Friday, May 3, 2013

Fool Me Twice -- No Shame At All


A few months ago, I watched an old movie called "Detective Story", starring Kirk Douglas. It was quite entertaining and thoughtful, but the point I wish to discuss has nothing to do with the movie itself, but rather an unusual experience I had while watching it.

At one point of the movie, when the camera shifted to Kirk, it was not Kirk Douglas whom I saw, but rather actor Sean Penn, another well-known actor born nearly half a century after his doppelgänger (who is within striking distance of becoming a centenarian).

Naturally, I did a mental double-take at that moment, for I thought I had been watching a Kirk Douglas movie, not a Sean Penn movie! A beat later, my mind's eye re-adjusted, and it was once again Kirk Douglas before me. This scenario repeated itself at another point later on in the movie.

I'd like to offer my insights into what happened in my mind at that moment. Am I an expert in the workings of the mind? No, I'm a Freud not! But nevertheless.

I see a photo and recognize my mother. The following steps occur:

  1. My eyes see the photograph and take in the visual stimuli presented.
  2. Those stimuli are transmitted to my brain.
  3. Somewhere in my memory, under the label "Mom", I have stored a set of visual information: my mother's facial features, expressions, etc.
  4. My brain compares the stimuli being transmitted to it right now from my eyes with the set of data stored in my memory under "Mom", and perceives ample similarity between the two.
  5. My mind concludes that the visual image I'm seeing is my mother.
  6. I smile.

What transpired in my mind at the aforementioned moment in watching the film was virtually identical to the above steps, with the following exception: in step (4), the visual stimuli of Kirk Douglas being sent to my brain from my eyes were markedly similar to the visual information stored in my memory under the label "Sean Penn" -- the thick, straight hair, the cleft chin, etc. My mind therefore concluded, incorrectly, that I was watching Sean Penn.

Fair enough, Dr. Freud Not, but not so fast. If what you're saying is true, then why did this "false-positive" recognition occur only at that moment of the film? Clearly, prior to that moment, every time my mind compared the visual stimuli it was seeing with the images stored in my memory, it found a match with the set of data stored under the label "Kirk Douglas". So, to borrow from the Paschal liturgy, how was this moment different from all other moments?

Put differently, at that moment, my mind, upon being presented with an actual image of Kirk Douglas, and comparing that image with both my memory of Kirk Douglas and with my memory of Sean Penn, somehow felt that an actual image of Kirk Douglas looked less like Kirk Douglas than Sean Penn. Surely an impossibility!

I don't think this question is easily answered. Perhaps at that moment, something in Kirk's expression or stance contained a spark which to my mind is more associated with Sean Penn. Or maybe at that moment, my mind's secretary, shuffling through the myriad of mental images stored in its memory, simply pulled out the Sean Penn file before it reached the Kirk Douglas one.

Finally, a note on human error. I believe that when the mind makes these types of errors, there is no conscious decision making process involved in the error. The part of the mind which is comparing the visual stimuli with the "wrong" stored mental image is taking place on an involuntary, automatic level. If in that process of comparing, the mind finds a significant number of points in common between the two sets of data, then there is absolutely nothing it can do negate that. There is therefore no shame in such errors. (To be sure, there ought to be no shame in any type of error!)