how rigid is your brain

[DaSwede]

The following is an illuminating example of my brain rigidity, now show me yours.

Many moons ago I saw a couple walking towards me on the sidewalk.They were holding hands. First I saw the guy. He was dark and wore denim. The woman, well, my initial thought was "Oh look, she has a mustache." As you've guessed, there were in fact two men, not a man and a woman. One would think that a brain - any brain - would more readily accept a two-guy-hypothesis than this hetero-couple-woman-with-a-mustache-hypothesis...

I can easily imagine a bunch of reasons why it's advantageous to our survival not to be too quick in abandoning the truths and categories that our brains have established so painstakingly throughout our individual lives and throughout the centuries. It's ok, I'm fine with being a bit slow, and I believe I understand the mechanisms at work here. My question to each and every one of you is just: How rigid is your brain? Examples, please! Understand I'm not asking for how rigid your values are, or anything like that - the above was just an example (that I'm not proud of.) It's your brain as such I'm after!

Very much looking forward to reading your replies and maybe learning that I'm not alone.

[nucleardream]

'tis true - my brain has similarily fallen victim to such hasty and erroneous assumptions. I can't remember off hand when I was "tricked" into believing a hetero-hypothesis vs a correct homo-hypothesis, but one thing I will never forget. The vision is one of those things that for some reason my brain has prioritized above countless other ones while in college to not forget (I graduated about 5 years ago).

I will never shake off the image of seeing my first lesbian couple holding hands. I can immediately place myself back exactly in the position I was at the time. Why is this so? Why can I not seem to forget this image when I would rather be keen to remembering other ones? Some things just live with people.

As an extension of the original RQ, and what I think of, why does the brain remember some trivial thoughts and not others, both being equal in their triteness.

[DaSwede]

I know what you mean about the trivial thoughts, nucleardream. Sometimes it's so obvious that the brain really needs desperately to work through something. I remember the long night in front of the teve that followed 9/11 - I think I must have watched the planes hit the towers at least 200 times before I could almost hear my brain saying to me: Ok, got it now. But up till the twohundredth time my brain hadn't got it, it really needed to see it again. Planes flying into a building - that was a sight unseen - a new concept. I think my brain 'did' that sight about as many times as a child does something new before it's learned. So I get that. But all these trivial thoughts... yeah I know what you mean. Where do they fit in?

[Azimov]

I get what you mean but it's hard to find a personal example to illustrate your point!
I think what you describe goes a long way to explain such phenomenon as ghostly visitatations, UFO experiences and monster sightings, to name only three!
The brain does what it can with the, sometimes confusing, stimuli it recieves several billion times a second!
It's not inconceivable then, that occasionally it makes the odd error and presents the waking, or conscious "mind" with something that it has a hard time processing and so when it does we either have to accept that a mistake has been made or believe wholeheartedly that what we "percieved" was indeed true!

Those that believe they have seen a ghost for example, find themselves on trash TV making complete fools of themselves and those who accept that they have been witness to a breakdown in communications between their senses and their brain, sit back and laugh at the former!

Me? I like to watch clouds and trash TV!
What can I say? I like a laugh!

[DaSwede]

We have those tv-programs over here too, Azimov... I particularly remember one featuring a Danish woman in her sixties. She told of an incident where outdoors in the garden she had been hit in the back by a hostile ghost who didn't want her living in that house. She also happened to mention that she had been working in that garden bent over double all day and that she had been pulling her two grandchildren in a wheelbarrow behind her using one arm... but she never I swear never made a connection between those activities and a sudden back pain - or at least not a conscious one, I should say - the fact that she did supply that information may of course mean that at some level she did make the connection after all.

Having said that - life is mysterious.