Being Wrong - Kathryn Schulz [30]
Like other automatic perceptual processes, inattentional blindness is generally quite useful. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to tune out the noise in our environment and focus on the task at hand. But when this process works against us, the consequences can be grave. In 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 was preparing to land in Miami when a light on the control panel failed to illuminate. The three crewmembers in the cockpit became so focused on the problem that they didn’t notice that the plane was continuing its descent on autopilot. The flight crashed in the Everglades, killing a hundred people. Analysis of the cockpit voice recorder showed that none of the crew noticed the impending crisis until just seconds before the crash. Similarly, inattentional blindness is thought to be a culprit in many car accidents, especially those involving pedestrians and cyclists—who, no matter how visible they make themselves, are less likely to be anticipated by drivers, and thus less likely to be seen. On a less frightening but still frustrating note, inattentional blindness is commonly exploited by thieves who work in pairs or groups to create a distraction, thereby drawing their target’s attention away from what would otherwise be the obvious pilfering of his or her possessions.
This deliberate exploitation of systemic perceptual glitches has a long and occasionally disreputable history, especially within religion and politics. One early account of the use of illusions for such purposes comes from David Brewster, a Scottish polymath and the author of the 1833 Letters on Natural Magic. Brewster was interested in “the means by which [ancient governments] maintained their influence over the human mind—of the assistance which they derived from the arts and the sciences, and from a knowledge of the powers and phenomena of nature.” If you’ve ever wondered about the origins of the phrase “smoke and mirrors,” Brewster provides a detailed description of how to use pieces of concave silver to throw human images against a background of smoke, thereby making gods (or rulers, or enemies) seem to dance and writhe in the center of a fire. His catalog of auditory illusions includes, among others, explanations of the mechanisms behind “the golden virgins whose ravishing voices resounded through the temple of Delphos; the stone from the river Pactolus, whose trumpet notes scared the robber from the treasure which it guarded; the speaking head which uttered its oracular responses at Lesbos; and the vocal statue of Memnon, which began at the break of day to accost the rising sun.”
As these examples suggest, dominion over perception is power. This is not a truth limited to ancient times. In fact, the most crystalline example of it might come from Brewster’s own era, in the form of a footnote to the history of colonial Africa. In the mid-nineteenth century, France was experiencing difficulty in Algeria. The region’s Islamic holy men were using their status—and supposedly their supernatural powers—to encourage resistance to colonial rule, and the resulting rebellion was proving difficult to quell. Deciding to fight fire with fire, Napoleon III turned to one Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, an erstwhile watchmaker who had become an extraordinarily inventive and convincing illusionist. (Today Robert-Houdin is recognized as the father of modern magic, an honor that comes complete with a kind of figurative primogeniture. In 1890, an aspiring young magician named Ehrich Weiss, seeking to pay homage to his hero, changed his name to Houdini.) Napoleon sent Robert-Houdin to Algeria with instructions to out-holy the holy men, and so he did. Wielding the full panoply of contemporary illusions—plucking cannon balls from hats, catching bullets between his teeth, causing perfectly incarnate chieftains to vanish without a trace—the magician convinced his audience that the more powerful gods were on the side of the empire, and that the French, accordingly, were not