Where are all the aliens? The complexity in their detection can be in ourselves, says a group of psychologists from the University of Cadiz (Spain). The article of scientists published in the journal Acta Astronautica says that we could simply overlook the signs of the presence of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. And this is not surprising, because this is one of the features of the work of our consciousness, which has a scientific explanation.
The human brain is a very complex and at the same time very strange thing. He has to process a huge amount of information of various kinds of usefulness daily. It often happens that a person simply does not notice what he has right before his eyes, because his attention at that moment is directed to a completely different direction.
This is called blindness inattention. The term was introduced in 1992 by the scientists Erien Mark and Irwin Rock and was used as the title of their joint book, published in 1998. The phenomenon does not pertain to problems with vision and is purely psychological in nature. And very bizarre, as you can see by watching a video created by two Harvard researchers, Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois and Christopher Chapris of Harvard. This is a visual experiment. Your task is to concentrate and count the number of passes of a basketball between students.
A phenomenon can be defined as the inability of an individual to see an irritant suddenly appearing in the field of vision, such as a person in a gorilla costume, who appeared, and then again disappeared from the frame. Did they notice the gorilla? Congratulations. Then maybe they also noticed how the color of the curtains changes in the course of the roller, and another girl in black leaves the frame? No? Then revise again.
Psychologists at the University of Cadiz have decided to conduct another experiment with a gorilla to illustrate clearly why scientists still have not found any sign of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
"And what if the cause that prevents the fulfillment of this scientific task is hidden in the human factor or the biopsychological features of our brain?" - the psychologists Gabriel de la Torre and Manuel Garcia are asking themselves.
To test their idea, the researchers invited to participate in a simple experiment to test the cognitive abilities of 137 volunteers. The participants were asked to answer the three questions posed. The results of the test should show how many people will have a predisposition to give quick answers without actually thinking about them (these scientists were referred to as the "first group"), and which should be more carefully addressed to the solution of these three issues ("second group"), .
After completing the test and completing the questionnaires, thanks to which the researchers were able to determine the level of attention of each person, the participants were asked to carefully check the aerial photographs of the surface of our planet and note on them artificial structures like buildings, as well as natural objects like rivers and mountain ranges.
However, in one of the photographs there was a tiny, 3 mm-size gorilla. As the researchers expected, representatives of the "second group" of subjects should have noticed the "hidden" gorilla figure more often than the first, but the results were even more impressive.
Among all the participants in the experiment, only 32.8 percent of the people found the gorilla in the picture, while almost all of them demonstrated the level of cognitive attention of the "first group", that is, they relied on the "more impulsive / intuitive method of perception of information."
"It seems that focusing on a particular method of searching, for example, searching for radio signals of extraterrestrial origin, can blind us, shielding us from other possible options," the researchers report in their conclusions.
"People can overlook the painted gorilla in the picture. The question is, how many "gorillas" we could have missed out looking for signs of extraterrestrial life? "
In addition to reminding astronomers of a phenomenon such as the blindness of inattention, psychologists in their work propose the introduction of a new classification for possible intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. Going beyond the famous scale of Kardashev - a method that suggests assessing civilizations by how much energy these civilizations can use for their own needs - psychologists from the University of Cadiz talk about the possibility of the existence of more diverse types of civilizations: from ephemeral, living only a small amount of time, and ending with a very fantastic, possessing the possibility of "multi-dimensional travel and using as a source of energy dark matter."
This study does not offer any new methods for detecting extraterrestrial life forms, but it is quite possible to explain how the "space gorilla" is able to confuse all the cards and make us look the wrong way.
Of course, there are other explanations why humanity is still waiting for the first contact. It is possible that this is just a matter of time. It may also be that extraterrestrial civilizations are represented only by microbial forms of life or are so far away that signals from them have simply not reached us yet.
The possibility is also possible that aliens are actively trying to avoid us or have already become extinct and we are the only representatives of intelligent life in this universe.
Comments
Post a Comment