Can you flip it for me?

This dog knows how to climb a tree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ylyi1tBPFk

This is a very complex task. It requires a great deal of balancing, distance estimation, path planning. It takes some serious “CPU power”, if one can speak so about a dog.

Yet with all that “power” the dog does not realize that it can let the rope down to the ground and then pick it up there. That would’ve made it’s descent much easier. Any human would have done that. The dog does not. This simple idea simply did not occur to the animal.

This cat cannot use his hind legs to move the treat. Or to push it to the floor. Or jump down and then jump up the other way around. He just keeps trying to reach the treat with front paws only. No success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM0ElH_osuY

Computationally, we humans aren’t fundamentally different from animals. We are same neural networks – albeit way more complex. So I am pretty sure we do have similar blind spots of our own. Ideas, which could make our lives way, way better. Ideas, for which we definitely have more than enough brain computational power. But we never come across these ideas – and even reject them when someone offers them to us.

There are only two problems to be solved in this life. How do you find such blind spots within your own cognitive space? And how do you effectively point them out when you see them in others?

Some of you have already seen this picture of Mercurian landforms called “hollows”. They are what the name suggests – ulcer-like depressions. Not flat plateaus, nor table mountains: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AhyC4Qz62r5BhO4x0GfRycJzmvtFdg

70% of people see mountains here. I tested. Worse, *I* see mountains, too. No matter what I do. I rotate the picture all angles. I inverse colors. I blur it. I know, better than many, that these are depressions – since I’ve read a bit about them and their formation.

Most of the time, I still see mountains.

How can I flip them?

This is what I seek in conversations recently. The “flipping” experience. Can you tell me anything that would flip my view on something? Can you offer a new, convincing vision on a part of the world? Rarely that happens now. It is quite a challenge to meet. Yet I am still looking for these experiences. Do you have any to offer?

07/11/2017