was reading will richardson’s end-of-the-year reflection posting on “changes” in the year, and co-incidentally, i saw this post by Dr Ashley Tan featuring an experiment conducted by harvard on some pple’s oblivious to drastic changes. (thanks tuck soon for showing me dr tan’s blog after i asked if he knows of anyone else in singapore who blogs abt education technologies. if you belong to this ‘rare species’ and u’re reading this post, pls leave a comment to get in touch!)
my initial response for the change blindness expt is a chinese proverb 成语 that comes to mind: 视而不见 (literally ‘see, and yet not seeing’; metaphorically meaning is somewhat different). but it does not help to explain the phenomena. my gut feel tells me that i will also ‘fail’ the expt, cos i’m an audio person (ref VAK), and i often find myself in situations where i’m supposed to see yet i fail to see, literally. perhaps i’ll notice the change of ‘voice’ of the person in the harvard expt? i’m not sure (:
my response to both posts in terms of change is another proverb 谚语： 一动不如一静. perhaps this would explain why to change is so difficult. another way to look at it is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. and that’s why one choose to 视而不见 and be blind to changes though it may be so obvious? cos wat 黄再源老师 said had always hold true : “现实生活中的现象，只要成语里找得到的，那就是正常的。 ” imho, 此乃真知灼见也 (: