Hiding in Plain Sight

The March issue of Scientific American had an interesting bit of information (which I hope I am relaying correctly as I don't have the issue with me):

• The equivalent of 10 billion bits of information per second hit the retina.
• Six billion bits per second leave the retina
• Six million bits per second go up the optic nerve
• 100,000 bits per second arrive at the visual cortex
• The brain interprets 110 bits of visual information per second

So what is going on is, in order to save processing time, the brain is pretty much filling out the rest of the picture based on what it predicts should be there.

Now say that early each morning, as you drive to work, you pull up to an intersection, look both ways, no cars are coming, and you proceed. You do that for years and it has become an automatic routine. On the day that a car is coming, you could glace that way and your brain would not "see" the presence of a car, because your brain does not expect a car to be there.

Test this out sometime: As you go down a road, look off to the side and consciously look to see what is there. You will likely see some detail that has been there, has always been there, but which you never noticed. It was literally hiding in plain sight.

When you are doing a safety check, you have to take your mind out of auto-process mode. For if you don't, that way lies disaster. Our brains are not set up to handle the rapid change of information in a modern world, but the slow pace of information of a hunter-gatherer on an African savanna.

You have to make the effort to consciously look at what is there, not just do it on autopilot. For on autopilot, the brain will probably see what it expects to see, not what is really there, and our machines will then kill you.