We do not see what we do not expect to see

Another of the nuggets shared by Dave Snowden in his youtube talk.

He talked about an experiment where a group of radiologists were given a batch of x-rays to look for anomalies. In one of the x-rays, they hid the picture of a gorilla, which was 48 times the size of the average cancer nodule.

80% of the radiologists never saw the gorilla.

We only see things that match what we expect.

This is hugely important because our biases play at large and take over.

It can become problematic if you attempt to solve a problem within a complex system, simply because you would not be able to pick up weak signals, and miss the point entirely.