Quotes by Leonard Mlodinow

Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal. For example, most people consider that the greatest evidence of an event one can obtain is to see it with their own eyes, and in a court of law little is held in more esteem than eyewitness testimony. Yet if you asked to display for a court a video of the same quality as the unprocessed data catptured on the retina of a human eye, the judge might wonder what you were tryig to put over. For one thing, the view will have a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina. Moreover, the only part of our field of vision with good resolution is a narrow area of about 1 degree of visual angle around the retina’s center, an area the width of our thumb as it looks when held at arm’s length. Outside that region, resolution drops off sharply. To compensate, we constantly move our eyes to bring the sharper region to bear on different portions of the scene we wish to observe. And so the pattern of raw data sent to the brain is a shaky, badly pixilated picture with a hole in it. Fortunately the brain processes the data, combining input from both eyes, filling in gaps on the assumption that the visual properties of neighboring locations are similar and interpolating. The result - at least until age, injury, disease, or an excess of mai tais takes its toll - is a happy human being suffering from the compelling illusion that his or her vision is sharp and clear.We also use our imagination and take shortcuts to fill gaps in patterns of nonvisual data. As with visual input, we draw conclusions and make judgments based on uncertain and incomplete information, and we conclude, when we are done analyzing the patterns, that out “picture” is clear and accurate. But is it?

Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the odds of an event with a fixed probability increase or decrease depending on recent occurrences of the event is called the gamblers fallacy. For example, if Kerrich landed, say, 44 heads in the first 100 tosses, the coin would not develop a bias towards the tails in order to catch up! Thats what is at the root of such ideas as her luck has run out and He is due. That does not happen. For what its worth, a good streak doesnt jinx you, and a bad one, unfortunately , does not mean better luck is in store.

A failure doesnt mean you are unworthy, nor does it preclude success on the next try.

Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.

Scientists attach great importance to the human capacity for spoken language. But we also have a parallel track of nonverbal communication, which may reveal more than our carefully chosen words, and sometimes be at odds with them.

One of the most surprising forms of nonverbal communication is the way we automatically adjust the amount of time we spend looking into anothers eyes as a function of our relative social position.

Touch is our most highly developed sense when we are born, and it remains a fundamental mode of communication throughout a babys first year and an important influence throughout a persons life.

Expressive speech, with modulation in pitch and volume, and a minimum of noticeable pauses, boosts credibility and enhances the impression of intelligence.

Our subliminal mental processes operate outside awareness because they arise in these portions of our mind that are inaccessible to our conscious self their inaccessibility is due to the architecture of the brain rather than because they have been subject to Freudian motivational forces like repression.

One of the things your unconscious mind does for you - and its a great gift - is it gives you extra courage to view the outer world and it does that by giving you an extra-special view of yourself.

Touch seems to be such an important tool for enhancing social cooperation and affiliation that we have evolved a special physical route along which those subliminal feelings of social connection travel from skin to brain.

Listeners instinctively detect that when we lower the usual pitch of our voice, we are sad, and when we raise it, we are angry or fearful.