About msunder

msunder

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05/28/07

• we have never been clever

  Authored by adamhoffer - 1 vote

• Hmm.

  Authored by tranquilo - 2 votes

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  Art & Design

  response to  Morgan Clendaniel's post Ignore This Sign...

  It's simple psychology

  The reason that people don't notice signs like these is not necessarily stupidity. The complexity of our world makes systematic processing, or careful notice of every stimuli, absolutely impossible in daily activity. It would be mentally exhausting to digest each detail as if it were completely fresh. These signs are very similar to things that we see every day, and therefore manipulate heuristic processing, the half-minded processing of information that people use in daily activities that allows them to only take note of jarringly unusual stimuli, filling in details like the writing on the sign with information from past experiences and, by doing so, streamlining their efficiency so they can complete everyday tasks more quickly. If there is a trend to blame in our society for the frequency with which anomalies like these signs go unnoticed, it is the increased complexity and hurriedness of our daily lives. Technology has allowed us to access everything faster and accomplish more per day, but at the cost of being, at times, unable to slow down and absorb the little things around us.

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  Commented on May 28, 2007 by - msunder