The fallibility of the human brain

I posted a brain-teaser in Numbers don't lie?. Let me recap here:

Three men go to dine together in a restaurant. The bill comes to $25 and they each contribute $10. The waiter takes the money to the cashier, who gives the waiter the $5 in change. Being a non-assuming waiter he takes the change back to the three men. The men take back a dollar each, hence effectively paying $9.00 each, and they leave the $2.00 as a tip for the waiter. On their way out, one of them points out that they each paid $9.00 for the meal, amounting to $27.00, and the waiter was left with $2.00. What happened to the other remaining dollar? Did the cashier pocket it?

Before reading on, if you have not tried it, give this puzzle a go. I guarantee that you will have some amusing and illustrative time.

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Lets’ analyze the puzzle a bit. Firstly the line of reasoning proposed in the puzzle is wrong. The three men paid a total of $27, of which $25 went to the restaurant, and $2 went to the waiter.

The equation is very simple:
$27 = $25 + $2

You CANNOT add $2 to $27. The belong to different sides of the equation, and the result is a meaningless number.

$29 is a meaningless number, and so is the $1. It is completely meaningless to ask what happened to it.

Now the crux of the puzzle. Observe how the question was phrased. The reader was asked to figure out what happened to the missing $1. It was an intentional device to mislead the reader to believe in a false proposition – and then asked to figure it out. This is a puzzle that has stood the test of time. Most people will fall for it because it worked on a fundamental mechanism of the mind.

I had some good fun teasing a few of my colleagues a while back - all of them are pretty good programmers. A new colleague who is a fresh graduate got it right away, so I got him to shut up.

After some 10-15 minutes of puzzled look and convoluted reasoning, a couple of them are beginning to get it. But then I interjected and reassert the question: "What happened to the $1", and all of them are hopelessly lost again. A colleague that catches a ride home with me could not get it even after 3 days. He is a brilliant programmer. But every time he is getting near, I would ask the magic question, and it would throw him back into bewilderment again.

This puzzle illustrates a fundamental mechanism of the brain. The brain is a habitual machine. It learns by repetition and reinforcement. The 'learned' skills/behaviors are stored in the mid-brain, which is usually referred as the sub-conscious or the emotional brain. Once something ‘learned’ it will continue to repeat and reinforce itself until it is being replaced.

It applies to our motor reflexes, our emotional responses, and as this puzzle illustrates, even our logical/reasoning brain. Once a false conclusion is accepted it seeks to reinforce itself – and everything is reasoned using it as a starting point. This simple puzzle is particularly illustrative. The mathematics is dead simple, but even though the false proposition is leading to obvious contradictions, many people are not able to resolve it. They would rather give up than resolving the inconsistencies.

I actually think that the term sub-conscious is a misnomer. The behavioral pattern of a person is completely obvious to everybody else. But for the person concerned it is quite automatic and no longer under the awareness of the discriminative part of the brain. It applies to believe systems as well as habits of reasoning. It is actually very easy to see the bullshits and inconsistencies that someone is up to as an observer, but it can be extremely difficult to have the person concerned see it himself or herself.

This is a survival mechanism. Without it we do we will not even be able to do simple things like tying a shoe lace or riding a bicycle. There are indeed people with such functional disabilities, and many are extremely gifted in other areas, the so called idiot savants.

This survival mechanism makes us extremely vulnerable and susceptible to being manipulated. This is why propaganda is extremely effective and dangerous. The message needs not be true. In fact the message can be completely wrong and evil, and often they are. All that is needed is repetition, repetition and repetition. With the right propaganda apparatus it is easy to drive the whole country into hating each other or even killing each other.

I have always advocated boycotting Malaysia’s mainstream media. And I will say it again. Stop reading those lies and bullshits. They have been screwing us up for the past 50 years and will continue to do so until we are wizen up. Save you money, save the planet, save your discrimination, save your sanity.

We have been under the spell of Barisan Nasional racial politics for far too long. There is a lot the different races need to work together to unlearn and undo. Every race and every religion has contributed their fair share of bullshits. Be strong with each other, but have compassion as well. The voice of tolerance and cooperation has to arise otherwise I don’t think we have any chance of surviving the current local and global crises.

All have suffered. All are equally full of nonsense. Therefore, in principle, there must be a new and universal politics — a politics of no praise and no blame. By these means, reconciliation must be achieved — cooperatively, in a disposition of mutual tolerance, trust, and respect.

Adi Da
Humankind Is Literally One Family

My deepest condolences to May 13 victims

I did not expect to see the strong reactions from some people about my article What is this May 13 anyway. The purpose of the article was not to ignore the sufferings of May 13 victims and to erase the incidents from history – but to point out that the ultra right stance and continued racial instigations and propaganda have done much greater harm to the society than the incident itself.

May 13 is an incident that should not have happened, and I have great sympathy for the victims. Justice was never given in the first place, and 39 years of continued threat of it happening again was a continued relentless assault. No living soul should have to bear this agony.

Let’s recognize that we live in the same land and breathe the same air and we are as dependent on each other as Siamese twins. The Chinese as well as the Malays have contributed their fair share in the atrocities. This is not the time to find out who cast the first insult and which side has done more damage on the other. Let’s put this neighborhood war aside for now and hold each other hands to rebuild the trust that was damaged by decades of racial politics.

I sincerely hope that one day we will have an open forum where grievances can be voiced and acknowledged. For most, a listening ear, a supportive society, and assurance of justice and protection from harm would be sufficient to heal the wounds.

Lets this be a lesson for all that racial politics is not leading us anywhere.

I offer my deepest condolence to those who suffered in the event. I apologized for not making myself clear earlier.

What is this May 13 anyway?

The topic May 13 is almost a taboo; it is a subject that stirs up different level of discomfort in most people. But how many people really know what it is, how many of us actually lived through the horror of it?

It happened when I was 9 years old, and my only memory of it was a few blissful days of no school and no homework. The incident was very insignificant in terms of human suffering. It was infinitesimal compared to the Japanese occupation, which has long been forgotten in our collective memory. But why does a small incident like May 13 get stuck in our collective psyche with such stigma? Yes, there were social and political ramifications – but how many of us really – I mean REALLY – took time to understand the cause and effect of it?

I would like to suggest that most of what we think we know about May 13 are mostly false, and most of our emotions associated with May 13 are mostly irrational. They are the results of almost 40 years of insidious propaganda. We were constantly being bombarded with threats about it repeating, each time with some new connotations added, until it became a boogeyman that everybody feared or hated but nobody knows exactly what it is.

The nature of the human mind is that we are extremely vulnerable to propaganda and brain washing techniques. Read the following article: 'We can implant entirely false memories'

"We can easily distort memories for the details of an event that you did experience," says Loftus. "And we can also go so far as to plant entirely false memories - we call them rich false memories because they are so detailed and so big."

Powerful emotions, it seems, can both reinforce and weaken real memories… And false memories, once accepted, can themselves elicit strong emotions and thereby mimic real ones.

The impressionability of the human mind is a crucial survival mechanism, for without it we would not be able to assimilate a vast amount of information within the rather short human lifetime. But it also renders the mind extremely easily exploited.

The human mind can be manipulated not just in terms of believing in falsehood. Witness the trial of Altantunya, observe how the trial process and the media were being manipulated. A hideous high profile murder could have been erased from the collective memory of the whole nation in the matter of months if not for the timely reminder of our true champion Raja Petra Kamarudin.

Human being can be driven to mass hysteria very easily as well. For example it only took one person waving a weapon, followed by a few provocative slogans chanting, and the country is divided and driven into hating each other. It is as irrational as the hysteria generated from a rock concert!

Today is the 39^th anniversary of the May 13 incident. Frankly this date holds no meaning to me whatsoever. For one thing I had always refused to believe in the racial hatred propaganda propagated by the Barisan Nasional government. I had always been driven by my yearning to reach out to another. I have been to many countries and made many good friends of people from different races. Skin color and trivial cultural differences has very little significance in the face to face, heart to heart relationship to another human being.

39 years is long enough for a lot of things to be forgotten and forgiven. May 13 would have been long forgotten if not because of the constant instigations from certain unscrupulous parties.

Any form of mass communication is extremely effective in influencing the population, and our mainstream media have been subverted into senseless propaganda machines for propagating all sorts of lies. It is time for the rakyat to stand together to put a stop to these bullshits.

Why wave the Keris to begin with?

(also posted in Malaysiakini)
Last edited 7th May 2008 12:05 am

This response to Hishammuddin keris waving apology (Hisham apologises for keris act) is late in coming, but I found the whole episode so bewildering that even after writing my first response (Hisham: I apologize for my apology??) I still felt something very unsettling about it. It took me a further full week investigating the various aspects of it before I felt I have enough clarity to pen down the following questions and observations.

Let’s begin from the very beginning. I would like to post this question: what message was Hishammuddin trying to convey by waving the keris, accompanied by the ultra radical slogan from UMNO youth supporters? Did Hishammuddin thought that the Chinese were making too many unreasonable demands such that he has to wave a weapon as a gesture to defend the rights of the Malays? If that was the case, then what were the demands the Chinese made that were deemed so unreasonable to him?

Was he referring to the Chinese demands for more Chinese schools? What I recalled was that the Chinese communities were not even demanding for more Chinese schools, the demand was only to relocate some schools in the rural areas to the city, to reflect the change in demographic of the population. Or is there something wrong with Chinese education, for example that it hinders ethnic integration? If the Chinese education was not the issue, then what was it?

Whatever it is - can our leaders enter into mature dialog with each other to resolve them instead of resorting to waving weapons and chanting ultra radical slogans?

As of now, I still do not understand what this whole episode was about. Hishammuddin apology was as if it had something to do with the dignity of the keris and the Malay race. That was a lot of nonsense to me. He could have waved a parang or a Chinese Sword and people would be equally offended by it.

Similarly Najib’s follow up statements (Najib: Keris apology won't derogate Malay dignity ) and MCA acceptance of the apology was equally nonsensical.

I remembered reading about how the Beatles was being promoted at the beginning. The promoter hired a bunch of young girls and got them to scream and tear off their clothes, and that set off a whole generation of mass hysteria. Now we have one person waving a weapon with a few people responded with some slogans and the whole country is divided in semi-hysteria.

To me this whole episode was only a cheap publicity stunt, intended to further the political interest of one person.

Hisham: I apologize for my apology??

I have to say - the article Hisham apologises for keris act that appeared in Malaysiakini got me very confused. I must have read it at least three times and I am still struggling to try to understand it. And then the following article Najib: Keris apology won't derogate Malay dignity came out today – oh man, that got me utterly confounded.

At first Hisham made an apology to the non-Malays, and then almost on the same breadth, was an apology to the Malays about having to make the apology. Sorry I am a computer geek, but something just doesn’t compute here. I mean – doesn’t the second apology nullify the first?

In the first place, what was the intention of waving the keris anyway? I am by no means a historian or a scholar, but my perception of the keris is that is a symbol of justice, courage and dignity. These are universal virtue that transcends race, religion and ideology. But the way the keris was being waved, the forum, the context, the intention, the radical stance – was every bit in contrary to the virtue that the keris represents. It was the subjugation and perversion of a sacred symbol for political means.

The waving of the keris was the act of derogation of human dignity. So Hisham apology should be to the whole of humanity, plain and simple. But the way the apologies were made, one apology to the non-Malays, and another apology to the Malays, was as if it was a matter of one race against others.

We have to put a stop to these racial bullshit. All Malaysians, regardless of race, should cherish and honor the virtues represented by the keris. We have to say no to racial politics. We have to stop the keris and other cultural/religious items from being hijacked for political means.

MCA – please wake up to what the rakyat is demanding

I have family members, relatives and good friends who are MCA members. I always despised politics, especially the Barisan Nasional politics, but I had reserved a soft spot in my heart for MCA, even volunteered to help out in the 1999 election. But whatever feelings I had for MCA has all but gone now.

I never thought much about politics, but I had been able to close an eye on it. I was annoyed by the ultra-radical rhetoric of UMNO youth, the keris waving etc, but I never quite believed in it. For me it was only a song and dance for some silly people to move up the rank in a crazy game called politics. I see that the politicians, the warlords and the Chinese tycoons and Ali Baba’s are so dependent on each other in minting their money and robbing the country that nobody really wants to rock the boat too much.

But the recent antics of some MCA leaders have got me fuming mad. I am referring to the PAS/Islam bashing announcements, calling DAP the traitor of the Chinese for going to bed with PAS etc. I don’t think many Chinese would take statements like these seriously, as everybody can see that the Chinese was never so well represented in the new government. But our Malay brothers and sisters are in a much more precarious situation. The welfare of the ordinary Malay – in fact any ordinary nobody regardless of race – was never really looked after by BN, and now all of a sudden they are faced with a new government with even less Malay representations.

I am not sure whether MCA is so dumb to not see this, or whether it is just a bunch of bankrupt politicians looking for cheap publicities. But statements like these that incite religious and racial tensions are downright irresponsible and dangerous in the current delicate situation. I consider these to be infinitely more sinister and dangerous than UMNO’s keris waving antics.

MCA – please wake up. The rakyat have spoken loud and clear in GE 12 that we don’t want race politics anymore. DAP and PAS, and indeed the whole Pakatan Rakyat has demonstrated their willingness to listen to the rakyat and made tremendous progress in finding a middle ground where all race and religions can cooperate and live in harmony. Please work with the rakyat to build a better tomorrow for all.