Demosthenes comments on Cached Selves - Less Wrong

172 Post author: AnnaSalamon 22 March 2009 07:34PM

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Comment author: Demosthenes 23 March 2009 07:58:15PM *  1 point [-]

Has anyone brought up this study by Bruner and Potter (1964) before? I think it would relate to intertemporal beliefs and how we sometimes perceive them to be more sound than they really are:

<http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~kin356/bpdemo.htm>

In this demonstration, you will see nine different pictures. The pictures will get clearer and clearer. Make a guess as to what is being shown for each of the pictures, and write down your guess. Note the number of the picture where you were first able to recognize what was being shown. Then go backwards - press the "BACK" button on the browser - and see at which point you can no longer identify the picture. Are your "ascending" and "decending" points the same?

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IF YOU HAVE TRIED THE STUDY:

Pictures of common objects, coming slowly into focus, were viewed by adult observers. Recognition was delayed when subjects first viewed the pictures out of focus. The greater or more prolonged the initial blur, the slower the eventual recognition. Interference may be accounted for partly by the difficulty of rejecting incorrect hypotheses based on substandard cues.

It would be interesting to think of your intertemporal frame of mind as discontinuous and running at 24 frames per second (like a film). Maybe your consciousness gives your sense of beliefs a false sense of flowing like a movie from one time state to the next.