Blinded By Your Expertise

Professor Allan Snyder Director, Centre for the Mind Health Sciences Conference - 1 November, 2000 Tonight, I want to confront a disturbing reality. One, that none of us ever wants to admit. We are all by nature prejudiced! We can only see this world through our mindsets We can only see this world through our preconceptions derived from our past experiences. Put simply, it is extremely difficult to experience the world anew. And, in my opinion, the only way to escape this condition is to understand how it came about in the first place.Ladies and Gentlemen, I am honoured to address you tonight. Address you on a topic which consumes much of my attention. Address you on why it is that we experts find it so difficult to question the foundations of our discipline?

Why is it that seemingly obvious solutions to problems in the health sciences could well come, not from brilliant specialists like so many of you, who know every nook and cranny of your discipline. But rather from complete outsiders. Why is it that breakthroughs so often come from way out in left field?

Let me examine this with the simplest example possible. Have you ever wondered why you can see meaningful pictures in clouds, meaningful pictures in randomly formed water vapour? And, have you ever wondered why it is that two people can look at the very same cloud and yet see completely different objects?

The portrait painter sees a face of dignity. The ultrasound sonographer sees a diseased gall bladder. To me, this says it all. It lays bare a masterplan of the mind. We don't see what is out there. Rather, we project our preconceptions onto each situation, so, the particular reading depends on our particular expertise, depends on our mindsets. How did this ever come about?

What could possibly be the survival value in a strategy that is so susceptible to faults?

First I want to emphasis that there is no definitive interpretation of the raw information that bombards our senses. It would take an eternity for our brains to work through all the possibilities. But, we have no interest in all possibilities, only the most likely ones. So, we have evolved a rather cunning strategy for rapid decision making.

We make assumptions about what is most likely. Our brains do this by constructing mindsets about what is familiar and important. These mindsets act as templates through which we view this world. Our mindsets facilitate rapid decision-making.

Take skilled medical diagnosis as a classic case. A doctor unconsciously forces a constellation of symptoms to fit one of only a finite number of known diseases. And a skilled practitioner can execute this diagnosis at a glance, based on mindsets built up from previous case histories.

Take the very act of recognition as another example. We often have difficulty recalling people's faces. But we instantaneously recognize someone when they are before us. In other words, we are all expert at recognising objects but not at recalling the detailed reasons assembled by our brain for labelling the object in the first place.

So mindsets allow for short cuts in decision making. They allow us to manoeuvre rapidly in familiar situations. But as a consequence of mindsets, we are vulnerable to prejudice in the form of illusions.

Put simply, there is a cost for adopting any strategy that accelerates our decision making. Nothing can be seen within a neutral frame of reference. We pay a heavy price for our expertise. We pay a heavy price for our unconscious assumptions.

For example, we are all experts at rapidly interpreting our visual world. And, to do this we unconsciously assume light comes from above. Bizarre illusions occur when objects are actually illuminated from below, such as concave surfaces appearing convex. So our unconscious assumptions even dictate our interpretation of the visual world.

Mindsets are enormously pervasive, they even distort our view about what is most likely.

Gruesome airline crashes mindset us to the horrors of flying. So, fear of flying prevails despite the indisputable statistics that airlines are far safer than cars. But such statistics are ridiculed, as an old joke reveals: If you are afraid of being on an aeroplane with a bomb, then you should always carry a bomb on the plane with you. After all, what is the probability of there being two bombs on the same aeroplane?

These examples should convince you that we can only experience this world through our mindsets, through our unconscious assumptions. This is the state of ordinary minds, Only a brain damaged mind, like certain autistic minds, see the world the way it really is. But this comes at a devastating price of being unable to cope with decision making. We need our mindsets, we need our mindsets, to operate automatically in familiar situations.

What then is my suggestion for seeing the world the way it really is? Obviously, take on more mindsets, take on more mindsets. Because, the more mindsets we imbue, the more different snapshots we have of the world. So, after mastering one situation, go on and master something completely different! Don't become entrenched in your own expertise. Have the courage to cross boundaries!

Take my career as an example. The Prime Minister recently awarded me the International Australian prize for work in telecommunications. But, that work arose from my earlier research on the vision of insect eyes. What relevance could insect eyes possibly have on telecommunications? But it did, it did. The light sensitive receptors of insect eyes are like optical fibres in today's telecommunication networks.

My second suggestion for breaking mindsets is to follow your intuition, follow your intuition, even if it seems to go against the logic of your profession. Now, why do I say that? Because, believe it or not, our nonconscious mental machinery propels most of our important decisions. The sooner we realise this, the better. Everyone knows that our nonconscious mind solves problems after all what do we mean by saying 'let me sleep on it'.

But how many of you know that it is our nonconscious mind which plays the decision making role in those matters that are so utterly crucial to our well-being. How many of you know that our nonconscious mind would appear to have almost dictatorial power about what is best for our survival?

This profound insight is derived from individuals who lost their emotions due to an unusual brain damage. These brain damaged people could still solve abstract problems logically but their ability to make crucial personal decisions totally disintegrated.

We need our emotions. The nonconscious mind knows more than the conscious mind reveals. And emotions provide one access to this information.

If any of you doubt the value of intuition, you will enjoy the story about Harvard's professor of logic. Here was a man who had utterly perfected decision making with an infallible set of rules. Well, this same professor was being emotionally torn apart by his girlfriend who threatened to leave him unless he married her.

But, when a compassionate student suggested that the professor merely apply his own infallible rules of decision making, after all he was the worlds expert, The professor replied "how can you possibly demean this important issue this is serious and in no way a matter for logic!".

So, while many of these things I have discussed here tonight are fascinating in their own right, how do they all tie together? What is my take-home message?

• Be forewarned by the blindness and the prejudice that is inseparable with your discipline.
• Wander freely, wander freely between different worlds of expertise.
• Never, never be afraid to follow your intuition, because intuition is powered by the non-conscious mind.
• And it is the non-conscious mind which forges novel connections between seemingly disparate concepts.

It is the non-conscious mind which drives true creativity.

Thank you.