Future Salon

Webcasting Blind Spotting Future Salon Now

If you could not make it in person. Please join the webcast on Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Future-Salon We will start at 7pm PST. See you there. #futuresalon

3 questions to Blind Spotting Future Salon presenter Peter Marks

As a little tease for the audience we like to ask the Future Salon speaker three questions beforehand. Further down are Peter Marks' answers. Great answers, can't wait for his talk. Please join us on Wednesday the 30th of June RSVP http://bit.ly/9Bny5B.

1)      What was the biggest blind spot that you overcame yourself.

 One thing I've become more aware of is how the "confirmation bias"  affects me.  Most of us, myself included, are confident in our own beliefs.   When challenged, we start looking (only) for evidence that supports our opinion.  Early in school and in my career, my knee-jerk reaction was to bury contrary opinions in an avalanche of facts.

An example of how the confirmation bias plays out,  many conservatives will dismiss liberal news sources and watch only, say, Fox News.   Similarly, liberals will avoid Fox, and listen only to sources that confirm their beliefs.   Confirmation biases affect everything from science to business decisions to decisions to go to war  (with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as a recent example).

If we're after the truth, we want to look as hard for disconfirming evidence as confirming evidence.   These days, I try to be slower in coming to conclusions; first looking for contrary evidence.In many cases, the result is a greater tolerance for ambiguity. 

All that said, there comes a time when we have to decide and move forward with action.   Weighing both the disconfirming and confirming evidence gives us a better chance of making the right decision when the time for action comes.

Replay of Trimtabs Future Salon

Thanks Miguel F. Aznar for excellent moderation of the Future Salon. Doing it old school with chocolate and round of introduction. It took 18 minutes, but may have been worth it, as the activity level in the room was definitely great. Exactly what is needed to unleash the best questions that my speakers are telling me the Future Salon audience are asking them.Check it out.

Bay Area Future Salon: Trimtabs for Systemic Change 1/2 from Mark Finnern on Vimeo.

Bay Area Future Salon: Trimtabs for Systemic Change 2/2 from Mark Finnern on Vimeo.

Blind Spotting Future Salon with Peter Marks

We all have blind spots, not only in our vision, but also in our thinking. This Future Salon will help you spot your own blind sides. Please join us on Wednesday the 30th of June RSVP http://bit.ly/9Bny5B.

Imagine if programmers were stuck with the Intel 4004 architecture (perhaps the first microprocessor) and had to write better software to work around its many limitations in memory and speed.   At the least, they'd bitterly complain.  Many would despair of creating modern applications.    Yet, in a sense, that's the situation we face with using our cognitive hardware (our brains) to make modern decisions.   The physiological hardware of our brains has been essentially unchanged for 35,000 years.  

The limits of human cognition are especially apparent with conscious decision making and social or group decisions.   This month's speaker, Peter Marks, has conducted significant  research in what he calls "Blind Spotting."   It turns out that we have more than a hundred documented cognitive and perceptual biases that often hide aspects of reality from conscious examination.  The last decade's stunning research on mirror neurons and imitation figures in this as well.