The Frequency Illusion

This week I had a good opportunity to discuss an interesting cognitive bias with one of my 4th year medical student while we were on renal rounds. The issue came up when I was examining the belly of one of my young patients, who screamed out, “your hands are cold”. One of our nurses was quick to respond, “Cold hands, warm heart”. My student looked at me then remarked that she had only recently ever heard that expression, and since then has been hearing it over and over again. This, of course, lead to a natural discussion of the cognitive bias called the Frequency Illusion, which also is known as “The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon”. I admit we had to look up the name, as neither of us could remember what it was called. As physicians and scientists, critical thinking and rational thought are vital, and one way I teach this to my students is by discussing cognitive bias and logical fallacies. These emphasize where limitations of the human mind lie, and how to avoid common pitfalls in thinking that we are all prone towards.

The frequency illusion is one we have probably all experienced from time to time. The example above, is a not unusual. My student may have heard that phrase before, but never really registered it, or perhaps really never did hear it before recently. In any case, the true frequency of the phrase is unlikely to have suddenly increased, but only my students perception of the phrase has lead her to believe that only now is she hearing, “cold hands, warm heart” all over the place. Cognitive scientists propose that when the human mind has been given new information, it creates a bias towards that information so that we are more likely to become aware of seeing or hearing that same information again the next time it is presented. This is known as a “Recency Effect”. In reality the information has always been present at the same frequency but until recently it was part of the background noise and not in the forefront of thought.

Another example of the Frequency Illusion is one that I noticed in myself this week.  This occurred after a friend of mine posted on Facebook that he and his wife were visiting the Florida Keys for vacation. Since then I have noticed several commercials on TV advertising the Florida Keys for tourism. I had never noticed those commercials before. Now, it is possible that those commercials have only just begun to be broadcast, my friend was influenced by the commercial and decided to go to the Florida Keys, and I only started noticing the commercials because they were never on TV before this week. A more likely explanation is that I have fallen victim to the Frequency Illusion.

And yes, my hands really are cold all the time, and my heart is around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit – so pretty warm. I guess my nurse was right after all!

Reference articles:
1. “The Baader-Meinhof pheonomonen”, How stuff works.

2. Structure of a logical argument. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe page.

3. “The Clumping Effect” Darwin’s Kidneys blogpost.

4. List of Logical Fallacies.  Wikipedia.

 

The Clumping Effect

by Rich Feldenberg

Cognitive biases permeate our thinking process, leading us to false conclusion and beliefs. Aristotle called humans, “The Rational Animal”, but it has been pointed out before that we are much more rationalizing than rational. We have a strong tendency to hold onto our notions, defending them with faulty logic and weak arguments, because we wish them to be true. Motivational reasoning and emotional argument is common to see in even very intelligent and educated individuals. Daniel Kahneman helped to define the idea of cognitive bias, and popularized it in his book, “Thinking Fast and Slow”. Over the decades the ways in which evolution has mesigned the human mind to fail the litmus test of reality testing has been more fully explored, and the list of cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and faulty brain circuits continues to grow ever longer.
I would like to introduce what I believe is a new, and as yet, unidentified type of cognitive bias the I’m labeling as “The Clumping Effect”. I have noticed this effect in myself over the last few years, and although I have not done a statistical analysis of the effect, feel it can be nothing more than a cognitive bias. The effect occurs when I am on the trail, either on my bike or running. The nature of the effect is this: If there is a stretch of trail with few runners, walkers, and cyclists, I notice that if there are two other people on the trail that are separated from each other at time 1 (when I notice them), then the three of us all converge at the same spot (time 2). In other words, if I’m on my bike I don’t just pass the first person and then later the second person, we all happen to be along the same point of the path together at time 2.
This effect can occur if all three subjects are moving in the same direction, or if two or moving in the same direction and one in the opposite direction, but all subjects must be moving at different velocities. In this definition I’m using the term velocity in its true physical sense (speed and direction), because you could for instance, have two bikes moving at the same speed, but opposite direction. Place a runner in-between the bikes and the Clumping Effect demands that the three will pass each other at the same point.
I notice this because it is somewhat annoying to be a cyclist, moving at a good clip on an empty trail, then have to be cautious about avoiding a collision when the lone spot of the trail is suddenly at full capacity. And, that I believe is the underlying reason for the Clumping Effect. It is those instances that stand out in my mind, whereas the many times that I pass one athlete then the other doesn’t really register as an event at all. We remember the hits and forget the misses, as any good skeptic knows.
I would be interested to know if anyone else has ever experienced a similar effect. I may also decide to do an experiment to measure the incidence of “hits” in comparison to “misses” on my typical trail. I’m curious to know do ‘hits to misses’ happen at a rate of 1:100 for example. How often does it have to happen that it stands out in my mind as something that “always happens”. Also, what proportion of users of the trail also notice the effect? I could send out a survey to local running and cycling groups?

References and other sources of good info:
1. Cognitive Biases Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias
2. Daniel Kahneman Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman
3. “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman. I really recommend this book.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/thinking-fast-and-slow/id443149884?mt=11
4. “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe (SGU)” podcast. Great free source of information on how to think logically.
http://www.theskepticsguide.org
5. “Neurological” Blog by Dr. Steven Novella. Also filled with great information on skeptical and logical thinking.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/
6. “The Rationally Speaking Podcast”, host Julia Galef.
http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org
7. SGUs guide to argument and logical fallacies: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logical-fallacies

What Would A Higher Level of Consciousness Look Like?

by Rich Feldenberg

As research in the neuroscience continues to advance, we are gaining more and more knowledge in regard to the sophisticated aspects of higher brain function.  Human neuroanatomy is well described, and the molecular biology leading to patterns of activity of individual brain cells up to complex neural circuits, containing astronomical numbers of brain cells, is also becoming better understood.  In addition, there is a great deal of information on patterns of human behavior, the ways people think, and the flaws and biases associated with normal human thinking based on research from the field of cognitive psychology.  One thing researcher still don’t agree about is, what is what do we mean by consciousness.  There is no single concise definition for consciousness, and there are some experts that think that this is not a well formulated or coherent question, and as such, we can never come up with a satisfactory answer or explanation for what it is or how it arises. Consciousness may not be any one particular thing, but may emerge by association of multiple brain systems.  

This reminds me a bit of the book, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, where a hyper-intelligent pan dimensional species built the supercomputer “Deep Thought”,  to find out once and for all, the answer to life, the universe, and everything, only to find after running the program for millions of years the answer was 42.  This didn’t seem like the kind of answer they were expecting.  When they asked Deep Thought what this meant the computer told them that they really didn’t ask the right question.  Our asking what consciousness is could be a little like this.  If we don’t know how to ask the question, the answer may not make a lot of sense.

Some would say that consciousness seems to be the property of being self aware of one’s own existence, to be aware of having certain ideas and thoughts, to be aware of information being received externally from one’s body through the senses, as well as, being aware of sensory information being received from within one’s own body.  

While intelligence and consciousness seem to be correlated to a large extent, these also appear to be two separate characteristics.  Intelligence is also a nebulous sort of concept, and is probably composite of many different factors.  It might be easier, in fact, to contemplate a higher level of intelligence than a higher level of consciousness.  We can all sort of imagine what it might be like to be smarter, but it seems less clear what it would mean to be more self aware.

Intelligence may be a property associated with problem solving, memory storage, memory access, and predicting future events.  It seems reasonable to conclude that if you have consciousness then there must be some level of intelligence associated with that.  If any creature or object is self aware, then there must be some degree of intelligence that goes with it, even if both the level of consciousness and intelligence are low.  It also seems reasonable to conclude that creatures with greater levels of consciousness may generally have a higher level of intelligence.  It may not follow that consciousness always has to exist with intelligence, however.  For example, it has been proposed that philosophical zombies could theoretically exist.  In other words, some entity that can think exactly like an intelligent human, respond perfectly to complex questions, solve problems, show appropriate emotions, and so on, but internally is not self aware any more than your pocket calculator when it calculates that 2+2=4.  This might apply to intelligent machines, where their very nature makes it difficult to determine if they have self awareness or not – Turing test be damned!  It could also apply to other species, both terrestrial or extraterrestrial where brain structure and nervous system are so different from us that determining the presence of consciousness could be very problematic.   

Down here on good old earth, it is easy to see that animals like chimps, dolphins, and our beloved family dog have intelligence.  Dogs for example recognize us, form social bonds with us, display emotion, recognize patterns of behavior and can anticipate future events based on past experience.  This is intelligence.  Many of us would conclude that dogs have some degree of consciousness, but of course, we can never really peer into the mind of our pet to know for sure that they are self aware.  I personally feel that philosophical zombies can’t really exist.  If something can mimic a self aware entity so perfectly, it must actually be a self aware entity.  It is just as clear that you can never prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, that anyone else really has a mind other than yourself.  Solipsism, as such, while possibly unfalsifiable, is never the most parsimonious explanation for the world around us.  It basically places us at the center of the universe, and so is by far the least likely explanation for the universe around us.   

Our brains have evolved to accept a theory of mind that allows us to view other people, besides just ourselves, as having thoughts, concerns, intentions and emotions.  This might seem a necessary requirement for a social animal, lest we forget the social insects like bees and ants.  It is certainly less clear that an ant recognizes its fellow workers as being capable of feeling pain or hunger, like it itself has evolved to perceive, but perhaps it does.  For an animal with a more complex nervous system, like a human, having a built in theory of mind is probably vital to working together towards common objectives and organizing patterns of society.  Our ancestors with this trait of understanding the mind of others, were more likely to survive due to the reproductive advantage of mutual cooperation and understanding in the group they were a part of. We must be careful, however, since these same biological circuits that evolved to give us a theory of mind often fire even when they are stimulated by patterns that have nothing to do with human behavior.  An example would be, when we as kids often feel that our toys have feelings, and could be sad if mistreated or neglected.  As adults, we often have the sense that there is unseen agency in the world.  Many primitive cultures believed there were spirits in the water, trees, sky and so on. There was a sense that other things must naturally have a mind like ourselves.  These kinds of superstitions live on today in many forms.   

So what might a higher level of consciousness look like?  It seems unlikely that consciousness is an all or none phenomenon, that it is either on or off.  We know that there are altered levels of consciousness that we are all well familiar with.  Sleep is a prime example.  During non-dream sleep we may not be aware of very much or anything at all.  People awakened from non-dream sleep often have no memory of anything or may recall only a few scattered thoughts or feelings.  During REM or dream sleep, we all know that we have a rich experience, but are usually unaware that we are dreaming, or that the events during the dream seem unusual.  Only after waking do we recognize that the dream scenario defied common sense, logic, and often the laws of physics.  The memory of the dream will usually quickly fade, unless reinforced by an active attempt to remember it.  The sleeping state, therefore, represent an altered level of consciousness.  During the dream state perceptions are altered, processing abilities are impaired, and our capacity for critical thinking is practically absent.  Lower level consciousness may be similar to having our mental processing systems and critical thinking skills shut off.  

During deep sedation or general anesthesia, our level of consciousness is artificially impaired.  Of course, this is what we want when undergoing a potentially painful or unpleasant procedure or surgery.  Most people have no awareness or concept of the passage of time when they are out during surgery.  The time under general anesthesia is essentially lost to them.  There was still brain function occurring during anesthesia, but not much higher brain function.  Even much of the crucial basal brain function is significantly impaired during general anesthesia, such as respiratory drive, making it critical that your anesthesiologist is also managing your airway and “breathing for you” by placing you on a ventilator while you are unconscious.  In many cases, the mechanism by which anesthetics alter consciousness is not well understood.

Drugs, such as anesthetics or recreational drugs that alter level of consciousness seem to be affecting certain brain areas that are necessary for maintaining consciousness.   This is also apparent with loss of consciousness that occurs with head trauma, where brain function has been disturbed in some way.  Axons stretched or sheared, neurons swollen, neurotransmitter levels in the synapses altered.   These kind of details, and many other observations of brain damaged patients, makes it clear that consciousness is a function of the brain.  There is no real evidence for a mind-body dualism that many people feel must be so.  

I tend to think of consciousness like a flashlight that is illuminating a basement filled with files and papers.  What items happen to be illuminated by the flashlight are what we are conscious of at that moment in time.  Everything else in the basement resides in our subconscious.   We may have some thought under the light in one moment, but soon the light has moved over to another item, and no longer illuminated, we lose the first thought from our conscious mind.  Some items in the basement hide in corners where we haven’t shined the light for a very long time, and possibly will never shine the light in those spots ever again.  

Perhaps a higher level of consciousness would give us the ability to hold our view over a much larger portion of our thoughts and memories at any one time, turning the flashlight into a spotlight.  Take this to the obvious extreme and we could light up the entire garage and all our previously subconscious thoughts and memories would now be in full focus at the same time.  There would be no difficulty finding any information that you possessed in your head, and you could think on multiple levels at one time.  Our internal awareness would be complete.

If being self aware is part of the conscious experience, then what would it feel like to be “more” self aware?  The Crisp and Turner, 2010 definition of self awareness is, “ a psychological state in which people are aware of their traits, feelings and behavior. Alternately, it can be defined as the realization of oneself as an individual entity.”  With this in mind a higher level of consciousness may mean that we are aware of our feelings and other traits much more often than we are now.  When we are focused on other activities, we aren’t necessarily thinking about how we are feeling, our internal states, or even that we exist at that moment.  A being with a higher level of consciousness might be much more in-tuned with those traits.  That is often the cited purpose of engaging in mindfulness exercises or meditation, so as to be more aware of your thoughts.  It doesn’t come very naturally for us most of the time.  Many times it is difficult to even describe what you’re feeling even when you do try to focus on it.  Again, take this to the absurd extreme and a being with a vastly higher level of consciousness than ourselves would never forget that they exist, what they are feeling, or any of their internal thought processes.  It would almost seem that if Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ever achieved that this kind of high level consciousness would be relatively easy to envision.  If a machine can be self aware at all, then what barrier would there be to it being more aware of all of it’s inner thoughts, identity, feelings, and memory than the average or even above average human.  Combine this with a superior intelligence, and wow, this may be the next giant leap in evolution.  

With human level consciousness, there are so many subconscious process going on behind the scenes, such as the basic instincts to survive and reproduce, that influence our day to day lives in just about every way.  Much of human behavior can be explained by these influences, even though we don’t often see this in ourselves very easily.  Perhaps having a greater awareness of all these subconsciously motivating forces could help us to be a more rational species.  Perhaps we will one day evolve from Homo sapiens to Homo rationalis (the rational ape).

Why Brontosaurus being back challenges my ability to change my mind

Why Brontosaurus being back challenges my ability to change my mind.

by Rich Feldenberg

 

 

Ok, here’s the thing.  I grew up dino-crazy.  From the time I was in 3^rd grade onward, I had a love for the prehistoric beasts we know as dinosaurs.  I’m not saying that a lot of kids don’t come down with dino-fever when they’re little (it is a common childhood illness after all), but it seems that for the vast majority of people it is a mild self-limiting disorder that is really nothing to worry about.  I didn’t fall into the category with the majority of inflicted, I was in the small percentage of patients where the condition became chronic.  There is an even smaller percentage of chronic dino-fever sufferers that go on to become paleontologists (so yes, there are some out there that have it worse than me).  I didn’t grow up to become a paleontologist, like I thought I would in 3^rd grade, but I continue to have an interest in learning more about my extinct darlings (all extinct that is except for the avian variety – birds!).  Of all the dinosaurs I knew about in 3^rd grade – and there are a lot more known today than there were then – brontosaurus was definitely one of my favorites.  It would certainly be amazing to be able to see what a living animal would have looked like.  Here’s hoping for Jurassic Park or Jurassic World technology one day – minus the rampaging raptors and out of control T. rex, of course!

Brontosaurus was one of the long-necked dinosaurs or sauropods.  They were a varied group and some, like brontosaurus, grew gigantic.  The sauropods were the biggest land animals to ever walk the earth.  Only blue whales are larger, and those whales are cheaters (literally, the “biggest” cheaters) because they use the buoyancy of the salty ocean water to prevent their tremendous weight from crushing the life out of them.  Not good old brontosaurus, they were built to take it.  In case you haven’t noticed, whales don’t last too long on dry land.  Back in my day (you know 3^rd grade) we thought that brontosaurus probably had to live in lakes and other bodies of water to support their mass, but over the last few decades it has become clear that isn’t so.  They roamed the dry land in herds.  Their legs and backs had to hold up under the unrelenting gravity of planet earth.  Their lungs had to expand to fill with air and their hearts had to pump blood through a super long neck leading to a brain (alright, so it was a tiny brain) with the weight of their own tissues constantly trying to flatten them.  A pretty impressive physiology had to be set in place by the wonder of evolution, and it is amazing to speculate on what environmental pressures lead to such crazy gigantism through natural selection.

So what does all this have to do with brontosaurus being back, or me having a tough time changing my mind?  Well, back during my paleontological training in 3^rd grade, brontosaurus was the most famous of the sauropod dinosaurs.  We did know about sauropods like diplodocus and brachiosaurus, but brontosaurus was the one most often portrayed in drawings and paintings.  Little did our young minds realize at the time, but there was a scientific controversy on the nomenclature of brontosaurus.  It seems that brontosaurus was named by the famous paleontologist Charles Marsh in 1879, but Marsh had already named a different skeleton of sauropod Apatosaurus in 1877.  Marsh, of course, thought that these two animals were different kinds, but in 1903 another scientist, named Elmer Riggs, studying the fossils, concluded that the two specimens were, in fact, one and the same species.  Even though Marsh was the discoverer of both specimens, the rules of dinosaur nomenclature state that the first named is the true name.  In other words, there was no brontosaurus, just apatosaurus.

Scientists had known, and basically accepted this since 1903, but it didn’t seem to trickle down to the general public until a long time later.  I’m not really sure when it became generally well known that brontosaurus was out and apatosaurus was in.  It may have been the 90s or early 2000s.  All I remember was being devastated that brontosaurus was no longer a thing!  The name was already well engrained in my mind, and it seemed annoying to have to now call brontosaurus, apatosaurus, but I was already scientifically trained by that time and was willing to do the right thing.  I began using the name apatosaurus when talking or thinking about the great beast.

Now new research has revealed that the bones of brontosaurus and apatosaurus really are two different kinds of animals.  So, just this year, brontosaurus is back after 112 years of mistaken identity.  When I saw the reports of the research teams conclusions I was overjoyed.  Yay, brontosaurus is back!  I love you brontosaurus!  Then the joy I felt at going back to a well engrained fact made me think about the difficulty humans have changing their minds.  The cognitive strain caused by having to accept new facts as true, and our emotional need for a stable, unchanging view of the world.  Darn, there are no free lunches after all!

Changing gears just a bit from the bones of the Thunder lizard to the frontal cortex of the “wise man” (Homo sapiens), research in cognitive psychology by nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman reveals that we rely on two systems to construct our view of reality, and to update that view as new information is processed.  These systems are called system 1 and system 2.  So much for creative naming.  System 1 is our quick thinking system.  It is similar to intuition or a gut feeling.  You don’t really have to think about the situation, the answer just comes to you.  Some of it is just evolutionary programming that is triggered by certain stimuli, like face recognition for example.  It allows us to rely on certain heuristics that may be right a lot of the time, so we can make snap decisions.

System 2 on the other hand is our slow thinking system.  It is dependent on more careful thinking and consideration to detail.  Applying statistical analysis or the scientific method to a problem would draw on system 2.  Unfortunately, system 2 is slow, expends a lot of mental energy, and is therefor expensive from a survival point of view.  In reality we use both systems everyday.

I think that since I learned about brontosaurus from such an early age, I formed a sort of heuristic of recognition when I saw or read something about apatosaurus.  There was a cognitive strain associated with placing apatosaurus in the memory location where brontosaurus was supposed to live.  The article that validated the uniqueness of brontosaurus as it’s own species gave me a sort of permission to use my old tried and true heuristic for recognizing the creature – much like recognizing a familiar face of a friend or celebrity.  A relief of the cognitive strain meant that I didn’t have to rely on system 2 each time to draw upon the fact that there is no brontosaurus, only apatosaurus.

This seemed a bit disappointing to me, since I consider myself someone who values system 2 type thinking a lot.  And this was only about the name of the brontosaurus.  Think of all the many beliefs deeply embedded in our minds due to having been placed there from an early age.  It makes it difficult, though fortunately not impossible, for us to self-examine facts that we take for granted.  But science teaches us that individual facts are updated, revised, and sometimes even completely changed as new evidence accumulates.  This is not how our system 1 evolved to interpret the world our distant ancestors woke up in.  The things our intuitions inform us of, that seem like common sense, are not always a good model of truth.  Getting my brontosaurus back told me that it is really hard to change your mind and update your model of the world.  Being open to change means feeling comfortable with some degree of uncertainty.  Not an easy thing, but something we can train ourselves to get better at accepting.  I was lucky this time, but the next beloved fact that is overturned will probably not be set back to zero again.  Oh well, I’m a scientist and I will continue to try my best to embrace the changes that are coming as science sheds new light on our world.    In the meantime, welcome back brontosaurus, I missed you!