In his blog post yesterday, Robert "Gagdad Bob" Godwin touches on the strange phenomenon of genius. This made me remember something I read in December 2005 about a phenomenon named "Latent Inhibition". I have a hard time remembering that name, because I think of it as "mind filter". Basically, normal people simply don't experience most of what they perceive. Most impulses are stopped at the very doors of perception and never make a memory -- seemingly not even short-term memories. For all intents and purposes, it is as if the perception wasn't even there.
This inattention to detail is not caused by a lack of processing power: Even highly intelligent people suffer from this "detailed blindness". Or rather, they don't suffer at all, except perhaps from boredom. They live their ordinary lives knowing nothing else. And if they are exceptionally intelligent, they excel at the ordinary things. They may have a genius IQ, but they are not geniuses. They are highly intelligent ordinary people. Latent inhibition is a trait that is inherited separately from intelligence.
It is a good thing that most people have this mental filter, because most who lack it go insane. On the other hand, those who don't go insane become geniuses. In other words, the geniuses and the insane have more in common with each other than with ordinary people... even highly intelligent ordinary people. But it seems that an ordinary intelligence is not able to cope with the flurry of information.
One condition that has been specifically linked to this is schizophrenia. This surprises me slightly, because I have also read that patients with schizophrenia have reduced brains, with the fluid-filled hollows (ventricles) in the brain taking up more of the space in their brain case than normal. Perhaps there are many more people walking around with reduced brains, but thanks to the mental filter, nobody notices. By sheer synchronicity, this article (in Norwegian, but with English picture) shows the almost completely fluid-filled brain of a French state employee. I don't think this condition is typical of French state employees, but the French may well disagree. The point is, you don't need all of a human brain if you aren't too perceptive.
I suspect a low latent inhibition makes for a rocky start of your education. I mean, the teacher is talking about Minnesota and a fly briefly lands on your desk. It has six legs in addition to wings. If that's possible, why don't cats and dogs have six legs and wings? What would life be if all animals had six legs and wings? Would people have four arms or four legs? You may end up as a great biologist one day, or more likely just another science fiction writer. But you won't learn much about Minnesota that way.
2 comments:
"fluid-filled brain of a French state employee..." very funny. Great data for making sport with French-bashing.
re Latent Inhibition:
A friend who has spent decades in law-enforcement explained that that's one of the reason why they get people being questioned to repeat themselves ad nauseam. Often, a small piece of information "slips out", something of which the speaker is not consciously aware or that is not part of their "memory" per say.
Of course, that's also the way liars screw up & expose themselves.
And of course there is the small detail that we are not alone in our head. The police would know this from experience. Even if someone does not remember (or does not want to remember) there are small complexes working in the background, and they may be more pliable.
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