A Dramatic Demonstration of the Power of Mental Frames by Simon Singh [video] | Hacker News Reader

A Dramatic Demonstration of the Power of Mental Frames by Simon Singh [video]

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36 pointsbd15 comments

Very interesting video, and I really like the practical demonstration of how the same "dataset" can mean something completely different depending on what you expect from it.

Its a nice way to show that even though you might consider yourself "completely unbiased" and taking the scientific approach, you might get the wrong result anyways.

FYI Simon Singh has lost the last couple years of his life being sued by the UK's chiropractic association for telling the truth - ie, it's a load of codswallop.

Further info on that: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/12/simon-singh-go...

Hi everyone,

Off topic, but this reminded me of this petition:

http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Please, if you are not satisfied with the present state of things, sign it. If you are unaware, perhaps have a quick read, and see what you think? They have a report here,

http://www.libelreform.org/our-report

but do have a read around the net too. Simon has even come up with a pyramid scheme (for a good cause) in order to get 100 000 petitions. I have included his email below (verbatim). Please give this some consideration, thanks.

==============================

Dear Friends,

I’ve had an idea – an unusual idea, but I think it might just work.

As you know, England’s chilling libel laws need to be reformed. One way to help achieve this is for 100,000 people to sign the petition for libel reform before the political parties write their manifestos for the election. We have 17,000 signatures, but we really need 100,000, and we need your help to get there.

My idea

My idea is simple: if everyone who has already signed up persuades just one more person each week to sign the petition then we will reach our goal within a month!

One person per week is all we need, but please spread the word as much as you can. In fact, if you persuade 10 people to sign up then email me (simon <<at>> simonsingh.net) and I promise to thank you by printing your name in my next book … which I will start writing as soon as I have put my own libel case behind me. I cannot say when this will be, but it is a very real promise. My only caveat is that I will limit this to the first thousand people who recruit ten supporters.

When persuading your friends remember to tell them:

(a) English libel laws have been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee.

(b) These laws gag scientists, bloggers and journalists who want to discuss matters of genuine public interest (and public health!).

(c) Our laws give rise to libel tourism, whereby the rich and the powerful (Saudi billionaires, Russian oligarchs and overseas corporations) come to London to sue writers because English libel laws are so hostile to responsible journalism. (In fact, it is exactly because English libel laws have this global impact that we welcome signatories to the petition from around the world.)

(d) Vested interests can use their resources to bully and intimidate those who seek to question them. The cost of a libel trial in England is 100 times more expensive than the European average and typically runs to over £1 million.

(e) Three separate ongoing libel cases involve myself and two medical researchers raising concerns about three medical treatments. We face losing £1 million each. In future, why would anyone else raise similar concerns? If these health matters are not reported, then the public is put at risk.

My experience has been sobering. I’ve had to spend £100,000 to defend my writing and have put my life on hold for almost two years. However, the prospect of reforming our libel laws keeps me cheerful.

Thanks so much for your support. We’ve only got one shot at this – so I hope you can persuade 1 (or maybe 10) friends, family and colleagues to sign.

Massive thanks,

Simon

The Libel Reform Campaign is a coalition of English PEN, Index on Censorship and Sense About Science.

So far, 188 MPs have signed our Parliamentary Early Day Motion calling for libel reform and the Justice Secretary Jack Straw has formed a working party that the Libel Reform Coalition is represented on.

Please also considering donating to keep our campaign going: http://libelreform.indiemedium.com/lt.php?id=ZkQFWw8KBlcYDEg...

There's a great book by Joseph O'Connor called "Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People " Which deals a great bit with "framing", as well as other concepts that really open up the understanding of human communication and perception. It was initially intended for psychologists/psychatrists/etc.. (I believe, based on the numerous references to using this in "sessions"), but it is really appropriate for just about every person who wants to understand human communication a little better.

This is a great subject. Framing is essentially manipulating our bayesian priors. I am interested in the variation of this thought line that we can consciously vary our prior. I can do this with, for instance, a Necker cube. I can deliberately switch my anticipated model and have the rest of my experience line up with this switch. Although curiously, it has a rather slow switching time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

It's not just the fact that he's compelling us to hear something, he's also pointing out what words we're going to hear on the screen. If he just promised we'd hear something and then not show them as it's playing, a lot of people would hear much less meaningful stuff still.

He specifically talked about the fact that when the brain has a "strong enough" bias, that's when it ends up telling you that its false error correction data is indeed fact.

Amazing how the mind locks on to the given pattern. Maybe that's related to the psychological fact that people tend to overestimate the control they have over the physical world. You could also call it optimism.

But, could the demonstrator have given any other lines and still caused the audience to observe them in the song? Those lines were deliberately designed from careful study of the song.

Really liked this demonstration. I wonder what the effects of this are on investors when evaluating a unique idea.

Isn't this the same reason why optical illusions work? The brain finds patterns and holds on to them.

Yes, but I think the interesting part of this (and similar) demonstrations is that it shows illusions that cross more than one sense. It's not just tricking your eyes; it's using your eyes to trick your hearing.