Yeah, I don’t think this illusion (which I posted in the colour constancy discussion you mention) is an appropriate example to use as an introduction to the Predictably Irrational story. Your brain is not being ‘fooled’ here—it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is solving the inverse rendering problem and not identifying RGB values. The anchoring effect with the prices of subscriptions is not really the same kind of thing at all.
Ariely then went so far as to recommend in his book that for best effect, you should go to bars and clubs with a wingman who is similar to you but less attractive.
It’s commonly observed that many girls use this exact tactic when going to bars and clubs.
Your brain is not being ‘fooled’ here—it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is solving the inverse rendering problem and not identifying RGB values. The anchoring effect with the prices of subscriptions is not really the same kind of thing at all.
Why not? Presumably the brain is ‘supposed’ to perceive differences more easily than absolute values as well, because that’s what was useful on the sorts of problems that shaped the brainware we now use to compare prices.
Your visual system is not evolved to be a colorimeter because that is not actually very useful for the kinds of things we use our visual system for. Thinking that your brain ‘should’ identify the same RGB values as the same ‘colors’ in a different context reflects a confusion about what invariant properties of the world the visual system represents as ‘color’.
Our conscious experience of color is related to the spectral composition of light that reaches our retinas but the RGB value of a pixel is not sufficient to describe the more complex qualia we label ‘colors’. If there is any ‘failure’ captured by this illusion it is a failure to understand what a good job the brain does of extracting useful information from the complex pattern of light that falls onto our retinas rather than a failure of the visual system. A colorimeter is a relatively simple $90 device. Matching the human visual system’s performance on the inverse rendering problem is an unsolved hard AI problem.
The anchoring phenomenon which can result in poor choices in certain circumstances on the other hand does reflect a ‘failure’ in the sense that a generally useful heuristic may lead us to make poor judgements. I’d say it is an example of misapplying a heuristic to a problem it is ill suited for. I think comparing it to the colour constancy phenomenon is misleading and inapt.
I totally agree that those functions of the visual system are features and not bugs, but I still think the analogy to biases holds; after all, there’s a strong argument that that biases can be features too. It’s all a question of whether they’re being used in the sorts of situations for which they were designed, or whether they’re in an unusual situation where they break down. In the case of vision, that’s specially designed optical illusions, but practically all modern thought is outside the original design specs for our cognitive heuristics.
Thinking that your brain ‘should’ identify the same RGB values as the same ‘colors’ in a different context reflects a confusion about what invariant properties of the world the visual system represents as ‘color’. … If there is any ‘failure’ captured by this illusion it is a failure to understand what a good job the brain does of extracting useful information from the complex pattern of light that falls onto our retinas rather than a failure of the visual system.
I agree with mattnewport’s use of “supposed to” if it’s in the sense of current usefulness. “It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do” as in “it is doing what we’d generally want it to do”. The ability to screen off tinting and lighting variations is probably more useful than the ability to perceive absolute colours. (If you see a Rubik’s cube through a yellow-tinted window and you want to figure out what colours are showing, then you don’t want the window to affect your answer.) But if we’re looking at a list of subscription options or choosing between TVs at a store, it would be vastly more preferable to have some neutral, non-relative way of evaluating the options, some way of having a $2000 TV evoke the same amount of happy desirability feelings whether you see it next to a $4000 TV or a $200 TV.
I’m not sure that the same neural mechanism is used to compare colours and to compare prices, but I could be convinced. (Is there any research on it? Are there any conditions that impair one of these processes, such that we could study them and see if the other process is impaired too?) If they are indeed the same, and I could choose to knock out that part of my brain or not (with no other side effects), then I think (very tentatively) that I would. I think I could deal with perceiving the blue tile as grey if it made me a much more rational economic decision-maker.
I really doubt that same neural mechanism is involved. Like P= 0.0005. We’re dealing with totally different areas of the brain that evolved hundreds of millions of years apart. I’m not even sure I see an obvious sense in which the optical illusion corresponds to the cognitive bias.
I don’t think it’s mechanically the same, or that there’s a value-of-magazine-subscriptions equivalent to double opponent cells in the visual cortex, but I think the two processes are conceptually solutions to the same problem.
The general problem is trying to pick out salient features from what’s currently in the attention without being distracted by the macro-level problem of how what’s currently in the attention differs from everything else.
So in color vision, that’s something like determining what parts of a field are redder or greener than others without being distracted by the entire field being redder than usual because it’s sunset. In purchasing, it’s something like deciding which of two meals is better value than another without being distracted by the whole menu being more expensive than normal because it’s a fancy restaurant.
Yeah, that was my intuition (though I hadn’t thought about it enough to get that confident). I was just posing the question to see if anyone actually wanted to argue a connection between the two processes or if they were only using it as an analogy. I got the impression that Yvain was using it as an analogy but that Nick was arguing or assuming that both cases were actually using the same cognitive processes.
Yeah, I don’t think this illusion (which I posted in the colour constancy discussion you mention) is an appropriate example to use as an introduction to the Predictably Irrational story. Your brain is not being ‘fooled’ here—it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is solving the inverse rendering problem and not identifying RGB values. The anchoring effect with the prices of subscriptions is not really the same kind of thing at all.
It’s commonly observed that many girls use this exact tactic when going to bars and clubs.
And some people have advised hitting on the less attractive one on the theory that she’ll be more likely to be receptive to advances.
Or to make the other one jealous.
Why not? Presumably the brain is ‘supposed’ to perceive differences more easily than absolute values as well, because that’s what was useful on the sorts of problems that shaped the brainware we now use to compare prices.
Your visual system is not evolved to be a colorimeter because that is not actually very useful for the kinds of things we use our visual system for. Thinking that your brain ‘should’ identify the same RGB values as the same ‘colors’ in a different context reflects a confusion about what invariant properties of the world the visual system represents as ‘color’.
Our conscious experience of color is related to the spectral composition of light that reaches our retinas but the RGB value of a pixel is not sufficient to describe the more complex qualia we label ‘colors’. If there is any ‘failure’ captured by this illusion it is a failure to understand what a good job the brain does of extracting useful information from the complex pattern of light that falls onto our retinas rather than a failure of the visual system. A colorimeter is a relatively simple $90 device. Matching the human visual system’s performance on the inverse rendering problem is an unsolved hard AI problem.
The anchoring phenomenon which can result in poor choices in certain circumstances on the other hand does reflect a ‘failure’ in the sense that a generally useful heuristic may lead us to make poor judgements. I’d say it is an example of misapplying a heuristic to a problem it is ill suited for. I think comparing it to the colour constancy phenomenon is misleading and inapt.
I totally agree that those functions of the visual system are features and not bugs, but I still think the analogy to biases holds; after all, there’s a strong argument that that biases can be features too. It’s all a question of whether they’re being used in the sorts of situations for which they were designed, or whether they’re in an unusual situation where they break down. In the case of vision, that’s specially designed optical illusions, but practically all modern thought is outside the original design specs for our cognitive heuristics.
Beautiful. Well said.
I agree with mattnewport’s use of “supposed to” if it’s in the sense of current usefulness. “It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do” as in “it is doing what we’d generally want it to do”. The ability to screen off tinting and lighting variations is probably more useful than the ability to perceive absolute colours. (If you see a Rubik’s cube through a yellow-tinted window and you want to figure out what colours are showing, then you don’t want the window to affect your answer.) But if we’re looking at a list of subscription options or choosing between TVs at a store, it would be vastly more preferable to have some neutral, non-relative way of evaluating the options, some way of having a $2000 TV evoke the same amount of happy desirability feelings whether you see it next to a $4000 TV or a $200 TV.
I’m not sure that the same neural mechanism is used to compare colours and to compare prices, but I could be convinced. (Is there any research on it? Are there any conditions that impair one of these processes, such that we could study them and see if the other process is impaired too?) If they are indeed the same, and I could choose to knock out that part of my brain or not (with no other side effects), then I think (very tentatively) that I would. I think I could deal with perceiving the blue tile as grey if it made me a much more rational economic decision-maker.
I really doubt that same neural mechanism is involved. Like P= 0.0005. We’re dealing with totally different areas of the brain that evolved hundreds of millions of years apart. I’m not even sure I see an obvious sense in which the optical illusion corresponds to the cognitive bias.
I don’t think it’s mechanically the same, or that there’s a value-of-magazine-subscriptions equivalent to double opponent cells in the visual cortex, but I think the two processes are conceptually solutions to the same problem.
The general problem is trying to pick out salient features from what’s currently in the attention without being distracted by the macro-level problem of how what’s currently in the attention differs from everything else.
So in color vision, that’s something like determining what parts of a field are redder or greener than others without being distracted by the entire field being redder than usual because it’s sunset. In purchasing, it’s something like deciding which of two meals is better value than another without being distracted by the whole menu being more expensive than normal because it’s a fancy restaurant.
Yeah, that was my intuition (though I hadn’t thought about it enough to get that confident). I was just posing the question to see if anyone actually wanted to argue a connection between the two processes or if they were only using it as an analogy. I got the impression that Yvain was using it as an analogy but that Nick was arguing or assuming that both cases were actually using the same cognitive processes.