Michael Shermer: The pattern behind self-deception from TED 2010
Posted by on July 2, 2010 in Thoughts | 3 comments  …or “My Mind
is Playing Tricks on Me.”  There is more information in the
world around us at any given moment than we realise. To prove my
point, just stop for a moment. Have a look around you. What can
you see? What can you hear? What can you smell, feel or taste?
Start writing down everything. Yes everything. Before too long
your list of information will stretch onto a second page, and a
third, and so on. It’s ridiculous really just how much
information is around us, because at any given moment there are
so many “things” around you all the time, interacting and
changing. Can you imagine a life where we were unable to
distinguish between which of these sensations were valuable to
us and which were “junk information”? Our whole existence would
be doing just that; noticing stuff.  It is naturally
advantageous for us to be able to block out certain information
and to identify useful patterns and