We are trying to detect relevant signal, our consciousness and cognitive functions embodied in an extraordinary sensing organism, in turn, embedded in a world of signal and noise.
Sensory salience
Our eyes can distinguish several million colours, our ears half a million tones, and our noses over a trillion different odours. (Entangled Life, Sheldrake. M)
Given the enormity of sensory data we are able to detect it is of no surprise that we have developed strategies to “make sense” of all these inputs.
For example, our eyes can detect peripheral motion at higher frame rates than what is directly in front of us (so you know when that wolf is pouncing!) but at the expense of colour (because you really don’t care at that point). At the peripheral, motion is salient and we detect it more efficiently.
In general our senses are searching for salient information in order to detect threat and opportunity with an emphasis on threat.
Preconception and pattern recognition
To be cognitively more efficient we ignore a lot of sensory input (the less salient), and use preconceived images based on expectation which we update with occasional new sensory input. This is how “slight of hand” magic tricks work, our preconceptions create literal blind spots.
In turn, our expectations are informed by pattern recognition, the process of mapping input to semantic memory. Semantic memory is built up over time and includes facts, ideas, meaning and concepts which are enmeshed with experience, and are culturally dependent. In other words, our expectations contain experiential and cultural bias, the cost of efficiency is confusing signal with noise.
Cognitive biases
Furthermore, what we determine to be salient in the first place, in part, is informed by our cognitive biases. Our biases become heuristic lenses used to assign salience to input that resonates with our preconceived expectations.
This dynamic feedback loop can increasingly lead us to confuse signal with noise. Simple examples of this are confirmation bias where we search for signals that confirm what we already believe, and salience bias, the tendency to focus on items that are more emotionally striking.
TL;DR Our biases and expectations lead us to assign importance to the wrong information in order to more efficiently “make sense” of the world.
To become better at detecting true signal we need to account for all this, but even adjusting for our own cognitive biases is an almost impossible task. This is where we need each other, it is much easier to recognise someone else’s expectations and biases than it is our own.
Pattern recognition has served us very well so far, affording rapid detection of both resources and threats. The increase in noise, particularly noise created by humans (from naïve bullshitting to PSYOPs) undermines the utility of pattern recognition. It is worth developing improved signal detection to have more accurate expectations, and afford better fit to reality.
As this series will explore in later articles, there are specific intra and inter personal skills that we can develop to help ourselves and each other. We are embedded in this world together, and we are better fit to make sense of it when working together.
Previous article in this series “What is Signal?”
Next article in this series “Hermeneutics: Beauty and Suspicion”
