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Six intuitions you shouldn't trust

By Michael Bond

23 June 2010

EVEN if you haven’t taken the invisible gorilla test, you’ve probably heard of it. It consists of a short video of two teams of students moving around while they pass basketballs. The idea is to count the number of passes made by one team while ignoring those made by the other. Roughly half of those who take the test fail to notice a person dressed as a gorilla who strolls into the middle of the players and beats its chest at the camera. The viewers are concentrating so hard on counting the passes that they’re blind to the unexpected, even though it is staring them in the face.…

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