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Saturday 29 October 2016

Pink elephants

Scott Adams the Dilbert cartoonist recently posted a good take on pink elephants.

Here’s a little thought experiment for you:

If a friend said he could see a pink elephant in the room, standing right in front of you, but you don’t see it, which one of you is hallucinating?

Answer: The one who sees the pink elephant is hallucinating.


The whole post is well worth reading even though the basic idea has been expressed in a variety of other ways. The Emperor’s New Clothes is a somewhat similar analogy, but Adams’ version is an excellent modern reminder. Realities with additions are hallucinations and the additions were added intentionally.

If a crowd of people are pointing to a stain on the wall, and telling you it is talking to them, with a message from God, and you don’t see anything but a stain, who is hallucinating? Is it the majority who see the stain talking or the one person who does not?

Answer: The people who see the stain talking are experiencing a group hallucination, which is more common than you think.

In nearly every scenario you can imagine, the person experiencing an unlikely addition to their reality is the one hallucinating. If all observers see the same addition to their reality, it might be real. But if even one participant can’t see the phenomenon – no matter how many can – it is almost certainly not real.

However those who need their pink elephants cannot apply the idea to real life. It only works if you don't see the pink elephants in the first place. Depending on allegiances, a varied herd of pink elephants could look like this.

Gods
Prophets
Ghosts
Miracles
Multiple universes

Or how about more abstract pink elephants such as -

Democracy
Social justice
Political integrity
Freedom
Dignity

And even -
The scientific method

Some of these evasive beasts are pinker and more elephantine than others – it depends on the strength of allegiances where allegiances, money and politics are closely related. Good as Adams’ analogy is, words rarely persuade. Pink elephants are here to stay.

3 comments:

Sam Vega said...

In nearly every scenario you can imagine, the person experiencing an unlikely addition to their reality is the one hallucinating. If all observers see the same addition to their reality, it might be real. But if even one participant can’t see the phenomenon – no matter how many can – it is almost certainly not real.

I'm not convinced by this at all. Selective attention experiments show clearly that unlikely additions to reality are not seen by people when their attention is elsewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

Adams is right to say that people can be hypnotised into falsely believing that something is there, but they can also be hypnotised into falsely believing it is not. They can be induced to walk into walls, or repeatedly trip over obvious obstructions, etc.

If Adams means that the unlikely addition is an hallucination when it is pointed out to people, then that's something entirely different. In the case of Trump, it is more a question of prior allegiances and predispositions determining what people see in him.

Demetrius said...

See you later, hallucinator.

A K Haart said...

Sam - I take it that Adams is referring to reality additions which are said to be illusions by at least one person, not failures of perception. I'm not sure why he raises hypnotism because as you suggest in Trump's case he is writing about manipulating prior dispositions which is where the analogy is most useful.

Demetrius - in a while cartoon style.