By Daniel Simons, on February 15th, 2012
In 2011, a computer (Watson) outplayed two human Jeopardy champions. In 1997, chess computer Deep Blue defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov. In both cases, the computer “solved” the game—found the right questions or good moves—differently than humans do. Defeating humans in these domains took years of research and programming by teams of engineers, but only with huge advantages in speed, efficiency, memory, and precision could computers compete with much more limited humans. What allows human experts to match wits with custom-designed computers equipped with tremendous processing power? […]
By Daniel Simons, on March 25th, 2011
When we look at the world around us, we feel that we are seeing it completely and accurately. What accounts for that […]
By Daniel Simons, on November 16th, 2010
You might think you remember how you heard about the attacks on September 11, 2001, but you might well be wrong. A reader sent a remarkable example of memory distortion for a much earlier experience which illustrates how easily memories can […]
By Daniel Simons, on June 13th, 2010
A friend referred me to a wonderful case of a lawyer taking advantage of the limits of memory to try to get his client out of a traffic violation. It’s almost hard to believe this actually happened — it’s easier to imagine it happening on a television show as a critical plot twist. After […]
By Daniel Simons, on April 20th, 2010
The BBC apparently has conducted a remarkable study looking at how eyewitnesses remember a staged crime. Although this sort of stunt has been pulled many times in studies of eyewitness fallibility, this one took the approach and realism a step further than previous […]
By Daniel Simons, on March 31st, 2010
A series of articles by Yaakov Kareev from the mid-late 1990s showing something remarkable: People with less working memory capacity are better able to detect moderately strong correlations (Kareev, 1995; Kareev et al, 1997; Kareev, 2000). Understanding why requires a bit of a digression into statistics. […]
By Daniel Simons, on February 26th, 2010
I just received an email from a contractor in Austria who described a legal problem that many contractors face. Apparently, demolition crews are sued regularly by homeowners for damage to nearby homes. After a blast that causes vibration in a house, homeowners search their house and discover big cracks. They then blame […]
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