As much as we would like to think that we humans are so superior to all other creatures, I think we are terribly limited in our sensory capabilities. We do not have the vision of eagles or sense of smell of dogs, and we cannot find our way home as well as the birds and the bees if we were dropped in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles away. Even though we live in a five-dimensional space (yes, we do), we can only sense four. We are not capable of perceiving zero or infinity (try to imagine what 10-33 second, which is how long it took for the universe to collapse from ten dimensions at the “big-bang” to five dimensions that we have now, or think about what “nothingness” really means). It is no wonder, then, that we are not able to perceive accurately what is around us.
At the beginning of my career, when I had to do surveying for a road project, I quickly learned that I cannot even come close to accurately guessing where the “horizon” or the horizontal plane is when I am in a hilly territory. It is similar to the phenomenon where pilots cannot tell that they are flying upside-down when they are in the clouds. So, when I was surveying in hilly territory I made sure to use instruments to determine what point on the other hill was at the same elevation as I was.
The “tables” was a good example of how our senses can be fooled to give us a distorted perception of objects. I have spent a lifetime (at least that of most students in the class) describing three-dimensional objects with two-dimensional drawings, and visualizing three dimensional objects from two dimensional drawings. Yet, I was still fooled by the two tables. They indeed had the same dimensions on a two-dimensional space. However, at the risk of appearing as “stubborn,” I will dare say that the answer to “Are these two tables same or different size (or surface area)?” is “I do not know.” A drawing of an object on the board or on paper is a projection of that object onto a two-dimensional plane from a certain distance and angle of view. By changing the distance and/or angle of view, we can change the dimensions of the projection of the object. Hence, it is entirely possible to pick the distance and viewing angle for two objects with similar shape but different dimensions such that their projections on a piece of paper are identical. There is a good reason why we have two eyes. With one eye we would lose the perception of depth and could not tell that what we see as two objects of identical size may in fact be two objects of different size at different distances from us.
One obvious lesson from last week’s mind bugs exercises is that we can perceive identical objects or situations differently under different contexts or environments, and that we should be aware of how wrong our perceptions can be. Another not-so-obvious lesson is that it is possible to learn or be trained to recognize under what circumstances and in what fashion our perceptions may be distorted. Those who know how to see and how to listen would have a significant advantage over those who don’t.
In my professional life, I have learned not to rely on appearances and check out things closely and carefully, when a misperception could have significant consequences. In one case, I was inspecting a construction, where the contractor was supposed to epoxy (glue) reinforcing bars into a concrete beam. I walked by the bars that were sticking out of the beam, and assumed that they were indeed epoxied into the concrete. This conclusion was obviously based on the fact that, in the past, if the bars stuck out of the beam they were always epoxied, and I had no reason to believe that the contractor was a crook who was trying to fool me. So, I told the building inspector who had come to do his inspection that I checked the bars and they were epoxied into the concrete. The inspector proceeded to go and pull on one of the bars, and to my horror, it came out. The bars were just stuck into the holes, and they were not epoxied. My credibility in the eyes of the inspector must have gone down to zero, and I was terribly embarrassed. I did give hell to the contractor, and I now always go and pull on the bars before I decide that they are indeed properly installed.
I try to “check things out” before I come to conclusions in my personal life too. Of course I don't do it all the time, and I am not prejudice-free. This class is definitely helping me improve in the right direction in many ways, including not to be “fooled by appearances.” As for the perceptions of others’ of me, I think their perceptions will change as my opinion of myself changes and it shows.
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