subjects in the laboratory are sitting a minute, two, and when I tell them what was the matter, they are surprised that they did not notice such an obvious detail.”

Fifty of the audience in the hall by this moment, it seems, have already ceased to be surprised at their inattention. At the end of the speech, Igor asked to reproduce his own photo on the screen with half a year ago - it turned out that during this time he managed to change his jacket and glasses. Of course, no one noticed changes until the scientist spoke about them.

Science was again interrupted by the show: this time Nikolai Fomushin showed a trick with a voodoo doll. “By the way, Nikolai and I are members of the Harry Gudini Expert Council - we give a million rubles to anyone who will prove their psychic abilities. So far, there were two applicants, and both failed. ” - A candidate of biological sciences Alexander Pankin entered the stage. He entitled his lecture “Protection from the Dark Arts” and devoted to the mistakes of perception, thinking and scientific experiments.

“Cum Hoc Ergo Propter HOC” (“Together means as a result”) is one of the most common “bugs” of human thinking. Alexander asked to project a graph of two decreasing functions to the screen. “If I said that one curve is the dynamics of the mortality of the population, and the second is the volume of alcohol per capita, many would conclude that alcoholism, we have cured all diseases. But the schedules that you see here are the number of murders in the USA and the share of the download of the Internet Explorer browser. There is a temptation to say that if you cancel Explorer, people will stop killing, but this is a mistake: together it doesn’t mean, there is always some third factor that affects both trends at once, ”Pankin explained and showed another schedule on which the number of dead, confused in bed linen, correlates with an increase in the income of ski organizations. “Of course, we can assume that there is a secret conspiracy of skiers ...”-because of the laughter in the hall, the scientist did not finish the phrase.

The rooster sang, and the sun rose. Does this mean that if we kill a bird, the dawn will never come again? Such a misconception is called “Post Hoc Ergo Propter HOC” (“After it means because”). Ritual dances are not a prerequisite for atmospheric changes leading to the formation of rain clouds, and a visit to the healer-exploration, although it precedes the cure chronologically, can hardly be considered its real reason. It would seem that everything is simple, but try to explain this to the natives from melania, which established the indestructible connection between the landing of a military aircraft and the appearance of delicious American food. Another popular thinking error is Argumentum AD Populum, or the argument to the majority. “All people cannot be mistaken,” we think and continue to believe astrological forecasts and homeopaths. Panchin is sure: the majority of the majority can not always be agreed. “You will be surprised to learn how many people are sincerely convinced of the anthropogenic nature of all radiation on Earth, although, it would seem, they should have heard about the deposits of radioactive ores and a natural radiation background at the school,” the biologist said.

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The protagonist of the trilogy Vachovsky had a choice: a blue tablet - wake up in his own bed, continuing aimless existence in artificial reality; Red - open the way to Super Sile and find out the secrets of the world order. It seems that the organizers of the “Red Pill -2” really managed to unite science with the blockbuster. If you alternate a refutation of myths about GMOs and water memory with bending forks and card focuses, you can gradually beat off the entire audience from the Battle of Psychics.