The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us


The book by the same name was named after the fascinating video below.  The authors introduce their case:

The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us is a book about six everyday illusions that profoundly influence our lives: the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, cause, and potential. These are distorted beliefs we hold about our minds that are not just wrong, but wrong in dangerous ways…We call them everyday illusions because they affect our behavior literally every day. Every time we talk on a cell phone while driving, believing we’re still paying enough attention to the road, we’ve been affected by one of these illusions. Every time we assume that someone who misremembers their past must be lying, we’ve succumbed to an illusion. Every time we pick a leader for a team because that person expresses the most confidence, we’ve been influenced by an illusion. Every time we start a new project convinced that we know how long it will take to complete, we are under an illusion. Indeed, virtually no realm of human behavior is untouched by everyday illusions.

The authors make the case that we see more, remember more, discern more, know more, and have the potential to improve more than we really do.   And the video demonstrates it in a practical, simple sense.