Perception Studies

There was a psychologist who lived in the early half of the 20th century by the name of Egon Brunswick. Egon spent a good chunk of his career studying the field of perception and some of these findings are still relevant today. If I was a more skilled writer, I would devote a good chunk of my next 6 months to Gladwell-izing Egon Brunswik and his ideas. There is enough good ideas in what I’ve read so far of his research, that it could probably make for a very compelling book....

“Is your red the same as my red?” A question that middle-schoolers and high-schoolers ponder in jest actually has some profound applications to perception. “Is your red the same as my red?” Perception is this in-betweeny thing that exists between reality, in this case the color red, and your interpretation of reality, what you perceive as red. Now, we can make all sorts of measurements and claims to try to circle around a definition for reality-red....

Lee looked at him and the brown eyes under their rounded upper lids seemed to open and deepen until they weren’t foreign any more, but man’s eyes, warm with understanding. Lee chuckled. “It’s more than a convenience,” he said. “It’s even more than self-protection. Mostly we have to use it to be understood at all.” Samuel showed no sign of having observed any change. “I can understand the first two,” he said thoughtfully, “but the third escapes me....