four mind bending thought experiments

4 Thought Experiments That Ask Tough Questions About the Nature of Reality

Let these logic conundrums test your mental mettle (and fire up some heated debates at the dinner table).

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Have you ever imagined the solution to a logic problem instead of calculating it?

Such “thought experiments” are carried out using one’s imagination rather than doing actual research. Typically delivered in narrative form with accompanying diagrams, thought experiments are used in wide-ranging disciplines for “entertainment, education, conceptual analysis, exploration, hypothesizing, theory selection” and more, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . But no one knows when the first thought experiments took place, according to The Decision Lab , an applied research firm that specializes in behavioral science. But we do know the first written evidence of thought experiments comes from ancient Greece, where pre-Socratic philosophers used them to solve math equations .

✅ A thought experiment doesn’t really have an answer—and that’s the whole point; these sometimes strange, open-ended questions use hypothetical scenarios to let your creativity and problem solving run wild, according to The Decision Lab. And hopefully, through the process of unpacking circular reasoning (when you use evidence to support a claim that is just repeating the claim itself) and rhetorical logic (the art of persuasion), the thought experiment will illustrate some sort of big idea. No wonder these exercises are so popular in philosophy.

From an Einstein puzzler developed while writing up his special theory of relativity to a brain-twisting exercise that could prove computers don’t really understand language , here are four modern thought experiments that will test your mental mettle (and probably fire up some heated debates at your next family dinner).

Einstein’s Train-and-Embankment Thought Experiment

In the 20th century, thought experiments played a key role in defining a physics revolution. When Albert Einstein, a physics professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, was writing Relativity: The Special and General Theory , he created a thought experiment that unraveled outdated concepts of what time is.

Before Einstein’s book was published in 1920, people assumed that time was universally constant across all frames of reference. Einstein showed that events are not simultaneous in different physical frames of reference if one frame is traveling relative to the other. In other words, time is actually relative.

To illustrate this concept, Einstein described a scenario in which a long train is traveling relative to an embankment with the velocity v . If lightning strikes at two locations simultaneously, as perceived from the railway embankment, these lightning strikes will not happen at the same time from the vantage point of someone in the train.

In the diagram below, the lighting strikes occur at points A and B. The two rays of light from points A and B meet at the midpoint, M, on the embankment. Meanwhile, a traveler on the train will see one flash very slightly before the other because he is located at point M’ and is traveling to the right; so, he will see the flash from point B before he sees the flash from point A. This will result in him thinking that the flash from point B took place first.

Based on this thought experiment, Einstein concluded that time varies depending on what frame of reference one has.

The theories of relativity have had profound consequences, changing our ground rules for how we expect the universe’s geometry and operation to work. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica , special and general relativity “overthrew many assumptions underlying earlier physical theories, redefining in the process the fundamental concepts of space, time, matter, energy, and gravity.”

The Twin Paradox

When Einstein wrote about the theory of relativity in a 1905 paper, he was curious about a problem that arose: if there are two clocks, and one of them travels, the clock that is traveling will record less time passing. He wrote, “the clock that moved from A to B lags behind the other which has remained at B by ½tv²/c² sec … where t is the time required by the clock to travel from A to B.”

In 1911, Paul Langevin, professor of physics at the Collège de France, expanded this example to describe human twins who age differently because one of them has taken a space flight and the other has not.

The paradox is that from the perspective of the twin in the spacecraft, the twin on the planet has accelerated away; so, the reverse should be true, since according to special relativity, their frames of reference obey equivalent physical laws if they are not accelerating.

This paradox has been hotly debated on the Q&A board StackExchange and in other physics discussions. According to a 2021 paper from the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics , it has still not been resolved. “Many attempts have been made to explain the twin paradox, which fall in two categories; one based on asymmetry and the other on acceleration,” wrote Pirooz Mohazzabi and Qinghua Luo, the two professors at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside who were the co-authors of the paper. “To resolve the twin paradox, some authors resort to [an] asymmetry argument. They argue that twin B does not remain in a single inertial frame of reference during the entire process; traveling toward the star, she is in one frame of reference, while coming back, she is in another one.

“In a second school of thought, some authors argue that the twin who leaves the Earth undergoes acceleration whereas the one who stays on Earth is not accelerating,” Mohazzabi and Luo wrote. “Some even argue that [the] time dilation equation is not valid if the reference system accelerates.”

However, the paper says the explanations based on asymmetry and acceleration do not hold if the twins are both accelerating away from each other and have both left the planet, for example. There are other exceptions as well.

This slowing down of time due to travel, which is known as time dilation, has been verified through multiple experiments . So although we don’t know why it’s happening, we do know it is happening.

The Chinese Room Argument

An intriguing thought experiment known as the “ Chinese Room Argument ” describes how computers can imitate human language without understanding it.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , John Searle, a philosophy professor at the University of California-Berkeley, wrote that he could imagine himself alone in a room, following a computer program that tells him how to respond to Chinese characters that someone slips under the door. He could do this without understanding Chinese.

Essentially, Searle would be communicating in Chinese the same way that artificial intelligence knows how to respond to strings of characters without understanding them.

This thought experiment shows evidence that the “ Turing Test ” does not provide evidence of real artificial intelligence. According to the Turing Test, a computer cannot be considered intelligent unless it can produce responses that a human observer could view as regular human responses. However, a computer can use language in a convincing way without understanding it. According to the Stanford website, this means that human minds are more than information-processing systems. Human minds come from biological processes; computers simulate them.

This thought experiment piques the curiosity of researchers who study language and computing. Other academics have critiqued some of its assumptions and conclusions. It is considered an argument against what is known as “Strong AI,” or artificial intelligence that mimics the human brain .

Anyone who has experimented for a while with online tools such as ChatGPT will notice some of the comical and surprising behavior that AI can engage in due to its lack of comprehension of human language and cultural and social contexts.

Mary’s Room (the “Knowledge Argument”)

Data may not be able to describe the colorful nuances of real-world experiences. In 1982, Frank Jackson, who is now an emeritus professor of philosophy at the Australian National University, proposed a thought experiment that he at first believed proved this was true. According to a TED video , this thought experiment has been used since then to describe why computers cannot have human experiences.

In this thought experiment , Jackson imagined that a brilliant neuroscientist named Mary lived in a black-and-white room and had never seen color , but knew the theoretical and practical science behind color vision. For example, the video said, someone like this would know that within the eye, three different types of light stimulate cone cells that send electrical signals along the optic nerve to the brain to allow us to perceive color.

Suddenly, Jackson said, Mary’s computer began to display color—or she left the black-and-white room. She now had a new experience that her previous scientific knowledge did not encompass.

This shows there are nonphysical properties and knowledge that can only be discovered through experiences. As the video said, the experience of color transcends the knowledge of color; this implies that abstract knowledge cannot capture the full zest of real life.

Philosophers call this experiment the “Knowledge Argument.” They say experiences have subjective qualities called “ Qualia ” that can be experienced, but not fully described. Some experiences cannot be described in words.

Jackson changed his mind later and said that the experience of viewing a colored image on a screen could be described in terms of an event in the brain. According to the open-access journal Philosophical Investigations : “He came to believe that there was nothing apart from redness’s physical description, of which Mary was fully aware. This time, he concluded that first-hand experiences, too, are scientifically objective, fully measurable events in the brain and thus knowable by someone with Mary’s comprehension and expertise.”

Kat Friedrich is a former mechanical engineer who started out as an applied math, engineering, and physics major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has a graduate degree in science and environmental journalism and has edited seven news publications, two of which she co-founded. She spends her free time learning about dance and functional fitness, reading science fiction, and exploring music events. 

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The 15 Most Mind-Blowing Thought Experiments Of All Time

Via medium.com

If you are the type of person who wants clear, solid answers, then thought experiments may drive you a little bit crazy. When considering thought experiments, sometimes you will have to become comfortable with a paradox, where two seemingly contradictory things may be true at the same time. Other times you will end up with a thought experiment that is not solvable because the answer lies beyond human understanding.

No matter the frustrations with these issues, thought experiments are useful to stretch the mind in ways that most people rarely do and geniuses do all the time.

When Albert Einstein was a lowly patent clerk, the job was so easy for him to do. It was so boring that he finished his work quickly each day and then spent the rest of the time staring out the window and considering his thought experiments. This effort led him to a whole new way of seeing the universe, a deeper understanding of the relationship between time and space, and ultimately the creation of his Special Theory of Relativity. He became a renowned genius for his original thinking, which sometimes took many decades for scientific proof to become available that supported his theories.

If you fancy yourself a kind of genius or if you just want to have some fun thinking about strange things; here are fifteen types of thought experiments that are mind-blowing. If you come up with a new unique answer then you may be the next Einstein!

15. The Zen Koan

Via johanjanssen.deviantart.com

Zen is a form of Buddhism. A koan is a type of question or statement that allows you to ponder it and yet it does not have a definitive answer. One of the most famous ones is “If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it. Does it make any sound?” If you consider sound as the vibration of air molecules then the tree falling would definitely vibrate the air molecules surrounding it.

However, if you consider a sound more deeply the concept becomes more complex. The sound comes from the interpretation of the vibration of the air molecules that has a vibratory effect on the tiny parts of the ear, the little hairs, the small bones, and the eardrum. This vibration then causes a signal to be sent to the brain, which the brain interprets as a sound. In this analysis of a sound, it requires a participant for the sound to exist.

To further explore the nature of a sound is to consider the question of where exactly is the sound? Is it near the tree, in the surrounding air, in the ear, or in the brain of the person perceiving it? A completely deaf person standing nearby a tree that falls would not hear any sound, although he or she might feel the vibration of the tree as it struck the ground. A sound cannot simply be a vibration because even though a deaf person can feel possibly feel it, they cannot hear it.

14. The Origin Question

Via NPR.org

This is one of the oldest thought experiments that humankind has pondered for ages since the time of Ancient Greece. It is “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” This question goes far beyond the origin of poultry because it could just as easily be asked about the universe. If the universe was created from the “Big Bang,” where did the singularity that created the Big Bang come from?

The reason why this is so perplexing it that it comes from our experience. We see that something always arises from something else. A chicken must come from an egg. It does not just spontaneously burst into existence. A religious person might say that God created the chicken and every other animal on Earth all at once and out of nothing. A Darwinian scientist would say all living creatures developed from some primordial ooze.

In 2016, R&D magazine reported that a team of scientists led by Craig Venter, Ph.D. were able to create a simple synthetic life form by using DNA created in a test tube, proving that it is possible. Dr. Venter and his colleagues have been working on this technique since 2010. This simple microbe had 473 genes as compared to a human that has over 20,000. This means maybe a bacterium came first before the egg that eventually became a chicken.

Also during 2016, the Financial Times reported that other scientists at Bath University created a viable offspring without needing to fertilize an egg. This means it is possible to have a chicken without first needing the egg. So, we are back to the same dilemma, which came first?

13. Are You Real or a Copy of Yourself?

Via i.ytimg.com

Plutarch from Ancient Greece is noted as the one who first proposed this thought experiment. There was a ship from Theseus. Over many years of use, parts of the ship began to wear out. The people of Athens kept the ship in good repair. As each part wore out, it was replaced by a new part. Over time, all the parts of the ship had been completely replaced. Is this still the ship from Theseus? If all the old parts were found in a junkyard and assembled into a ship would it be the ship of Theseus?

Let’s take this a step further. Over a period of approximately seven years’ time, every cell in the human body has been replaced by a new one serving the same function as the previous one. If every cell in your body is different, are you still the same person?

Imagine there was a transporting device, like the kind featured on “Star Trek,” with one big difference. This transporter does not send your particles from one part of space to another. Instead, it takes the information about your body down to the tiniest, exact detail and makes a copy, including your memory and consciousness. This device builds an exact copy of you at the distant location. Everyone who encounters this new you thinks it is exactly the same as the old you. You also feel the same. In order to do this transportation, the original you is destroyed in the process. Is the new you the same person? If you looked, acted, and felt exactly the same, would you still be you?

12. Could a Monkey Write a Shakespeare Play?

Via shakesdrama.blogspot.com

The infinite monkey theorem is a thought experiment that says, if you had an infinite amount of monkeys that were trained to type on a keyboard, given an infinite length of time, eventually, one of them would type a Shakespeare play by typing at random. In fact, one would type all of Shakespeare’s work. Moreover, many would type copies of any finite work like a Shakespeare play an infinite number of times.

Even though the probability of a monkey typing Shakespeare is extremely low, it is not zero. Given enough time of say, hundreds of trillions of times the age of the universe, a monkey would randomly type Shakespeare. Even if the chance is only one out of a googolplex (this is a number of 1 followed by one hundred zeros), infinity is forever and larger.

There is mathematical proof of this theorem. The probability of two completely independent events occurring at the same time is the combination of the probability of both separate events occurring. For example, if the chance of it raining in one place today is 0.5 and the chance of having an earthquake in another place is 0.000005. Then, the probability of rain in one place combined with an earthquake in the other place is 0.5 times 0.000005, which equals 0.0000025.

If a keyboard has 50 keys, the chance of typing a single letter is one out of fifty. If a monkey is typing at random the chance of typing the word “banana” is (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50). This equals the chance of one out of 15,625,000,000 for the monkey to type banana. The chance is small, but no matter how small a chance is, if infinite time is applied the chance is never zero.

11. Brain in a Jar

Via Pinterest.com

Before the “Matrix” films, there was a thought experiment called the “brain in a jar” (sometimes called the “brain in a vat”). This experiment removes a human brain and keeps it alive in a jar. The scientist uses a computer to provide electrical/chemical impulses to the neurons of the brain in the jar that simulate what a brain normally experiences while inside a living human body.

If the computer was sophisticated enough to both provide stimulus to the brain in the jar and react to the brain’s activity in the same ways as if it was still inside the skull of a living human being, then the brain, from its perspective, would not be able to tell that it was in a jar and would have experiences that to the brain seem exactly like reality.

This kind of philosophical examination of our definition of reality brings up the possibility that we are all existing in some form of an illusion that we have no true way of knowing whether it is real or not. We may only be able to determine that we are real; however, everything else is our perception of reality and may not have a true independent existence. At least, there is no sure way to prove the independent existence of anything else to ourselves, since our perceptions are all we have available to use.

10. Time Travel Paradox

Via USmagazine.com

If a time machine existed that allowed a person to travel back in time and they used it to go back to kill their own grandfather, how could that person still exist? This is called the grandfather paradox or an alternative version is the Hitler paradox.

In the Hitler Paradox, a person using a time machine to travel back in time to kill Hitler before he rises to power would have then removed the reason that made the time travel necessary, since Hitler would no longer exist.

One way that quantum scientists used to explain how to avoid the time travel paradox is by using an infinite number of multiple universes. Gong back in time and killing your own grandfather would only kill him in a parallel universe that is identical to the one you come from, with the sole exception that there is no grandfather and therefore no you in it. By the way, the photo is Hitler as a baby. If you could go back in time, would you be able to kill a baby who was at that time just an innocent child?

9. As Above, So Below

Via alphacoders.com

The very largest things in the universe, called the “macrocosm”, are very similar to the very small, called the “microcosm.” This idea was first proposed by Hermes Trismegistus. The macrocosm is the universe. The microcosm is oneself. As the microcosm compares to something larger, it also becomes the macrocosm to something smaller. From the level of atomic particles, a person is a macrocosm.

Scientists, who study particle physicists, continue to look for the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Until the splitting of the atom was possible, it was assumed that the atom was the smallest unit of the universe. After the atom was split, so many new particles were discovered. In contemporary times, the large Hadron collider in Switzerland continues to find new particles of smaller sizes and with different configurations. The tiniest building blocks of the universe have yet to be discovered and perhaps they do not even exist, if everything can be both infinitely small and infinitely large at the same time.

8. Holographic Universe and Fractals

Via Pininterest.com

Related to the “As Above, So Below” thought experiment, is the idea of a holographic universe. The thought experiment about the holographic universe notes that everything in the universe is contained and replicated on a different scale in any smaller piece of it. Just like each part of a laser-made hologram contains the entire image, the holographic universe theorem says that everything is simply a fully contained copy of everything else. The only difference is scale.

Another way to think about this is the idea of fractals. Fractals are mathematical expressions that repeat themselves based on simple rules. As you zoom in on a fractal you see the same pattern repeated, just the same as if you zoom out. The pattern is the same no matter what scale is used. A thought experiment from fractal mathematics is that it is impossible to measure a coastline with 100% accuracy. As the scale of measurement becomes smaller, the edges of the coastline become more varied, thereby increasing its overall length. The only way to measure a coastline is by using an approximation at a certain scale.

7. Unexpected Hanging Paradox

Via wolframmathworld

In this thought experiment, a prisoner on death row is told he will be hanged one day next week between Monday and Friday and he will not know the day of the hanging in advance. This means that he cannot be hanged on Friday because if he is alive on Thursday he will know in advance of his hanging on Friday, which is the last day of the week it is possible for the hanging.

He cannot be hanged on Thursday because if he is alive on Wednesday he will know that since he cannot be hanged on Friday, he will be hanged on Thursday. Since he cannot know this in advance Thursday is also not a day he can be hanged.

This same logic continues to show he cannot be hanged on any day because he will know in advance when he will be hanged. This even applies to Monday because if all the other days are not possible then Monday is the only possible day, and if Monday is the only day left he knows he will be hanged on that day in advance.

The prisoner feels confident in his logic and knows there is no day of the week that is possible for him to be hanged. Monday comes and he is not hanged; however on Wednesday at noon, to his surprise, he is hanged.

6. Time Dilation

Via Study.com

In Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, he predicted the phenomena of time dilation. Time dilation is an effect on time as one accelerates to move closer to the speed of light. More time passes for something moving at a slower speed than for something moving at higher speeds. There is also a gravitational effect on time. Things move slower for those closer to a gravitational force like the Earth compared to those further away from the gravitational force.

The strange thing about this phenomena is that Einstein imagined that “time was relative” before there was any way to prove it.

In Einstein’s famous scientific paper that he published on special relativity during 1905, he concluded that when two synchronized clocks that keep perfect time were used and one was taken away from Earth and then brought back, the one that stayed on Earth would have moved at a faster rate of speed and the one brought back would be lagging behind in time.

Decades later, this theory was tested using atomic clocks, which are extremely accurate and the theory was proven correct. One clock stayed on Earth and the other was taken into orbit around the Earth. The one that returned was slightly behind in time when compared to the one that remained on Earth. Einstein’s theory has been proven many times. Atomic clocks on satellites run slightly slower than the same atomic clocks on Earth, so they have to be adjusted for the difference.

5. Runaway Trolley Dilemma

Via Business Insider

In this thought experiment, developed by Philippa Foot in 1967, you come across a set of train tracks. On one set of tracks that the runaway trolley is going down there are five people tied to the tracks who are unable to move. On another set of connected side-tracks, there is one person tied to the tracks. A fast trolley is approaching. It is going too fast to stop in time. There is a switch that will divert the trolley onto one set of tracks or the other. There is no time to do anything but either throw the switch or do nothing. What do you do?

Do you let the trolley kill the five people or do you throw the switch to kill only one to save the five others? What if the one person tied to the tracks alone is your own child?

Another variant has a fat man standing nearby who is large enough to stop the trolley before it hits the five people. Do you push the fat man into the way to save the five that are tied to the tracks? Surprisingly, most would pull the switch to save a net of five of the six lives, but few would push the fat man onto the tracks to save four others. There is a perceived moral difference between the two acts, even though the net number of deaths is the same. However, this decision is reversed if the fat man is the villain who is responsible for tying the people to the tracks.

4. Deterministic Universe

It the theory of the deterministic universe everything has a cause and an effect. There is nothing that happens without a related cause that creates it. Another way to think about this is the idea of fate or karma. Fate is something that happens, which cannot be prevented by the person it happens to. Karma is the effect from something done in the past, Buddhists believe in reincarnation, so for them, karma can last for more than a single lifetime.

From a Buddhist point of view, this explains what bad things happen to seemingly good people or innocent children. They may not have done anything to deserve the bad consequences in this particular life, but they must have done something bad in a past life to bring the bad karma in this life.

A deterministic universe contradicts with the idea of free will. If fate is pre-determined then there is no such thing as making any choice. Choices are just an illusion, which brings the person to the same end result, no matter what they do.

3. Allegory of the Cave

Via SteveSanders.online

This was a thought experiment developed by the Greek philosopher Plato and presented in Plato’s work as a conversation between Plato’s brother and his mentor Socrates. In this thought experiment, Plato has Socrates explain that some people have lived all their lives in a cave held in place by chains and facing a blank wall. They watch the shadows on the wall of things passing by the front of a fire, which is behind them. They create names for the shadows. Some of the shadows’ appear at the same time as when they get water and food. For them, the shadows are the reality. They do not even have a desire to leave the cave because they have not known any other way of life.

In the dialogue written by Plato, Socrates says that a philosopher is like a person freed from the cave. The philosopher sees the true nature of reality, not the manufactured reality of the shadows that are thought to be the reality by those held in the cave.

2. Flatland

Via panoramio.com

Similar to the allegory of the cave is the thought experiment of Flatland. Flatland was a satirical novel written by an English school teacher named Edwin Abbott. In Flatland, everyone lives in two dimensions. The leader of Flatland is a Square. The Square tries to convince the King of the one-dimensional Lineland, which is a group of lustrous dots, that there is more than one dimension. The King tries to kill the Square rather than listen to what he considers nonsense. The Square escapes back to Flatland.

When a three-dimensional object passes through Flatland, the Sphere, it first appears in Flatland as a dot, then changes into a circle, which widens and then shrinks back from a circle to a dot and then disappears. This leads the Square to discover the third-dimension of Spaceland, which he visits.

The Square has dreams of other dimensions, including Pointland, which is a single dot who believes there is nothing in the universe except him. The Square also dreams of higher dimensions and he tells the Sphere and others in Spaceland about his dreams. He is forced to return to Flatland when he is thrown out of Spaceland for trying to spread his crazy ideas about other dimensions.

In Flatland, he is imprisoned for his heretical beliefs. After seven years in prison, the Square writes a book of his memoirs and experiences in other dimensions hoping those in future generations will read it and be able to see beyond their two-dimensional existence.

1. Schrödinger’s Cat

This is one of the most famous thought experiments in physics invented during 1935 by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger as his argument against the theory of Quantum Superposition that was proposed by other scientists at that time.

Quantum Superposition theory states that at a quantum level, a particle may be in an undetermined state that is sort of in-between states of existence, which collapses into a certain state only upon being observed.

Schrödinger thought this Quantum Superposition proposition was ridiculous and used his cat thought experiment to demonstrate his reasoning.

In the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment, you think of putting a cat in a sealed box along with a vial that contains a tiny bit of radioactive material that has a 50% chance of decaying within one hour’s time. Also, you put a Geiger counter in the box that is connected to a hammer and a vial of poison gas. If the Geiger counter detects radioactive decay, then the hammer falls, breaking the glass vial with the poison gas and the cat is killed. Regardless of the macabre nature of this thought experiment, there is no way to know if the cat is dead or alive without opening the box.

Under the Quantum Superposition theory, the cat would be in an undetermined state of dead/alive or alive/dead until the researcher opened the box after one hour had passed. This is what Schrödinger thought was absurd. Clearly, the cat is either dead or alive and because the poison gas kills almost instantly. The cat is never in a state of both being dead and alive at the same time.

Schrödinger’s logic is correct for larger objects such as a cat; however, he was dead wrong when it comes to actions of particles at a quantum level. Research since then has shown quantum particles have the ability to fade in and out of states of reality and simultaneously maintain the probabilistic state of two contrary conditions at the same time until an observation is made.

The observation causes the quantum field to collapse and the state of the particle can then be determined by the researchers. In spite of Schrödinger’s skepticism, quantum research is uncovering strange and unusual things happening at a quantum level, which do not exist in larger forms. Luckily, no cats had to be killed to prove this.

Sources: alternativephysics.org , rdmag.com , ft.com , iflscience.com

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August 20, 2024

12 min read

Can Space and Time Exist as Two Shapes at Once? Mind-Bending Experiments Aim to Find Out

Proposed experiments will search for signs that spacetime is quantum and can exist in a superposition of multiple shapes at once

By Nick Huggett & Carlo Rovelli

T here is a glaring gap in our knowledge of the physical world: none of our well-­established theories describe gravity’s quantum nature. Yet physicists expect that this quantum nature is essential for explaining extreme situations such as the very early universe and the deep interior of black holes. The need to understand it is called the problem of “ quantum gravity .”

The established classical concept of gravity is Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This spectacularly successful theory has correctly predicted phenomena from the bending of light and the orbit of Mercury to black holes and gravitational waves. It teaches us that the geometry of space and time—spacetime—is determined by gravity. So when we talk about the quantum behavior of gravity, we’re really talking about the quantum behavior of spacetime.

We don’t currently have an established theory of quantum gravity, but we do have some tentative theories. Among them, loop quantum gravity (which one of us, Rovelli, helped to develop) and string theory are two leading contenders. The former predicts that the fabric of spacetime is woven from a network of tiny loops, whereas the latter posits that particles are fundamentally vibrating strings.

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Testing these theories is difficult because we can’t study the early universe or black hole interiors in a laboratory. Physicists have mostly assumed that experiments that could directly tell us something about quantum gravity require technology that is many years away.

This situation might be changing. Recent developments suggest it may be possible to perform laboratory experiments that will reveal something about the quantum behavior of gravity. This potential is extremely exciting, and it has raised real enthusiasm among theoretical and experimental physicists, who are actively trying to develop the means to carry out the investigations. The proposed experiments could test the predictions of quantum gravity theories and provide support for the assumptions they’re based on.

The experiments all involve events happening at low energies, where the predictions of strings, loops, and the like agree, so they aren’t going to tell us which specific theory of quantum gravity is correct. Still, ­experimental evidence that gravity is actually quantized would be groundbreaking.

We already have plenty of observations about gravity’s effects on the quantum behavior of matter. Albert Einstein’s theory works fine in these situations, from stellar dynamics, to the cosmological formation of galaxy clusters, all the way to laboratory experiments on the effect of Earth’s gravity on quantum systems. But in all these scenarios, gravity itself behaves in a way that is consistent with classical physics; its quantum features are irrelevant. What’s much more difficult is to observe phenomena in which we expect gravity to behave quantum mechanically.

We both have worked on quantum gravity throughout our careers—Rovelli as a physicist and Huggett as a philosopher. We are keenly interested in exploring what these experiments can and cannot tell us about quantum gravity. If they come to fruition, we might be able to see, for the first time, space and time themselves being quantum.

T he two of us were discussing the developments recently during a break at a conference. Over coffee in a café in Oxford, England, we came up with a simple thought experiment illustrating how the quantum nature of gravity could be revealed. (Related ideas have been discussed previously by, for instance, Alejandro Perez of Aix-­Marseille University in France, in work on dark-matter detection, and Netanel H. Lindner and Asher Peres of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology.)

Our idea involves “interference,” which has been crucial in unraveling many aspects of quantum mechanics. Interference is a phenomenon that applies to waves, quantum or not. All waves have a pattern of crests and troughs; the distance between two crests or troughs is the wavelength. If the crests of two waves meet at a point, they combine to produce a crest twice as high as either alone, and when two troughs meet, you get a trough twice as deep. This kind of interference is said to be constructive. Destructive interference, then, is when a wave and a trough overlap and cancel each other out.

Jen Christiansen

In the 19th century, interference allowed scientist Thomas Young to demonstrate that light acts like a wave. He shined light through two narrow slits to cast an image on a screen behind them. Waves from each slit travel the same distance to reach the point directly between the two slits, so their peaks hit that point at the same time, and they produce constructive interference—that’s where Young saw the brightest light. At points farther along the wall to the right of the light source, the wave from the left slit has to travel a slightly longer distance than the wave from the right, so crests and troughs no longer line up, and the height of the added waves decreases. Eventually there is a point at which the wave from the left has to travel half a wavelength farther than the one from the right, and crests line up with troughs to make destructive interference; here Young saw no light. This pattern, known as “Young’s fringes,” repeated along the wall and showed that light is, in fact, a wave.

Young’s experiment was purely classical, but variations on this setup became important for quantum physics. In 1923 physicist Louis de Broglie proposed that quantum objects may behave not like little billiard balls, as they had often been thought of, but like waves. If so, particles such as neutrons should also produce a pattern of fringes in a double-slit experiment—and indeed they do, as demonstrated in the 1980s with neutrons produced in a nuclear reactor.

Amazingly, these experiments produce the same results when neutrons pass one at a time through the double slits. Even a single neutron sent through the experiment will create interference, meaning it somehow interferes with itself . That can happen only if the neutron acts like two waves that follow two different paths. Because the idea of being in two places at once is so alien to classical particles, a new term was adopted; we say the neutron is in a “superposition” of being both here and there.

Does this part of quantum weirdness apply to gravity? Does it apply to space and time? To address these questions, we turn to general relativity, which tells us the presence of mass (or energy more generally) means that nearby spacetime will be curved. This curvature, in turn, means that objects will be naturally deflected toward mass, explaining its gravitational attraction. Such spacetime curvature also means that clocks run slower when they are closer to a mass. This effect can be used in an interference experiment that brings quantum mechanics and gravity together— a step toward showing gravity is quantum.

Suppose a neutron, in wave form, is split in two by a mirror that reflects and transmits equal amounts of the wave. The two resulting quantum waves travel different paths to a screen: one travels parallel to the ground and then upward, the other upward and thenparallel to the ground, each path forming two sides of a rectangle. The waves are in sync when they leave the mirror, but because of Earth’s gravity, the wave that follows the lower path will oscillate more slowly, and its crests will arrive slightly after those of the wave that follows the higher path. (The effect of the vertical segment is the same on both.) The result is quantum interference caused purely by the curvature of spacetime.

Physicists proposed such an experiment in 1974. The following year Roberto Colella and Albert W. Overhauser, both at Purdue University, collaborated with Samuel A. Werner, then a staff scientist at Ford Motor Company, and successfully carried it out . The team observed the predicted fringe pattern, directly demonstrating the influence of gravity on the quantum behavior of particles, to the great excitement of many scientists. But even though the neutrons in the experiment behaved quantum mechanically, gravity in this case can be described by general relativity, so it is still classical, not quantum.

The breakthrough in the new proposals is that they aim to go further and demonstrate for the first time that gravity, like neutrons and light and all other quantum objects, also has a quantum nature.

A ccording to general relativity, all matter, whether a planet, a speck of dust or a neutron, affects spacetime curvature. The deformation of spacetime produced by a small object is minuscule, but it still happens. But what if a small object is in a quantum superposition of locations? Because each position produces a different spacetime geometry, physicists expect that the result is a quantum superposition of geometries. It is as if spacetime has two shapes at once. It is this quantum weirdness of gravity that we hope to one day see in a laboratory.

The simple thought experiment we came up with that day in Oxford shows how it could be done in principle. Imagine that you shine a light past an object in superposition. That light would travel through a superposition of two spacetime geometries. In one geometry it might be far from the object, in which case the effect of gravity would be negligible, and it would travel in a straight line to a screen. In the other geometry it would pass close enough to the object that gravity would have to be taken into account, so it would follow a curved path to the screen. These two different paths mean that when the waves recombine at the screen, they will interfere and produce the telltale fringe pattern.

Crucially, interference will not arise unless gravity can exist in superposition—in other words, unless gravity itself is quantum. If instead gravity is fundamentally classical, no such interference will result. Perhaps, as mathematician and Nobel laureate Roger Penrose has argued, nature picks one of the superposed geometries, causing the mass in superposition to “choose” a single location. Or perhaps there is a single geometry corresponding to a single mass at the average position among its possible locations. Either way, there will be no superposition of geometries, and the light ray will follow a single path and won’t be able to interfere with itself. So if interference fringes were to occur in such an experiment, they would, according to standard physics, show quantumlike behavior of gravity such as a superposition of geometries—a momentous result so far not achieved by any experiment.

What are the prospects of carrying out such an experiment? On one hand, the more massive the object we place in superposition, the greater the effect on gravity and hence on the light. On the other, although every object is fundamentally quantum mechanical, most large, everyday things are essentially impossible to observe in superposition because they interact too much with their environments, hiding any interference. We call this effect “decoherence.” The larger something is, the more chances it has to interact, and the more it decoheres ; scientists who have isolated systems to overcome this effect have won Nobel Prizes.

So we are pulled in two directions for our experiment. We need something big enough to let us see gravitational effects but small enough for us to see its quantum nature. We have to find the sweet spot.

Quantum gravity is characterized by three constants of nature: the speed of light, Isaac Newton’s constant describing the strength of gravity, and Planck’s constant describing the scale of quantum phenomena. Arithmetically combining them produces a characteristic “Planck mass” of around 20 micrograms (μg). This is about the same mass as that of a flea egg or a strand of hair a few millimeters long: not large but—unlike the energy involved in the big bang—definitely on a human scale. The sweet spot where we hope to search is plausibly around this mass, which involves both gravitational and quantum mechanical constants.

Recently scientists were able to place an object of that mass into a quantum superposition of locations two billionths of a nanometer apart . This separation, however, is still less than a billionth of the distance we’d need for our tests to have a visible effect. The situation may seem hopeless, but to an experimentalist it sounds like a challenge. Labs are working hard to gain better control over the quantum behavior of Planck-mass bodies and to observe the gravitational effects of masses many times lighter than 20 μg.

If we want to observe a fringe pattern, though, we can’t just shine light at the object in superposition. Even in the gravitational field of a Planck-mass object, the effect will be too small. For us to have any chance of observing what we seek, the light would need a wavelength of 10 − 32 meter—once again in the inaccessible realm found only at the big bang.

W hat if, instead of light, we used a second quantum mass to travel near the original mass and exploited its quantum wave nature? The heavier the mass, the greater the gravitational force—and the slower it moves, the longer the mass has to experience that force. These two effects are dramatic: fringes should be observable if the two masses are one ten-thousandth of the Planck mass, tantalizingly close to current experimental ability.

In 2017 a pair of papers about another way of measuring quantum gravity effects in the lab triggered considerable excitement among physicists. The research suggests a strategy for observing a superposition of spacetime geometries that is more subtle and possibly within even closer reach than the one the two of us came up with. Both build on recent advances in theory and experiment that have brought gravity and quantum physics closer together. Both take inspiration from theoretical physicist Richard Feynman’s 1957 version of an idea originally proposed by Soviet physicist Matvei Bronstein.

Start with two Planck-mass particles, each in a quantum superposition of locations. Combined, the pair is in a superposition of four possibilities: one where they are close together, two where they are (much) farther apart and one in which they are at the greatest distance from one another in the experiment. Because the geometry of spacetime depends on the distance between the particles, the different possibilities for the particles’ arrangement correspond to different geometries. Once again, the particle superposition means that gravity, too, is in a quantum superposition.

According to quantum theory, a stationary quantum particle is a wave that oscillates with a frequency that depends on its energy, so it is a kind of clock. But as we mentioned, gravity affects the rate at which clocks run. In particular, the particles oscillate at different rates in their different arrangements: the closer they are, the slower they oscillate. As a result, the superposed arrangements get out of phase with one another. As before, when waves get out of phase, they experience interference, which in this case can be measured in characteristically quantum correlations between the two particles called “ entanglement .”

A basic result from the theory of quantum information indicates that entanglement can’t be observed unless the gravitational field through which the particles interact is in a quantum superposition. Therefore, observing the entanglement of the two particles is another means of demonstrating the quantum mechanical behavior of the gravitational field. In 2019 Rovelli published a paper with Marios Christodoulou of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Vienna (IQOQI) arguing that if gravity were indeed caused by deformations of the spacetime geometry, then measuring such entanglement would provide evidence that spacetime geometry can be put into superposition—that space and time, one may say, are quantum.

The 2017 proposal, and this convergence of spacetime physics with the field of quantum information, has caused a splash of experimental, theoretical and philosophical consequences. We are both members of a research consortium called Quantum Information Structure of Spacetime (QISS) that is working to elaborate theoretically and experimentally on these ideas. For instance, a group at IQOQI has been developing the experimental techniques that will be necessary for the entanglement experiment. Other groups in QISS have clarified the theoretical and philosophical significance of the experiment and proposed alternatives to measuring entanglement.

That the QISS collaboration involves philosophers such as Huggett may seem surprising. But there is a tradition of philosophical investigation of space and time that can be traced from antiquity through 17th-century polymaths Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 19th-century scientist Henri Poincaré, Einstein, and many others. When foundational notions such as space and time need to be rethought, we need people who can bring in a high level of analytical and conceptual—that is, philosophical—clarity. For instance, Huggett recently explored the implications of gravitational entanglement in a book written with science philosophers Niels Linnemann and Mike D. Schneider.

T his is not the first time scientists have envisioned laboratory experiments meant to test possible quantum gravity phenomena. But all past proposals, as far as we can tell, involved either unobservably small or extremely speculative effects that aren’t actually predicted by plausible hypotheses about quantum gravity. Rovelli remembers his surprise at first encountering the idea for the new gravity-induced entanglement experiment: a phenomenon that may well become testable and that we expect to be real.

There is still a long way to go over the next few years to carry out such trials (and there would be an even longer path toward enacting our own thought experiment). But if they can be successfully accomplished, they will test the low-energy domain on which almost all theories agree. If researchers find evidence for space­time in superposition, then they will have the first direct evidence for the basic assumptions of our theories of quantum gravity. We will substantially rule out the possibility that gravity is classical, a significant and previously unexpected step forward. More than that, experimentalists would have reached a new horizon of the physical world, producing a region of spacetime that is observably quantum in a macroscopic laboratory. At last physics will have concretely entered a realm that for now remains a land of hypothesis.

If signs of superposition are notobserved, the experiments will instead support speculations that gravity is intrinsically classical, confounding the expectations of much of the physics community and plunging a huge amount of work from the past 40 years into crisis. Such a result would require a significant revision of our understanding of the world and of the connection between quantum theory and gravity.

In either case, the effect would be momentous.

Nick Huggett is a philosopher at the University of Illinois Chicago who specializes in the philosophy of physics.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist and writer. He is associ­ated with Aix-Marseille University in France, the University of Western Ontario and the Peri­meter Institute in Canada, and the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. His latest book is White Holes (River­head Books, 2023).

Ben • January 31, 2020 • 17 min read

15 Reality-Shattering Thought Experiments That Will Unplug You From the Matrix

Consciousness & Meditation Philosophy Random + Awesome

What is the matrix?

The matrix is all around you. It’s your current worldview — everything you think you know.

The thing is: your current worldview is incomplete and inaccurate. It contains a certain amount of delusion and illusion.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We all live in the matrices of our current worldviews. We all approximate our own truth. No human fully comprehends what is going on in this universe .

However, when people become too certain in their beliefs, bad things often result. When people become overly certain, they become willing to kill and commit other atrocities to defend their beliefs.

Thus, one of our purposes at HighExistence is to consistently challenge the beliefs of the human species — to show all of you that you shouldn’t be so certain. For the world is an endlessly complex and mysterious place…

The freethinker understands this. The freethinker seeks consistently to expand and refine their worldview, knowing that there is always room for more knowledge and perspective.

One great way to expand your worldview — to unplug from the matrix of your current belief system — is to contemplate thought experiments.

That’s why I’ve assembled this collection of reality-cracking paradoxes and puzzles. My sincere hope is that this series of thought experiments will compel you to be a freethinker — to admit that there are oceans of things you do not know and to continue learning for the rest of your days. Good luck.

“I don’t believe anything, but I have many suspicions.” — Robert Anton Wilson

15 Mind-Bending Thought Experiments

#1: we can’t all be right.

Many of us believe “ I’m right.”

That’s ridiculous!

There’s no way we could all possibly be right. There’s no way even most of us are right. But we’re almost always convinced: “I have the right perspective”.

There are some things we can be pretty sure about. I know I’m typing on my laptop. I’m facing a window and I know it’s sunny outside. I know I like barbecue sauce.

But my interpretations of social situations often turn out wrong…

One morning at work my supervisor quickly told me they had feedback for me later in our afternoon meeting. I stressed out all day worried about what I had done wrong. It turned out they wanted to emphasize something I had done well.

I was so anxious about something completely in my imagination . I had an incorrect expectation about what the word “feedback” meant. I let my imagination run wild with this expectation, and cause me distress over something that didn’t exist.

We have a lot of ideas that we think are right. We’re certain that if we accomplish this goal, we’ll be super happy! We know this social problem is caused by that issue, and so we need to pass this legislation to solve things. We believe this happens after we die…

In all these cases, we really don’t know . We might have a good guess. And sure, we all guess right now and then.

But the world is infinitely complex. Our intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge have limitations. There are so many things we can’t know.

I bet a lot of the time, you think you’re right . Reflect on that. How much unexamined loyalty do you have in your own perspectives?

Know that everyone who disagrees with you rests with a similar level of self-assuredness.

Experiment with thinking about how ludicrous it is that almost everybody believes they’re right. We can’t all be right. But most of the time, we manage to believe we are.

#2: WWAT? What Would Aliens Think?

What would an alien think?

Question all your personal habits, all your culture’s values and activities, from that perspective.

Of course, intelligent extraterrestrials would most likely have their own biased perspective just like you do. It’s not that the alien’s perspective is totally objective and perfect. The point isn’t to get a perfect view of ourselves.

The point of this thought experiment is just to see ourselves as an outsider . Are the things we do with our life worthwhile when viewed from afar? Aren’t a lot of our activities and choices kind of weird? What are we like when considered through the lens of something literally alien to us?

When I ask myself this question I find that a lot of the stuff we do is weird as fuck .

Why do we keep the toothbrush right next to the place where we shit ? I mean, you put that thing in your mouth!

Why do I make a weird voice when I talk to my dog? What would an alien think if it saw a subway full of humans all staring at their phones?

If an alien with no knowledge of humans saw one of us surfing, how would it explain the activity? What would the alien think of that human’s motivation to surf? Why is the human doing that?

What would aliens think?

#3: Do We Need “A” Reality?

In his essay “Do We Need ‘A’ Reality?”, Carl Rogers begins by reflecting on how a teacher’s job is to prepare students for the “real world”.

But what is the “real world”? What do we mean when we say that, and is it an accurate model of the reality we’re actually living in?

Rogers gives an audacious answer:

“… The only reality I can possibly know is the world as I perceive and experience it at this moment. The only reality you can possibly know is the world as you perceive and experience it at this moment. And the only certainty is that those perceived realities are different. There are as many ‘real worlds’ as there are people!” — Carl Rogers

No matter how you cut the cake, you don’t really know the “real world” . All you really know is your experience .

Rogers points out how people whose realities deviate from the accepted norm are alienated, exiled, and at times executed. Copernicus was “declared a heretic” for claiming that the Earth was not the center of the universe. “Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 for teaching that there were many worlds in our universe”, as Carl writes.

Accepting only one reality has consequences. We shun, marginalize, and even kill our visionaries . We refuse to learn from one another . We fail to find empathy and compassion for people different from us.

So, do we need “a” reality? Is it possible for us to accept that “there are as many real worlds as there are people”? Can we learn from those who experience reality in a different way?

#4: Inner-Sense

Most people think we have 5 senses. Touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight.

Actually, we have many more! Balance, temperature, hunger, thirst, pressure, and plenty of other sensory capacities allow us to detect physical phenomenon relevant to us.

Contemplative and meditative traditions sometimes take the view that thought, emotion, memory, and other internal activities of the mind are also senses.

These senses help us detect the more ephemeral and intangible dimensions of reality — the dynamics of a relationship, feelings like sadness and joy, what meaning a situation has for us, etc.

They paint the picture of our inner environment , as opposed to our outer environment.

Now, there are important ramifications of re-categorizing internal activity as sensation. Usually, we think of senses as detecting things that are not us .

A sensation — a sight, sound, taste, pain in the stomach — is seen as an experience we’re having . We think of them as happening to us .

But we identify with thoughts and feelings. Usually we don’t see a thought, feeling, or memory as an experience we’re having. We see it as a part of ourselves .

Would it be a good or a bad thing to de-couple our identity from thoughts, feelings, and other mental activity? We’d still have the mental activity. All the “inner senses” would still pass through.

But maybe we wouldn’t take them so personally. Maybe we’d deal with them more objectively and effectively.

Or would we get lost in apathy? Would we lose our personal passions, and the unique touches that make us ourselves?

Should we re-categorize mental activity so we see it as another “experience happening to us”, as a sensation, instead of seeing it as part of ourselves ? What are the consequences of doing this?

#5: Eye See The Mind’s I

The Mind’s I: Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett is an incredible book full of thought experiments on mind, identity, and consciousness. Note that the cover is a close-up of an eye.

I love the concept to which they’re alluding. The idea that your “I” is also an “eye”. One’s identity functions as a perceptual instrument .

Oftentimes the way you interpret a situation has more to do with you than the situation itself. You can’t know objective reality, but you can interpret it through your subjective experience . All your views are influenced by who you are, and remnants of you can be found in all your perspectives.

When someone insults us, we try to remember that what they think about us is actually a reflection of them and not us. They haven’t been in our shoes and they don’t know what it’s like to be us.

They are interpreting us through the lens of themselves . Through the lens of all the experiences they have ever had, the lens of their personality, the lens of who they are.

We see things through the filter of our identity. How we experience ourselves is the primary filter for how we experience the world. Everything you experience somehow reflects a quality of you, because your manner of experiencing is constructed by your identity.

Can we ever see things for how they are, or is our perspective always bound by the limits of the self? Is it ever possible to transcend our identities, to see past the lens of the “mind’s eye”, and understand reality for how it is?

How often do you see things for how they are, and how often do you see things for how you are?

#6: Who Runs Your Mind, Anyway?

Do you control your own mind? Most of us believe we do. But if you did, wouldn’t it be a much easier place to live ? Human minds are plagued by doubt, anxiety, depression, frustration, intolerance, craving, and plenty of other unpleasant experiences .

If you were in total control of your mind, wouldn’t it be best to choose not to feel anything bad? How often would you choose to experience thoughts and emotions which cause you suffering? Wouldn’t you just choose to feel awesome and think awesome things all the time? You could still make good decisions — just without the shitty thoughts and feelings ?

Well, none of us can do that. We can take our negative, challenging, difficult, uncomfortable thoughts and emotions and learn to work with them in awesome ways , but the shitty material is always there.

So if you’re not in control of your mind, then who is? What is? Is it controlled at all by anyone? Or do you disagree with my experiment and believe you do totally control your mind?

Do you have some degree of control, but not complete control? Where does your agency or influence begin and end?

#7: Social Convention Is Just Conceptual Bullshit

Social convention, the way we agree to run relationships and society, is never real. It’s just conceptual . It’s some shit we made up.

Gil Fronsdale, a Buddhist teacher who has practiced in several monasteries across the world, told a story about meditation room etiquette at one monastery in Asia.

In the meditation hall, no one could walk on the carpet that the Buddha statue sat on. The carpet covered much more floor space than the statue, so you had to be careful to avoid it when walking across the room.

As a monk, it would be a very disrespectful gesture to step on the same carpet as Buddha.

One day Gil was in the meditation hall while some tourists were stopping by. They walked onto the carpet, got right in Buddha’s face, and started taking pictures.

At first he was really thrown-off from seeing someone walk on the carpet. How could they, these impudent tourists !

Gil said this sparked a small awakening in him. He realized that the order of the cosmos wouldn’t fall apart if someone walked on the carpet . It wasn’t actually a heinously immoral act to walk on the carpet.

He just had an idea in his head about walking on the carpet, a kind of expectation , that had worked its way in during the course of his monastic life. The tourists didn’t have this same idea, and were able to walk on the carpet blissfully unaware of the monastery’s customs.

Our ideas about how social interactions should go, about how we should behave, about what’s valuable and what isn’t, about how life should be lived — they’re all just ideas .

Reality has no standards .

You are the one who holds judgments, standards, and rules.

Should we throw away all social convention? Or are there important cultural adhesives we need to preserve for the sake of social unity and smooth conversation? How should we handle the reality that all our conventions are just some shit we made up?

#8: Neil’s Worm

“There’s a worm in the street, you walk by it. Does the worm know that you think you’re smart? The worm has no concept of your smarts. Because you’re that much smarter than the worm. So the worm has no idea that something smart is walking by it. Which makes me wonder whether we have any concept — if a super species walked by us. Maybe they’re uninterested in us because we’re too stupid for them to even imagine having a conversation. You don’t walk by worms and go “Gee I wonder what the worm is thinking.” This is just not a thought that you have!” — Neil deGrasse Tyson

This quote calls to attention how we are exponentially smarter than a worm.

We are so much smarter than a worm that it has no way of even imagining our level of  intelligence. It might know enough to get out of the way so it doesn’t get squashed, but that’s about it.

Here’s why this idea matters: if we are that much smarter, that much more aware than the worm, then why couldn’t there be an organism somewhere in the universe that much smarter than us ?

Who are we to assume that we’re the smartest organisms ever?

Likely, something out there has an intelligence and awareness which dwarf ours in the same way ours dwarfs that of the worm.

Perhaps we’ve encountered such a being and not even known it — because we didn’t have the smarts ! Maybe a super-intelligence has strolled right by Earth without us ever noticing.

So, how smart are we really ?

#9: Sagan’s Butterfly

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” — Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan, 1994. Photo Credit: Johann Heupel ( Flickr Commons )

A lifetime seems long as fuck to us, but it’s just a tiny blip on a geological timescale.

We perceive our 75-ish year life spans as a lot of time. But compare that to how long it took the Grand Canyon to form. Compare that to how long the Earth has been here, or to the age of the Sun. Compare it to the age of the universe .

Doesn’t seem like we live all that long anymore, does it? But hold up, because we could compare it to other time periods, and realize that a human life is an amazingly long time!

There are some butterflies that live on average only two days. Others live for almost a year. Compared to any butterfly, our lifetime is blessedly long!

Is your lifetime a long time? Or is it just a cosmic second?

#10: Fish Don’t Know They’re In Water

This perspective-shattering idea is cited by many different people. I haven’t found a definite source, but it likely originated somewhere in Africa and Sufi spiritual tradition:

“A fish doesn’t know water is wet .”

Wetness is in one way all a fish knows. But because water is the base of the fish’s entire experience, it doesn’t know how wetness compares to other states . It has no non-wet point of reference from which to evaluate wetness.

Much in the same way, we are often totally unaware of the contexts that immerse us — precisely because they immerse us.

The most influential things that frame our lives can go unnoticed. We are rarely cognizant of the mediums through which we experience .

Without a mirror, you can’t see your eyes.

Culture is a great example to demonstrate this. Experiencing culture shock is like a fish having an out-of-water-experience .

When you encounter a way of life that rests on different assumptions than yours, it forces you to reexamine the assumptions you live by. You experience the world as filtered through assumptions you received from your culture of origin. But you don’t realize you even have these assumptions until you encounter someone operating from different principles.

In Costa Rica, people saw me as too stressed out because I kept asking about the future. “When will we get there? What are we doing this afternoon? Where do you think we’ll eat lunch?”

In the United States my frequent attempts to plan things out are normal enough. In Costa Rica people would tell me I need to relax. I had no idea how much of a need I feel to have a plan until I bumped into a different cultural way of being.

Think about the contexts that immerse you . Your culture. Your family. Your mind and the way it functions. Your body and the way it feels. How might you be blind to the processes through which you experience the world ?

#11: Nearly Everything That Sustains Your Life Is Out Of Your Control

There’s a concept in Buddhism often translated as “interdependence”. The principle is essentially that everything is related to everything else . Nothing in the universe exists outside of relationship .

When describing how this idea is relevant to our lives, Buddhist teachers often reflect on how many processes have to occur for our lives to go on.

You eat some rice. For you to eat that rice, the earth had to provide fertile soil. The sun and rain had to nourish rice plants all through history, and environmental conditions had to let those plants survive. Generations of farmers reaching ages into the past cultivated that rice.

A group of farmers alive today had to put in physical work to grow the rice you eat. People had to drive trucks, boats, and planes to bring the rice from where it was grown to where you bought it. Store employees had to run the place where you bought the rice.

Then after you eat that rice, your digestive system has to work to process the rice. Your organs and microorganisms in your body do that stuff. Generations upon generations of animals had to live and pass on their traits so that one day you would exist as a human with this functioning digestive system.

Eating that rice connects you to the history of minerals in our planet, the sun, the rain, the farmers, the shipping companies, the cashier at the checkout line, and your entire evolutionary history .

Buddhism points out that nearly all of these things are not you . Most of the things which sustain your life are outside your control .

Yes, you take actions to keep yourself alive, so you’re part of the process too. You drive to the store to buy the rice. You worked all week to afford your meals and rent at the house where you cook them.

But you wouldn’t have a house if no one built it. You wouldn’t have that car if it weren’t for the industrial revolution. The rice wouldn’t be there for you to buy if no one grew it. You wouldn’t have a body or mind to live through without the history of evolution occurring as it did.

Nearly all of the things that allow you to live the way you do happen outside of your control as an individual.

Think about that one…

12: We Never Really Know If We’ve Done Good Or Bad

We can never really know if we’ve done good or bad.

All we can do is act with best intentions, and hope the ramifications of our actions are good.

Let’s say you build a rifle and sell it.

Are you doing a good or a bad thing?

The rifle you build may kill innocent people. Or it may stop those who sought to kill innocent people. Likely, especially if used in modern warfare, it will end up doing both in its course.

The gun you sell could take lives and save lives.

Or what if you invent a new technology? A powerful, revolutionary technology.

You have no way of knowing how your technology will eventually be used. Likely some people will use your technology for purposes you consider beneficial, while others will use it for things you consider immoral.

Take airplanes. Can you weigh the benefit of being able to travel to the other side of the world in a day against the human suffering caused by all the bombs ever dropped from airplanes? Did the inventors of flight do something good, or bad?

Take the internet. Anyone can learn anything with access to the internet. History has shown that freedom’s strongest allies are education and knowledge. The internet is a technology with the potential to liberate the world .

At the same time propaganda can be spread like never before, and there is now the possibility for government and corporate entities to spy on the public with unprecedented breadth and detail . The internet is a technology with the potential to bring new forms of slavery and oppression to the world.

The domino effect has too many repercussions to calculate. You never know whether your choices will do more good or bad. You never know what could happen as a result of your actions.

Do you agree that you can’t predict the full extent of consequences that your behavior sets in motion? How should we live with this dilemma?

#13: You Are Both Magnificent And Insignificant

You are both magnificent and insignificant. It all depends on how far you zoom in or out .

You are an entire ecosystem of microorganisms cooperating to create an incredibly rich , vivid experience of reality. This is a truly awesome phenomenon. Inside of you are worlds of biological wonder .

At the same time, you are basically nothing on the cosmically infinite scale of reality. Our galaxy is but an atom when compared with the whole universe. What does that make you?

And to boot, nowadays we’re questioning whether or not we’re the only universe out there!

You’re kind of like a cell to the earth, and the earth is a cell in the universe . That makes you tiny and irrelevant. But you’re also an Earth to a cell, and a universe to an atom. That makes you grand and incalculably significant!

#14: Change Is The Only Constant

The only thing that doesn’t change is the fact of change itself. Change is the only thing that will always happen, guaranteed.

Make this one personal. Think of something you care about . Think of how that thing will inevitably change . Eventually, everything you know will be different somehow.

Matter and energy are never created or destroyed, they just change form. And on a long enough time-frame, changing form happens to everything.

People will die. Buildings will be taken down. Your body will grow old. That tree will grow taller.

This universe will move on no matter what you’d like to hold onto.

If you accept that the things you like won’t last forever, it will be easier to let go of them when the time comes.

“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose” — Yoda

When you see that the things you don’t like are bound to change , then it might be a little easier to tolerate undesirable conditions for the time being.

Face the reality that everything, everything , will change. Accept that reality and you’ll be a pro at flowing with life’s curveballs.

#15: You Don’t Need to be Special, And Neither Does Anyone Else

We care so much about our reputation, about how we seem to others, and about how we measure up to standards set by society. We see certain people as demigods worthy of social worship. We bend ourselves out of shape trying to emulate and impress them.

But you’re not special , and neither is anybody else. We’re all just meat-bags wandering this rock. Nobody really knows why, how, or what it’s all about.

Jupiter is stopping the asteroid belt from destroying our planet . Oftentimes, as I’m busy comparing myself to others and wishing that my life was different, I forget to be thankful for that.

This idea is splendidly liberating when you play around with it. You don’t need to measure up to those standards. You don’t need to idolize anyone or anything. You don’t need to arrange your life perfectly like some Bed, Bath, and Beyond catalogue.

You just need to enjoy the ride on this cosmic rollercoaster. Maybe try to help some other meat-bags along the way. Helping other organisms feels good for some reason.

Nobody is better than you. And you’re not better than anyone else. And there’s no final exam or annual review for your life that you should be working harder to prepare for.

You’ve just got life — vibrant, messy, and I assure you totally normal.

We’re all just regular humans, all deserving compassion and help. You don’t need to live in competition with any standards. Just try to find ways to enjoy the butterfly’s eternity that you get here.

THE ULTIMATE LIFE EXPERIMENT 30 CHALLENGES TO ENLIGHTENMENT

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The course,  30 Challenges to Enlightenment , is a map for those who want to explore life’s most radical frontiers. Through mastering unconventional habits and pushing your comfort zone you will understand the world and your place in it like never before. Are you ready for the journey?

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Cognitive Psychology Experiments: Unveiling the Mysteries of the Mind

From illusions that deceive our senses to the limits of our memory, cognitive psychology experiments have long sought to unravel the enigmatic workings of the human mind. Our brains, these marvelous biological computers, continue to baffle and amaze us with their complexity and capabilities. Yet, through the tireless efforts of researchers and the ingenious design of experiments, we’ve managed to peek behind the curtain of consciousness and glimpse the inner workings of our cognitive processes.

Cognitive psychology, the study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem-solving, creativity, and thinking, has been at the forefront of this exploration. It’s a field that bridges the gap between our subjective experiences and the objective world of scientific inquiry. By designing clever experiments, cognitive psychologists have managed to shine a light on the hidden mechanisms that drive our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors.

The journey of cognitive psychology began in the mid-20th century, emerging as a response to the limitations of behaviorism. While behaviorists focused solely on observable behaviors, cognitive psychologists argued that to truly understand the human mind, we needed to examine the internal mental processes that give rise to those behaviors. This shift in perspective opened up a whole new world of research possibilities, leading to a boom in experimental studies that continue to shape our understanding of the mind to this day.

The significance of these experiments cannot be overstated. They’ve not only advanced our theoretical understanding of cognition but have also had profound practical implications. From improving educational methods to developing more effective therapies for mental health disorders, the insights gained from cognitive psychology experiments have touched nearly every aspect of our lives.

Foundational Cognitive Psychology Experiments: The Building Blocks of Understanding

Let’s kick things off with a colorful conundrum that’s been puzzling psychologists for decades: the Stroop Effect. Imagine you’re presented with a list of color words, but here’s the catch – the words are printed in different colors than what they spell. For instance, the word “RED” might be printed in blue ink. Your task? Simply name the color of the ink, not read the word. Sounds easy, right? Well, prepare to have your mind blown!

Most people find this task surprisingly difficult, often stumbling and slowing down when the word and ink color don’t match. This phenomenon, first described by John Ridley Stroop in 1935, reveals the powerful interference between our automatic reading processes and our ability to name colors. It’s a prime example of how our cognitive processes can sometimes trip us up, even in seemingly simple tasks.

But wait, there’s more! Let’s take a stroll down memory lane with George Miller’s “Magic Number” experiment. In 1956, Miller proposed that our short-term memory capacity is limited to about seven items, plus or minus two. He arrived at this conclusion after presenting participants with lists of random items (like digits, letters, or words) and asking them to recall as many as possible.

Surprisingly, most people could remember about seven items, regardless of whether they were simple digits or complex concepts. This “magic number” has had far-reaching implications, influencing everything from the design of phone numbers to the way we organize information in user interfaces. It’s a testament to how a single, well-designed experiment can reshape our understanding of human cognition and impact our daily lives.

Now, let’s dive into the murky waters of memory reconstruction with Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer’s groundbreaking work on eyewitness testimony. In their famous 1974 experiment, participants watched videos of car accidents and were then asked questions about what they saw. Here’s where it gets interesting: the researchers found that simply changing the wording of the questions could alter the participants’ memories of the event.

For instance, when asked “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”, participants estimated higher speeds than when the word “smashed” was replaced with “hit” or “contacted”. Even more astonishingly, a week later, participants who had been asked about the cars “smashing” were more likely to falsely remember seeing broken glass in the video – even though there was none!

This experiment sent shockwaves through the legal system, challenging the reliability of eyewitness testimony and highlighting the malleability of human memory. It’s a stark reminder that our memories aren’t perfect recordings of past events, but rather reconstructions that can be influenced by subsequent information and the way questions are phrased.

Attention and Perception Studies: The Invisible Gorilla and Other Mind-Bending Phenomena

Now, let’s turn our attention to… well, attention itself! One of the most jaw-dropping demonstrations of selective attention comes from Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris’ “Gorilla in our midst” experiment. Picture this: you’re watching a video of people passing a basketball, and your task is to count the number of passes made by one team. Sounds simple enough, right? But here’s the kicker – in the middle of the video, a person in a gorilla suit walks right through the scene, beats their chest, and exits.

You’d think everyone would notice a gorilla, wouldn’t you? Surprisingly, about half of the participants in this experiment were so focused on counting passes that they completely missed the gorilla! This phenomenon, known as inattentional blindness, shows just how selective our attention can be. It’s a humbling reminder that we often see what we’re looking for and miss what we’re not expecting, even when it’s right in front of our eyes.

Speaking of missing things right in front of our eyes, let’s talk about change blindness. This phenomenon occurs when we fail to notice changes in our visual environment, even when they’re quite significant. In one famous demonstration, researchers showed participants alternating images of two people having a conversation. The images were identical except for one major change – in one image, the first person wore a hat, and in the other, they didn’t.

Astonishingly, many participants failed to notice this change, even after multiple viewings. This experiment highlights the limitations of our visual awareness and challenges our intuitive belief that we see and remember everything in our environment. It’s a sobering thought that we might be missing more of the world around us than we realize!

Lastly, let’s explore the world of visual search with Anne Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory experiments. Treisman proposed that our visual perception occurs in two stages: a pre-attentive stage where we process basic features like color and shape in parallel, and a focused attention stage where we combine these features into coherent objects.

To test this theory, Treisman conducted experiments where participants had to find a target item among distractors. She found that when the target differed from distractors in a single feature (like a red circle among blue circles), people could find it quickly regardless of the number of distractors. However, when the target was defined by a combination of features (like a red circle among blue circles and red squares), search times increased with the number of distractors.

These findings have had profound implications for our understanding of visual perception and attention. They’ve influenced everything from the design of user interfaces to strategies for improving visual search in real-world scenarios like airport security screenings.

Memory and Learning Experiments: Forgetting Curves and Spaced Repetition

Let’s take a journey back to the late 19th century, where Hermann Ebbinghaus was busy memorizing nonsense syllables. Why, you ask? Well, Ebbinghaus was on a mission to understand how our memory works, particularly how we forget information over time. His painstaking self-experiments led to the discovery of the “forgetting curve” – a graph showing how information is lost over time when there’s no attempt to actively recall it.

Ebbinghaus found that memory loss is rapid at first, but then levels off. For instance, he might forget 50% of the nonsense syllables within an hour, but then only forget another 10% over the next month. This insight has had profound implications for learning and education. It’s why cramming the night before an exam isn’t as effective as spaced repetition – reviewing material at gradually increasing intervals.

Speaking of context, let’s dive into the fascinating world of the Encoding Specificity Principle, brought to us by Endel Tulving and Donald Thomson. Their experiments showed that the context in which we learn information plays a crucial role in our ability to recall it later. In one study, participants learned lists of words either on dry land or underwater. Surprisingly, they were better at recalling the words in the same environment where they learned them.

This principle extends beyond physical environments to emotional states and even physiological conditions. Ever had trouble remembering something you knew you knew, only to have it pop into your head later in a different context? That’s the Encoding Specificity Principle at work! It’s a reminder that memory isn’t just about storing information, but about creating rich, contextual associations that aid in retrieval.

Now, let’s talk about a learning phenomenon that’s music to the ears of procrastinators everywhere – the Spacing Effect. This effect, first discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus (yes, him again!) and later elaborated by many others, shows that we learn more effectively when we space out our study sessions over time, rather than cramming everything into one marathon session.

In a typical experiment demonstrating this effect, participants might be asked to learn a list of words. One group studies the list in a single session, while another group studies it in multiple shorter sessions spread out over time. When tested later, the spaced-learning group almost always outperforms the cramming group, even when the total study time is the same.

This finding has revolutionary implications for education and learning. It suggests that shorter, more frequent study sessions are more effective than longer, less frequent ones. So, the next time you’re tempted to pull an all-nighter before a big exam, remember – your brain might thank you for spreading out your study sessions instead!

Decision-Making and Problem-Solving Studies: Logic, Framing, and Functional Fixedness

Let’s kick off this section with a brain-teaser that’s stumped countless participants – the Wason Selection Task. Imagine you’re shown four cards. You know that each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other. The visible faces of the cards show A, D, 4, and 7. Now, you’re told there’s a rule: “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.” Your task? Select only the cards you need to turn over to check if the rule is being followed.

Sounds simple, right? Well, prepare to have your mind boggled! Most people choose A and 4, but the correct answer is A and 7. This task, developed by Peter Wason in 1966, reveals our struggles with abstract logical reasoning. It’s a stark reminder that our brains aren’t naturally wired for formal logic, and that we often rely on intuitive shortcuts that can lead us astray.

Now, let’s shift gears to a phenomenon that’s shaped our understanding of decision-making – the Framing Effect. This cognitive bias, explored in depth by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, shows how the way information is presented (or “framed”) can dramatically influence our choices.

In one classic experiment, participants were presented with a hypothetical scenario where 600 people were at risk from a disease outbreak. They were then given two treatment options:

– Option A: “200 people will be saved” – Option B: “There’s a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and a 2/3 probability that no one will be saved”

Interestingly, most people chose Option A. But when the same scenario was presented with different framing:

– Option C: “400 people will die” – Option D: “There’s a 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die”

Suddenly, most people preferred Option D, even though it’s mathematically equivalent to Option B!

This experiment reveals how our decisions can be swayed by the way information is presented, even when the underlying facts remain the same. It’s a sobering reminder of how susceptible we are to manipulation through framing, with implications ranging from marketing strategies to public health communications.

Lastly, let’s shine a light on a cognitive quirk that can hinder our problem-solving abilities – functional fixedness. This phenomenon was beautifully illustrated by Karl Duncker’s Candle Problem. In this experiment, participants were given a candle, a box of thumbtacks, and a book of matches. Their task? Attach the candle to the wall so that it can burn properly without dripping wax on the table below.

Many participants struggled with this task, trying to tack the candle directly to the wall or melt some of the wax to stick it. The solution, however, was to empty the box of thumbtacks, tack the box to the wall, and use it as a platform for the candle. The difficulty arose because people were fixated on the box’s function as a container for thumbtacks, failing to see its potential as a candleholder.

This experiment reveals how our preconceived notions about an object’s function can limit our problem-solving abilities. It’s a reminder to think outside the box – sometimes quite literally! – when faced with challenging problems.

Modern Cognitive Psychology Experiments: Peering into the Brain and Beyond

As we venture into the 21st century, cognitive psychology has embraced new technologies and methodologies, opening up exciting new avenues for research. One of the most revolutionary developments has been the advent of neuroimaging studies, which allow us to peek inside the brain as it performs various cognitive tasks.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies, for instance, have allowed researchers to observe which areas of the brain “light up” during different cognitive processes. In one fascinating experiment, participants were asked to imagine walking through their homes while their brains were being scanned. The researchers found that different areas of the brain activated in sequence, corresponding to the mental “walk” through different rooms. This kind of study provides unprecedented insights into how our brains represent and navigate spatial information.

But it’s not just about pretty brain pictures. These neuroimaging studies have practical applications too. For example, they’ve been used to study the neural basis of cognitive biases, helping us understand why we’re prone to certain systematic errors in thinking. One study used fMRI to examine the brain activity of participants as they made financial decisions. The researchers found that when people experienced the “sunk cost fallacy” – continuing to invest in a failing project because of past investments – there was increased activity in areas of the brain associated with negative emotions and conflict resolution.

Speaking of cognitive biases, modern cognitive psychology has continued to uncover and explore these fascinating quirks of human thinking. One particularly intriguing area of research has been the study of the “Dunning-Kruger effect” – the tendency for people with low ability in a specific domain to overestimate their competence.

In a series of experiments, Justin Kruger and David Dunning asked participants to rate their abilities in various domains (like logical reasoning or grammar) and then tested their actual performance. They found that those who performed poorly on the tests consistently overestimated their abilities, while high performers tended to underestimate theirs. This effect has profound implications for everything from education to workplace dynamics, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and continuous learning.

Lastly, let’s talk about a hot topic in modern cognitive psychology – multitasking. In our hyper-connected world, many of us pride ourselves on our ability to juggle multiple tasks simultaneously. But what does the research say about the effects of multitasking on our attention and performance?

One eye-opening study by Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony Wagner compared the cognitive abilities of heavy media multitaskers (people who frequently use multiple media simultaneously) with those of light media multitaskers. Contrary to what many might expect, they found that heavy multitaskers performed worse on tasks that required switching between different types of information. They were more easily distracted by irrelevant information and had more difficulty organizing their memories.

This research challenges the common belief that multitasking makes us more efficient. Instead, it suggests that constantly dividing our attention might be impairing our ability to focus and process information effectively. It’s a sobering thought in an age where we’re constantly bombarded with information from multiple sources.

As we wrap up our whirlwind tour of cognitive psychology experiments, it’s clear that this field has come a long way since its inception. From the foundational studies that shaped our understanding of attention, memory, and perception, to the cutting-edge research using neuroimaging and exploring cognitive biases, each experiment has added a piece to the puzzle of the human mind.

These studies have not only advanced our theoretical understanding but have also had profound practical implications. They’ve influenced educational practices, shaped legal procedures, informed design principles, and even changed how we think about our own thinking. The insights gained from cognitive psychology experiments have truly permeated every aspect of our lives.

As we look to the future, the field of cognitive psychology continues to evolve. Emerging technologies like virtual reality and artificial intelligence are opening up new possibilities for experimental design and data analysis. At the same time, there’s a growing recognition of the need for more diverse and representative participant pools to ensure that our understanding of cognition isn’t limited to a narrow subset of humanity.

One thing is certain – the human mind remains as fascinating and mysterious as ever. As we continue to probe its depths through clever experiments and rigorous analysis, we’re sure to uncover even more surprises. Who knows? The next groundbreaking cognitive psychology experiment might be just around the corner, ready to revolutionize our understanding of the mind once again.

So, the next time you find yourself marveling at the quirks of your own thinking – whether you’re struggling to ignore the word “RED” written in blue ink, or wondering how you missed that gorilla in the basketball game – remember that you’re experiencing firsthand the phenomena that cognitive psychologists have been studying for decades. Our minds may be enigmatic, but with each experiment, we get a little closer to unraveling their mysteries.

References:

1. Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643-662.

2. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81-97.

3. Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585-589.

4. Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28(9), 1059-1074.

5. Treisman, A. M., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12(1), 97-136.

6. Ebbinghaus, H. (1885/1913). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

7. Tulving, E., & Thomson, D. M. (1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review, 80(5), 352-373.

8. Wason, P. C. (1966). Reasoning. In B. M. Foss (Ed.), New horizons in psychology. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

9. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453-458.

10. Duncker, K. (1945). On problem-solving. Psychological Monographs, 58(5), i-113.

11. Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134.

12. Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15583-15587.

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