The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us by Chabris Christopher & Simons Daniel

Author:Chabris, Christopher & Simons, Daniel [Chabris, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2010-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

And Then What Happened?

The illusory perception of causes from correlations is closely tied to the appeal of stories. When we hear that teens are listening to sexually explicit music or playing violent games, we expect there to be consequences, and when we hear that those same teens are subsequently more likely to have sex or to be violent, we perceive a causal link. We immediately believe we understand how these behaviors are causally linked, but our understanding is based on a logical fallacy. The third major mechanism driving the illusion of cause comes from the way in which we interpret narratives. In chronologies or mere sequences of happenings, we assume that the earlier events must have caused the later ones.

David Foster Wallace, the celebrated author of the novel Infinite Jest, committed suicide by hanging himself in the late summer of 2008. Like many famous creative writers, he suffered for a long time from depression and substance abuse, and he had attempted suicide before. Wallace was something of a literary prodigy, publishing his first novel, The Broom of the System, at the age of twenty-five while he was still studying for his master of fine arts (MFA) degree. The book was praised by the New York Times, but received mixed reviews elsewhere. Wallace worked on a follow-up short story collection, but could not help feeling like a failure. His mother brought him back to live at home. According to a profile in the New Yorker by D. T. Max,11 things went downhill quickly:

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