Our 'marvelous' brains

Both the History Channel and the National Geographic Channel have been airing episodes about the human brain, its complexity, its uniqueness and even its shortcomings, the latter being the most interesting of all. The premise is that we should not trust our brains entirely, because it tends to skim over certain details and concentrates on what we perceive to be the most important at a certain time. Forced perspectives, shadows, word and detail omissions are just some of the examples shown by the informative shows in their respective channels.

Because of the amount of information that the human brain receives everyday, a sort of built-in filter kicks in to only allow those that seem important. Otherwise the brain would literally heat up and burn out faster than we would want it to. A good example was when a portrait of the famous Mona Lisa was shown to several persons, they all failed to notice a UFO in the background, which of course is not in the original painting. Because we know, or supposed to know what the Mona Lisa looks like, we don't look at other details anymore.

Misdirection is another way to distract the brain. So many examples of misdirection were shown, which is the bread and butter of a good magician or illusionist, and yes, even con artists and criminals. Your brain is made to focus on something while ignoring everything else. Watching a basketball being passed several times among players while totally ignoring a gorilla that walks among them. Amazing! And this is what criminals like pickpockets master. That little bump on the shoulder is enough to distract you while they go after your wallet or purse. Or using beautiful women to get the attention of gullible men. You know the rest.

Don't look now, but I think politicians are starting to catch on the concept of misdirection. Instead of answering the issues or accusations leveled at them, they now bring in other issues to divert the attention away from primary issues. In a privilege speech at the Senate, one of those initially accused of mishandling their PDAF has now come on the offensive, skirting the issue of the PDAF and accusing the president and several members of his cabinet of impropriety pertaining to the Corona impeachment trial. How the people will react to this I guess totally depends on how trained the individual brains are, which in some cases isn't really saying much. But I am hopeful there will be more who will see this display as another delaying tactic on the inevitable progress of the PDAF/Napoles cases, which really needs to get going. Hopefully, after being made aware that it is indeed possible to fool our brains, we will not be.

Hopefully.