Quotes about Blind spot

            “Beliefs can easily cause us to become blind to the obvious.  Recent research on ‘inattentional blindness’ has shown that even minor tweaks to one’s expectations can cause a form of blindness.  A simple experiment developed by University of Illinois psychologist Daniel Simons provided a dramatic demonstration of this effect.  …

            Simon’s experiment consists of a twenty-five second video clip of six people playing a basketball game.  Three are dressed in white T-shirts and three in black T-shirts.  The white team is passing a basketball amongst themselves, and the black team is doing likewise.  During the game, a person dressed in a black gorilla suit calmly walks into the middle of the game, beats its chest, and then walks off.  The gorilla is not understated or camouflaged – it’s blatantly obvious.  And yet the majority of people viewing the clip do not see the gorilla provided they’re given a very simple instruction:  count the number of basketballs tossed between the members wearing white T-shirts.  This minor deflection of attention is enough to cause complete blindness to something as obvious as a gorilla.  The power of deflecting attention is well known to stage magicians, who specialize in creating such illusions.”